Random Aerodynamic Oddity of the Day Thread

[freebeard]

Imagine how it might have gone if the budget had allowed a Cord L-29 donor car instead of a Ford.

[Bicycle Bob]

It would have been a more refined package, but it would have lost the easy comparison to the familiar Ford performance.
It is curious that although Bucky regarded his car as a half-built roadable aircraft with inflatable wings, it was not stable in a glide. One gained a tail fin to help. Other sketches show versions with an inverted V bottom, intended as an "air keel" and a way to lift the rear wheel, with its job being taken over by an air rudder. The sketches don't show the CG moving forward much, though.
Modern cars make much better use of space, too, but we seldom use it.

[freebeard]

I'd start with a Previa platform today.

His flying tail could work with modern torque vectoring. The twin-jet 'stilts' didn't pan out either.



The 'air keel' corresponds with the central jet in a modern underbody architecture.

[Bicycle Bob]

The "air keel" was intended for directional stability, but it didn't have much mass to work with. Modern underbodies are designed for downforce, while Bucky was assuming he'd get lift at the rear. His ideas about flow were not very accurate. He thought that air separated ahead of the stagnation point the way that steel fractures ahead of a machine tool point, not accounting for the difference in shear strength in a solid.

[freebeard]

Playing his machinist card?

https://en.geneastar.org › genealogy › fullerr › buckminster-fuller
Family tree of Buckminster FULLER - Geneastar
Fuller earned a machinist's certification, and knew how to use the press brake, stretch press, and other tools and equipment used in the sheet metal trade. Fuller was born in Milton, Massachusetts, the son of Richard Buckminster Fuller and Caroline Wolcott Andrews, and also the grandnephew of the American Transcendentalist Margaret Fuller.

[Bicycle Bob]

Obviously, yes. He used that example, showing the wear points on a tool bit. He did not follow up with pictures of a lack of bugs on the rounded front edges of aircraft.
People are constantly mis-applying familiar forms and concepts. From the 30s through the 60s, car styling imitated aircraft, which is one reason why streamlining, which produced lift with such shapes, was slow to catch on. Next, Corvette had a hit with Supersonic type leading edges. Now we even have an electric Stealth pickup truck. Usually, flat panels get corrugated, but those are done some heavier way.

[freebeard]

1953 Muntz Jet walk around video

I wonder if the Continental kit acts as a ducktail spoiler?

The modern hypercar style is to have free floating fenders with external ducting around a narrow passenger pod.


justacarguy.blogspot.com/2022/08/a-cycle-car.html

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by freebeard

IIRC the four-wheel variant was drafted by Starling Burgess' draftswoman. Anyone recall her name? DuckDuckGo certainly don't.

Was the 4-wheeled version fitted with a narrow track like the Isetta, in order to allow it to not have a differential?

[freebeard]

IIRC it was more like Norman Bel Geddes designs, with pontoon fenders in back.

[seuadr]

Originally Posted by freebeard

I wonder if the Continental kit acts as a ducktail spoiler?

Aerodynamics aside that is an absolutely gorgeous car