Brock Racing Aerovault trailer

[winkosmosis]

I saw an ad for this in Grassroots Motorsports magazine. The one in the ad and in the brochure even has moon hubcaps. The underside is skinned!!

BRE: BRE Aerovault Trailer

Our goal with the Aerovault was to make a car trailer that was as light, low drag and economical to tow as possible. With current fuel prices we heard many people complain about their costs for towing their heavy ""bread box"" trailers. At the same time, we’d been looking at trailers to tow our own Superformance Daytona Coupe and Datsun 510. We were frustrated at the lack of aerodynamics knowledge there seemed to be in the trailer industry.

Ultimately we decided to design our own trailers. The result is the Aerovault.

Check out the brochure- they explain the design elements.

[trikkonceptz]

It's a beautiful car hauler. SInce you will never park it up to a loading dock why not go all the way and make a hinged boattail for it. He doesn't seem to address the turbulence coming off that square rear end, which contributes most of the drag.

Otherwise a bit pricey @ $17,000 but a step in the right direction.

[winkosmosis]

I think the added length is an even bigger problem with a trailer like this than a semi

[aerohead]

It's good looking but would go better backwards.

[Cd]

Originally Posted by aerohead

It's good looking but would go better backwards.

Agreed !

The roof even slopes UP towards the rear of the trailer. ( Actually increasing the size of the wake .)

I wonder how long it will take before everyone realizes that a wedge is not a good aerodynamic shape.

[winkosmosis]

If it was going backwards, the air would slam into the door like a brick wall, and fan out. Just because the optimal shape for a given length is a teardrop doesn't mean everything that tapers from front to rear is good. A forward wedge is better than a backward wedge any day of the week.

It's shaped the way it is to fit cars which have a low front. The back has to be big enough to fit whatever fits in the rest of the trailer, because that's where the entrance is.
If it was tapered to the rear, why not just build the whole thing at that height?

[Frank Lee]

It was designed to appeal to the masses that don't know better.

Reminds me of a huuuuge arguement on some forum about whether the v-nose trailers were more aero than the flat ones. Man, it didn't matter HOW much proof you brought to the table, people had their ideas and they stuck to them like glue.

[winkosmosis]

Originally Posted by Frank Lee

It was designed to appeal to the masses that don't know better.

Reminds me of a huuuuge arguement on some forum about whether the v-nose trailers were more aero than the flat ones. Man, it didn't matter HOW much proof you brought to the table, people had their ideas and they stuck to them like glue.

Just because some people on this forum read and misinterpreted some aerodynamic studies doesn't mean a flat front end is as aerodynamic as a curved one that transitions smoothly to the flat sides...

[Frank Lee]

I should have said, ANOTHER forum...

http://www.chevelles.com/forums/show...r+aerodynamics

[winkosmosis]

http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/Spinoff2008/t_3.html

For a large truck, this can mean a particularly large surface moving a large quantity of air at a high velocity—its blunt face acting like a fast-moving bulldozer, creating a zone of high pressure. The displaced air must go somewhere, spilling around the cab into swirling vortices. The air traveling along the side moves unevenly, adhering and breaking away, and sometimes dissipating into the surrounding air.

....

Rounding the vertical corners on the front and rear of the cab reduced drag by 40 percent while decreasing internal volume by only 1.3 percent. Likewise, rounding the vertical and horizontal corners cut drag by 54 percent, with a 3-percent loss of internal volume

Since the rear of the truck is not flush with the front of the trailer, with even more of a gap due to the small cross section of the bed, the same aerodynamic principle applies to the front end of a trailer.