Quote:
Originally Posted by Blacktree
I doubt you're going to get the ram air effect behind the radiator. Maybe in front of it. But then, you won't get the heating.
That said, the only way to know for sure is to try it.
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Heya Blacktree!
It turns out that while there is a bunch of pressure loss on the fluids inside the radiator, the loss on airflow is much smaller:
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/...fig3_286352432
If I want to increase pressure, I can always play games with the cross section of the intake.
However, I don't even know if that's what I should be doing. I had a chat with an automotive friend of mine that suggested that I don't want to be increasing air pressure but
decreasing it (to get better fuel economy). In his view, if we don't have direct control over the fuel injection (say via altering fuel maps), everything boils down to how much oxygen enters the piston chambers. Cold, high pressure air has more oxygen per unit volume, while warm, low pressure air has less. So he said the only conceivable way to get better fuel economy is rarified air at WOT; otherwise, the ECU will simply adjust the throttle to ignore all the modifications upstream.
That view jibes with what I've read about the Prius' air intake. It's ludicrously restrictive, far more than is necessary to simply filter air. Both the resonator and airbox cause significant pressure drops... which seems like what's it's trying to do is decrease pressure. But then that makes the placement (in a high pressure zone near the wheels) somewhat puzzling. It seems they are gathering high pressure air just so they can make it low pressure air. Maybe if they put it in a low pressure zone it would cause too much pumping loss on the engine?
Man, I understood the model of the engine as an air pump, and why turbochargers were so brilliant. But this stoichiometry stuff makes my head hurt.
