Deturbulator tape
 

Hi folks,

I was doing a review at the SAE site to see what aerodynamic papers I need to catch up on when I ran across this.

Looks like it is still in the developmental stage.

https://www.sinhatech.com/

Bman

Wow, a 30% reduction in aero drag by running a strip of "turbolator" tape across the roof above where the front seat passengers sit? How simple is that?

I must give this genius inventor money!!! LMAO

An interesting find though...

I'm ALWAYS wary of aero flow add ons to a semi truck that claim high numbers -- there's not a great deal you can do to the flow that's already on a semi given the extremely high Reynolds number....

Look at that! bring the cD of a van from .5 to .1! Not sure how he validated scale wind tunnel testing - it's very dependent on physical length...

Doh! Curse you extra e!

The only scientific portion is quantifying how wild the claim can be before it starts tripping even the gullibles' BS meters. :rolleyes:

Help, I'm Having English Class Flashbacks!
 

Enquiring minds want to know ;) , are you being cautious (wary) or are you exhausted (weary)?

If both, and to a great degree, then maybe you're like Elmer Fudd and you're weally, weally, wary weary.:D

Foam weatherstripping would be way cheaper and easier to test the ideas with. It worked on my helmet when I was riding my bike a lot so there might be a very tiny gain if you get it placed just right on a car.

Somehow I think it would be hard to measure a change even with a coastdown test but I could be wrong ....

i've come across something similar on the web. turbulator tape seems to be comonly used on gliders and is somewhat similar to vortex generators, although not entirely.

the way i understand these things work is that they're placed just ahead of a sepparation bubble wich is a point where laminar flow seppatates from the wing. the additional drag they cause is smaller than the drag the bubble would cause.
for the turbulator to function this point has to be exactly determined.

there might be potential for this on cars, but the very exact placement and potential to small to measure gains might might make this difficult for most people to implement.

on the other hand this turbulator tape seems to be nothing else than a thick sawtooth patterend tape, so people willing to try might be able to make it themselves. or use the stuff used on gliders if you have access to it.... afterall if you compare the width of your car's rooftop to the span of a glider youd only need a small leftover.

Just use duct tape, what's the difference?

Hello -

I found this on the site :

Improving Automotive Fuel Efficiency with DeturbulatorTape
SAE Paper: 2007-01-3458
SAE 21st Asia Pacific Automotive Technology Conference, Hollywood, CA, U.S.A.
5th-8th August, 2007
https://www.sinhatech.com/SAE-APAC-20...08-06-2007.pdf

I can't make heads or tails of it. When I went to look at the specific conference event guide, I couldn't find the Sinha paper (EDIT: Found it, see next post) :

“Impacts & Opportunities for the Global Automotive Industry”
https://www.sae.org/events/sales/brochures/APAC.pdf

Here is the organization that is was presented at (maybe) :

14th Asia Pacific Automotive Engineering Conference (APAC-14)
August 5-8, 2007 / Renaissance Hollywood Hotel / Hollywood, California, USA
https://www.sae.org/events/apac/
Here are other events :

https://www.sae.org/events/conferences/groundvehicle/
Here is something interesting. There is a conrference in Anaheim on December 2-5 2007 :

EVS-23: Sustainability - The Future of Transportation
December 2-5, 2007, Anaheim, California, USA
(SAE International co-sponsoring industry affiliate)
https://www.electricdrive.org/evs23/


CarloSW2