Quote:
Originally Posted by freebeard
Am I correct in thinking that the action is longitudinal rather than normal to the surface? Even though pressure diagrams use normals for magnitude the resultant is closer to toward the wake?
|
Of what, vortices? It doesn't matter what happens to them after the car - they can only act on the car through surface pressures. Therefore, measuring pressures at the centre of trailing vortices (not that I have done this specifically), and looking at the angle of the panel, will tell you the force direction.
But I might add that vortices is a very tricky area, one I couldn't get agreement on from my experts when I was writing the book. The disagreement was so strong that I did a panel on it (Page 19). I am at the moment in communication with a professional aerodynamicist about lift/downforce and vortices, and he is adding to my knowledge on this topic as we speak!