Quote:
Originally Posted by JulianEdgar
Aerodynamics of Road Vehicles (5th edition) has a lot more on it than earlier editions of the book, but to be honest I've not really absorbed everything in this book yet.
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I just ordered this edition, nice to hear it has more information on vortices.
Scibor-Rylski makes an interesting assertion that I hadn't read anywhere else: deliberately introducing a counter-rotating vortex to reduce the strength of already-present vortices can reduce the vortex-induced lift by simple vector superposition (summing vector components of the velocity in each axis reduces or cancels the velocity along them, in other words), but drag increases according to the summed scalar strength (no cancellation) of each vortex. I don't know if that's true or not, but it may be possible to find out on the road if you can design a device to induce rotation outward (counterclockwise looking from the rear of the car) and then throttle-stop test.
I've wondered if this shape, in fact, is designed to do just that and reduce rear lift:
