Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Natural Hydro/Aero - Dynamics

What's your guess on the drag coefficent of this critter:

boxfish side view


boxfish front view

and this critter:

formula one

for reference, the drag coefficient of a raindrop is around 0.04, and the drag coefficient for a square, flat plate is about 1.2.

yeah, that's a pretty lame question I've proposed, but it always surprises me when folks talk about F1 cars and their relevance to low drag geometries -> F1 is primarily about downforce, not low drag.

12/24 Update:

Here's some great pics of various cars in a wind tunnel using smoke flow viz -> text is in german, but the pics work just fine:

smoke flow of cars

I think there's a shot of an F1 car in there somewhere, with it's Cd of ~1.2. Oh, and that square cross sectioned, angular box fish above, I think it has a reported Cd of 0.06 and was the inspiration for a mercedes concept car:

mercedes boxfish concept car

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