pszikla

check this out!!
what a crazy notion, but it seems to actually work!!
enjoy
Pete

http://technology.sympatico.msn.disc...8-8ea34f459fbf

discoganya

Very cool, thanks for sharing. As a fluid dynamicist I always wondered why nobody did this...

AndyK

Pretty cool! Imagine trying to wax or wash a car with little dimples all over it's paint!?

LiveNupe

Slower lap times in the afternoon, huh?? I question the validity of the data. With the higher temps in the afternoon, you would expect slower lap times than in the morning even the car didn't have the wrap. Changing two variables simulataneosly (higher temp + removing wrap) diminishes the credibility of their claim in my opinion. I'm not saying the concept doesn't work. However, THIS demonstration doesn't prove it to me.

redridge

brilliant!

Doug Donsbach

Hardly a conclusive test, but interesting nonetheless.

Ubermensch

They stated the temperatures hadn't changed much from morning to afternoon. I'm not sure how they defined "much".

washington dc porsche

So "orange peel" on a paint job may come in handy.

Doug Donsbach

It's not a bug, it's a feature!

LiveNupe

EXACTLY!!!

Van

Wouldn't they be able to do that test in a wind tunnel?

Turn on the air to 60 MPH and measure the force of the car moving backwards... Really you want to find out if the dimpled covering reduces the friction against the air. If it does, that's the equivalent to getting a wee bit more horse power.

Dave!

I think they had already done that and were looking to see what kind of benefits you could see on the track. I'd be curious to see what the wind tunnel test results were, and what this could be made into with further development.

Pretty cool.

Botsy67

Kinda a neat idea... This add an alternative to repainting the whole car but question is does this wrap strong enough to last through our harsh environment or just design for few races, probably the latter. Anyhow thanks for sharing!

multi21

As an avid student of aerodynamics, I can tell you that this idea on a car absolutely does not work.

The small dimples on a golf ball do work because of it's spherical shape and the pocket of air that encases the ball as it travels through the area. Because a car has so many different angles and shapes, the dimples do not work as they would on a golf ball.

Formula 1 teams and their aerodynamicists studied if the same dimple effect would work on their cars many years ago and found that it was actually slowing the cars down. This was tested in wing tunnels as well as the track.

Because of the aforementioned multi-angular cars, smoother surfaces actually work better. In fact, many F1 teams no longer paint the leading edge of their wings and body work on their cars because of the tendency of the paint to get chipped up during the course of a race from debris of other cars that they are following or their own exposed tires. As a result of the chipped paint at the leading edge, aerodynamicists found that their vehicles were actually less efficient and had more drag because of the uneven edges to their wings.

A few things come to mind when I saw that film:

1. The testing was less than scientific in that the 15 lap runs in the morning with the wrap were probably is cooler temps than in the afternoon sans the wrap. In Texas where this was conducted, that could be a big difference.

2. There was never any mention made of the subsequent 15 laps run with fresh tires. If they ran the tests with the same set of say Hoosiers, the grip level of say A6s will not be the same as the first 15 laps as they are always faster when new. Once again, nothing was said about tires and we're assuming the tires were new to begin with, but they could have been corded for all we know.

3. When in doubt, follow the money trail. This was a good PR piece for this guys wrap business, but there is not a huge market for track cars with dimpled wrap. However, what the owner is angling for is expanding his business to the almost never ending trucking business where if this wrap thing took off, it could make him and others in the business multi-millionaires.

Dharn55

So will all the door dings and parking lot dings make my car faster???