Quote:
Originally Posted by PaleMelanesian
Like the sides of this boattail? It's stepped in to allow taillight visibility, but the length gives the needed angle after flow reattaches.
By the way, how much do those front wheel arches help?
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As is usually the case,this was as far as I could get with mods by time I had to be on the road.
The open sides did create attached vortices within the unfinished region,with outer flow skipping over.
Continuum Dynamics demonstrated the efficacy of the simple panel design on an 18-wheeler,sponsored under a DARPA SBIR grant,tested at NASA Ames Research Center,Palo Alto,California.
As the T-100 is pictured,these mods were good for just under 32-mpg over 5,000+ miles back in 2005,at 70-75 mph.
As to the front wheel arches,they've never been independently tested.
For a boat tail to properly function,the 'onset flow' must be of good laminar quality.I was doing everything I could to clean up the T-100's front.
Later I did full skirts as basjoos has done with the AeroCivic.And the boat tail got foam to fill in the voids,and fenestations for tail lights got clear Plexiglas covers.
I think there is a tuft-testing photo of it near the end of the Full-Boat-Tail Trailer with Gap-Fillers thread.It's crude and primitive,but the air seems to like it.
PS,In January,coming back from Phoenix,I drove the last 633 miles at the old 55-mph speed and pulled 36-mpg ave. (tank).This run included the 4,000 foot climb from Alamogordo up to Cloudcroft,NM.
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