Quote:
Originally Posted by aerohead
I was looking at the 2015 Yukon Denali, tested by CAR and DRIVER.
This is a little larger SUV than the Tahoe, and a curb weight of 6,060-pounds.
EPA test weight would be 6,360-pounds.
For it's frontal area estimate, and using Cd 0.36, aerodynamic road load @ 70-mph is 67.72% of overall load ( 29.798- horsepower, leaving 32.27% for rolling-resistance ( 14.2- horsepower )
Should there be one particular airfoil design, superior to all others, which, say, produced an evenly-distributed 3,180-pounds lift, then rolling resistance could be cut in half, and the lift-drag table for that airfoil would indicate the required power to create that magnitude of lift. Then it would be a matter of comparison, to establish your cost-benefit ratio.
If you drove into a chain-reaction rear-end collision, involving a breached cooling system, and had to maneuver on top of a glycol-wetted road surface, I can't imagine a sensor package which could identify this as a threat, reacting spontaneously, such that it could avoid catastrophe.
Product-liability attorneys would be all over that. A 'rainmaker'.
|
I agree with what you have said here, and I think it is clear why normal cars currently don't fly.
However, if the car is already "flying" then there would be able to have control surfaces. How quickly could a spoiler come up? Half a second, I would think is possible.
How the hazard is identified, I don't know, but how would a normal car identify that? Wheel slip, yaw and steering angle sensors in traction control systems can react pretty quickly, use the same technology?
But really the question is not about traffic, it is about theoretical possibility. It seems possible to me if the aerofoil has a lift/drag higher than a wheels lift/drag then it would work. see permalink 8