Just a thought of using force fields for aerodynamics...
 

Real world force field for combat vehicles • VideoSift: Online Video *Quality Control

Imagine driving your stock 72 chevelle with no mods to the exterior but a force shield cutting the wind... oh bliss....

The Tempo has one of those and it's the ****!

Now you just have to solve the problem of making wind behave like incoming missiles!

energy
 

the energy required to maintain any sort of force field would no doubt be far greater than the amount saved from being more aerodynamic.
also, someone commented on that thread that its not a force field, but a point defence system.

Right, it doesn't stop anything, it instead detonates explosive projectiles before they hit the vehicle, toss a rock at the vehicle and it will hit it, shoot a bullet and it will hit it as well, even depleted uranium (so much harder then steel plating that when it hits it, it melts the steel) would be unaffected, but fire or toss a bomb and it will blow up before hitting the vehicle.

There is a sort of force field that can be used to reduce drag. Its called Electrostatic Drag Reduction. You ionize the air and repel it away with a like charge from the vehicle skin.

I imagine energy consumption would be crazy.

the energy consumption should be proportional to the amount of air diverted. The vehicle skin charge should not need a lot of current to maintain, but as new air hits the vehicle it will need to be ionized for maximum force (plus some drag for the ionizing interface). Not sure if/how to make a win out of it but it is an interesting idea, some links would help.

Of practical concern, you don't want sparky sparky while refueling at the gas pump.

A side benefit to having a functional EDR system on your car would be the anti-theft protection, not to mention the value of keeping stray dogs from urinating on your custom aero hubcaps. :eek:

You might lower the Cd, but the frontal area would still spoil the CdA.

I imagine wiring up a few high-voltage transformers and having exposed electrodes on the front of the car wouldn't be too pedesterian friendly.

I'm not sure electrostatic manipulation of the boundary layer is much benefit - skin friction isn't much of an issue for an ecomodder. But to something that flies high, fast and has massive skin friction to deal with, I can see why this kind of thing was studied.

It's straight forward enough to create a bit of an ion wind between electrodes, there's youtube vids of people making hovering alumium foil craft and bladeless fans. Sometimes done with hacked up neon sign transformers.

So the trick would be using this to manipulate airflow round an object. Cleaving the air in front, preventing or disrupting vortexes, keeping it attached across a surface it might otherwise not have remained attached to.

As a bonus, if you forget to turn it off, and some kid tries to key your car... ZAP