Testing Aerodynamics Through Software

[Shortie771]

Originally Posted by ConnClark

I said "things taking forever"

Oh, apperantly I can't read too well It wasnt even that late...

[Phantom]

Originally Posted by Shortie771

My reason for having the Cherokee model is because that is what my brother drives... with a way to improve his gas mileage (image below), but he is not willing to hurt the look of his vehicle.

Hurt the look they should build them like that stock.

[Shortie771]

I know right? With a turbo'd 1.5 4 cyl engine and get decent gas mileage like everybody else.

[Shortie771]

Nearly done adding a grill block and kammback to my virtual del sol. As soon as I finish that and edit the "solid" wheels problem I will be posting some results. Has anybody here used the program yet?

[Cd]

I'm still getting a crash at startup on my MacBookPro.

I'm sure it has something to do with my Windows partition not being installed correctly or having some driver missing etc.

How are things going with the rest of you guys ?

[ConnClark]

I'm still struggling with repairs to the virtual model of my car. I have holes that lead to the interior which bogs down the simulation by simulating airflow where there shouldn't be. This also creates drag. I have gotten my simulated CD down to 0.48 but my car should have a CD of 0.36 .

A few things I would like to note about digital models for people. Unless you get a real 3d scan of a car, you have to remember they aren't exact and someone may have taken some artistic license. On my car model I had to reduce the forward rake and tire size to something that was similar to my car. That reduced my drag by about 6%. Also proper offset of the wheel in the wheel well can effect things. Correcting that got me another 3 to 4% reduction (not good news for the skinny tire improvement theory).

[Szegedin74]

Thanks for the great info. Managed to get Google Sketchup running on Ubuntu 12.04. CADspan didn't want to work for me, so MeshLab is an alternative (for the same process - save as stl) for all you Linux users, FYI.

Still trying to get Falcon to run under wine, to no avail... All this just for a very simple operation, to see how having the hatch open on my van affects aerodynamics as a sort of boattail...

Does Falcon tell you a cd number, or just show the dynamics of air movement???

[theycallmeebryan]

Wow, I definitely need to give this a look. I've been looking for a free CFD program for Windows OS's for quite a while.

Can you use blender models?

[ConnClark]

I'm using blender for my model manipulation. Blender can export to many common formats such as stl and wavefront.obj . So yes you can use blender models

[theycallmeebryan]

Are there any blender models of a Saturn SL1?