Solid state drag reducing vehicle grille

[gone-ot]

...just because something is patented is no assurance that it'll actually be made.

...lot's of things are "patented"--and never made--soley so the owner can "make money" from 'selling' manufacturing rights to others.

[sid]

Originally Posted by Old Tele man

...just because something is patented is no assurance that it'll actually be made.

...lot's of things are "patented"--and never made--soley so the owner can "make money" from 'selling' manufacturing rights to others.

I'll definitely agree with this, from experience. I have a dozen patents, but half of my patents were never put into production by the company I worked for, for many reasons (too expensive, found a better way after submitting patent, decided not to pursue that market, etc.). And half the things I invented my employer never pursued patenting and decided to keep them as trade secrets (though I still was rewarded by the company as if these things were patented).

[gone-ot]

...same 'patent' process goes on in the defense/aerospace industry that I work in.

[cfg83]

Old Tele man -

Originally Posted by Old Tele man

...same 'patent' process goes on in the defense/aerospace industry that I work in.

Yeah, I know, but sometimes this is all we have to work with. In addition to texanidiot25's suggestion, it seems that this would be fairly easy to test. You don't even have to mount it in the grill per se. You can make a pseudo-grill that you stick out the window and measure with some kind of air-pressure sensor. If it works, the air pressure should decrease as you reach freeway speeds. Does that make sense?

PS - I found the old Ford Fiesta solid-state grill from the 1970's :



This is from this book. Ha ha, even in the book you can see that they are specumalatin'

CarloSW2

[Piwoslaw]

Originally Posted by Old Tele man

...just because something is patented is no assurance that it'll actually be made.

...lot's of things are "patented"--and never made--soley so the owner can "make money" from 'selling' manufacturing rights to others.

Then there are the patents that get bought and put in the drawer to make sure onebody makes them.

[lunarhighway]

in respons to the semi focus sketch in the pdf, i think it's just a generic car based on a focus picture they had laying around, to get the proportions somewhat right.
it's probably there to establish what a "grill" for those who have missed the evolotion of transportation since the horse drawn cart went out of fashion.

just because something is patented is no assurance that it'll actually be made.

True, but i assume that in an age where carmakes (over here in europe at least) are bashing eachother over the head with eco, green, etc... models and low co² emissions are the new horsepower (because they usually mean you can tax reductions or whatnot on such a model, making it cheaper to buy so you can blow your savings right away on expensive options that will kill your FE) it would be smart to build something that actually works, especially since you own the pattent so others can't copy it.

than again, if you have a windtunnel it seems that it's rather easy to build such a grille so perhaps a lot of "grilles" especially these new slender ones like on lets say cars like the prius to name one, act like that.

[Patrick]

Originally Posted by lunarhighway

than again, if you have a windtunnel it seems that it's rather easy to build such a grille so perhaps a lot of "grilles" especially these new slender ones like on lets say cars like the prius to name one, act like that.

I'm not sure how well that would work on the current Prius. The majority of the opening is in the front bumper, which is on a vertical plane. It looks to me like Ford's design is dependent on the airflow up and over the hood for it to work properly.

Also, I wonder how much drag Ford's design is adding over some other possible opening. The "angles" are similar to small parachutes, which is about the worst possible profile for low drag. I'd like to see a Cd comparison between the Ford design and, say, a plain opening with the same area as the "slots" and the "angle" area just a smooth curve into the hoodline.

[lunarhighway]

i was mainly referring to the top grille... the bottom grille looks kinda big true

[Deyeme]

Originally Posted by cfg83

Phantom -
...The grill segments are not perfect 90 degree Ls, but we think it's "close enough". Therefore, we started looking for good metal "L" shapes. We did find extruded aluminum, but they are mostly the same length in both directions of the "L". We finally found an almost exact match at Home Depot which is 1" on the diagonal, but it's about 5$ a piece and you can only make one grill section with it. On the plus side, if it's well done, I think it can look very cool, ala "billet" look.

However, before investing in a fan$y aluminum grill, it's (as always) best to prove if it works with a cheaper material.

CarloSW2

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Both have a good selection of metal and fiberglass angles.