Today's nuclear power debate is brought to you by... trains!
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Originally Posted by aerohead
Hoerner has a section on trains in his book,"Aerodynamic Drag." I'll dig it out and post that,but I think Bicycle Bob and Big Dave have covered the fundamentals of it.
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I happened across a paragraph in Hucho, with an interesting tidbit about rear taper.
He repeats that due to their length, the boundary layer is very thick by the end of the body. So much so that:
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...at the end of a train ... (it) is hardly able to overcome any adverse pressure gradient at all. Therefore, in contrast to a road vehicle, the shape of the rear has minor influence on the drag of a train. Furthermore, with modern high-speed trains like the ICE or TGV, the shape of the rear end is not selected on the basis of the flow field generated at the rear. This is because these trains go back and forth without turning around, and so the contour of the locomotives is the same at both ends, and is determined by the requirements of a front end.
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Interesting. Learned something new today.
We now return you to your nuclear debate...