Interesting episode of Mythbusters last night

[msd3075]

There was an obituary for Richard Whitcomb in the paper last week. He invented/designed the little winglets that angle upward at the ends of large aircraft wings. According to the obit, these increase fuel efficiency by as much as 7% by reducing turbulence. Pretty amazing...

Those winglets "clean up" the airflow at the end of the wings by preventing air on one side of the wing from flowing onto the other side. There was some prototype plane from the 1950's that experimented with reducing the drag caused by the same phenomenon. Their solution though was to relocate the plane's engines to the end of the wings.

[plugged]

I'm going to start gluing little airplane wings onto my golf balls.

[kfowler]

i'm going to start gluing little airplane wings onto my golf balls.

ha!!!!! :-d

[Nick77]

A friend of my dad engineered this clear tape with dimples (resembled a golf ball) and had my dad place the tape just behind the leading edges of the wings of his cessna and also placed the tape on the edges of the prop. They're is a trick is placement though, you can either easily gain speed or lose speed. Well anyway, the tape added a total of 1o knots, to be conservative. His theory of this tape all derived from a golf ball. cool stuff!

[mc0388]

I saw that too... great episode! The car with the dimples was pretty wild looking... who knows, maybe the car comanies will take notice and use some dimple technology to improve mileage?! With all the talk of hybrids and new ways to improve gas mileage, I have never thought about changing the body of the car.

Man, would washing your car be a nightmare!!! haha

[iacas]

Man, would washing your car be a nightmare!!! haha

Why? We just need bigger sized versions of these:

[mc0388]

Why? We just need bigger sized versions of these:

Nicely done

[sethro5hc]

ha, fluid dynamics is such a weird subject. I went to GT for mechanical engineering and actually did my capstone senior project on a fuel efficiency project that involved a lot of fluid dynamics and even the 60 year old doctors at the GT research institute didn't understand all the equations associated with it. That's why all fluid dynamic stuff is just tested in water and wind tunnels and they basically guess and check designs, rather than trying to calculate then build it. Basically though the dimples change the flow or air over and around the ball to turbulent, rather than laminar (smooth), meaning the turbulent flow sticks to the ball more as it goes around...instead of separating earlier and creating a bigger wake like the smooth flow does.

Fun fact, hexagon shaped dimples actually reduce drag more than circular ones.... I'd almost bet you'll see SOME company try those out before long.

[sethro5hc]

haha, forget hammering dimples into your car for better fuel efficiency... just throw down like 120k and get one of these bad boys...no gas at all and 0-60 in under 4 seconds!

http://www.teslamotors.com/

OH, and even more interesting, the stats of colorado for WHATEVER reason, is giving $42,000 rebates for anybody buying this car in Colorado before Dec. 1st. Why? No clue, but I saw that on aol this morning.

[sethro5hc]

Man they can do soo much with dimple aerodynamics it's ridiculous. You know they could, and did, eliminate dimples on the sides of golf balls, leaving only a sort of stripe running around the middle? dimples are what creates the lift, but also what creates slices and fades. If you impart spin on the ball then the direction it's spinning towards is the direction it goes due to the relative velocity of the air on that side. The ball takes the path of least resistance... so looking down at a ball if you hit it with left to right spin...it's gonna slice right and visa versa. Perfect back spin results in lift which is desirable. Well some guys found out that a stripe of dimples...lined up top to bottom as the vertical axis on the tee....would virtually ELIMINATE hooks and slices but keep backspin, and thus most of the distance of a normal ball. lol but along came the buzzkill USGA and made that illegal. It's called the Polara (or the nonhooker) if you want to look it up.

I swear one day I'm going to the course with a Geek non-conforming driver, some Polara balls, drawing lines for all my putts, and then framing the scorecard

[pounc007]

I have asked an engineer buddy of mine why formula one and other racing leagues don't do this. I can see why ford wouldn't want to dimple a car (can you imagine what a PITA it would be to wax a dimpled car) but in racing they don't really care how the thing looks, just performance. The answer is in order to dimple the car's surface they would have to make the body panels thicker, which would increase the weight to the point it would not create any significant gain.

[Jay-Bird]

I'd buy a dimpled car. 11% is a LOT of mileage savings... wow.

A dimpled car would be hard to get an accurate RADAR or LIDAR reading on. That would be awesome. I'd be driving too fast to be saving any gas milage!

[kfowler]

The answer is in order to dimple the car's surface they would have to make the body panels thicker, which would increase the weight to the point it would not create any significant gain.

That's an interesting thought. I don't know that they would necessarily be thicker but you would certainly have greater surface area, therefor your weight should increase vs. smooth body. How much, I'm not sure.

If anyone has the show recorded, see what the gas mileage was on the stock, clean Taurus vs. the dimpled Taurus. If the dimpled version got better mpg, then the added weight is not a significant factor since the dimpled version had the added weight of the clay.

[Fat Slice]

I don't care how much extra mileage I would get with a golf-ball dimpled car. If I did that to my car, after about 180 yards of driving it would veer off to the right and end up in some tall grass. No thank you.

[kfowler]

I don't care how much extra mileage I would get with a golf-ball dimpled car. If I did that to my car, after about 180 yards of driving it would veer off to the right and end up in some tall grass. No thank you.

It took me a minute to get it but eventually I figured it out. Perhaps if you had a 460cc steering wheel, it would correct the problem.

[right handed phil mickelson]

It took me a minute to get it but eventually I figured it out. Perhaps if you had a 460cc steering wheel, it would correct the problem.

Or buy a car thats set for a draw.

[iacas]

I don't care how much extra mileage I would get with a golf-ball dimpled car. If I did that to my car, after about 180 yards of driving it would veer off to the right and end up in some tall grass. No thank you.

You need the Stack and Tilt bucket seat upgrade. You're reclining too far and your weight is getting too far back.

[Clambake]

I don't care how much extra mileage I would get with a golf-ball dimpled car. If I did that to my car, after about 180 yards of driving it would veer off to the right and end up in some tall grass. No thank you.

Or you could get the R9 version. Put the larger wheels on the right hand side and it would counter that veering. For those that veer left, do the opposite.