Quote:
Originally Posted by Al Soran
Entertain me on a rainy race weekend...So a 25 square foot top wing on a sprint car drives the car down and makes it stick. In these days of $4/gal. gasoline, my mind has been wandering to unorthodox methods of getting better fuel mileage. Here's my latest thought (please offer yours): What would happen if you were to take a 25 square foot top wing and turn it upside down and mount it on your street car? At low speeds, I would imagine not much would happen except for strange looks from town folks. But, at highway speeds what would be the effect? Would it actually take weight off of the suspension, thereby requiring less energy to propell it (fuel)? ***maybe I should stop here and say, please don't try this (yet).**** If this theory has any merit, there would certainly be things to consider, like would it fly  ? Would it affect steering or braking? Would it do anything at all? Hey if nothing else, it's a great rainy race weekend mind execise. By the way, you heard it here first in case this is a billion dollar idea  .-----I can invision GM, Ford, or Chrysler, designing wings that adjust themselves as you go down the road for optimum up force/stability/fuel mileage. Whaddaya think? |
I've not looked for it lately, so I don't even know if it's still there, but I used to go to a program called "foilsim" (I googled it) and it had a program where you could adjust an airfoil (shape, camber, attack angle, etc.) and it would calculate lift, drag etc. I used it to calculate downforce when we ran with wings (you have to use a negative camber and negative attack angle in the calculation because this is made for airplanes). Anyway, you might take a look and see if this gets you started.
Tim Simmons