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Author Topic: Vortex generators  (Read 409 times)

Erasmo

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Vortex generators
« on: May 14, 2018, 02:33:46 AM »

A lot of us have windscreens and other fairing pieces attached to the bike. Helmet buffering is a bit of a problem on my fairing and as far a I know most windscreens are pretty loud.

An old solution are those lips(or the new version of them but vortex generators also seem to work pretty good, and you can play a bit more with them and also install them on the lower parts of eg. a dustbin. They are widely used on aeroplanes and race cars so the idea behind them seems legit.

This article also mentions it: https://canadamotoguide.com/2016/05/04/motorcycle-aerodynamics/

A bag of them shouldn't cost more than a few euro so I'm considering ordering a few models to see what works best.

Your thoughts?
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Doug S

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Re: Vortex generators
« Reply #1 on: May 14, 2018, 08:07:20 PM »

I think vortex generators are a great idea, and I've often thought of trying them myself.

A lot of people don't realize that the rear of a vehicle is at least as important as the front, aerodynamically speaking. Splitting the airstream in half cleanly is important, but it's equally important to bring it back together cleanly after the vehicle has passed through. If you don't, you'll get huge vortices and partial vacuums which will consume tremendous amounts of energy -- they create drag.

Vortex generators add just enough movement to the airstream that it's better able to merge together after the vehicle has passed. You're basically adding a bit of drag in order to save more. So they're very sensitive to placement, size and shape, and you'll need to do a fair amount of playing around to get the best configuration. It will also be difficult to determine in the real world when you've really made an improvement, unless you happen to have a wind tunnel handy. But I still think it's a great idea.
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Erasmo

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Re: Vortex generators
« Reply #2 on: May 14, 2018, 10:30:33 PM »

You can always use the wool string method to get a rough estimate. I'm away for some time but I'm going to dive in this a bit more, if you can get a few extra kilometres of range it can be interesting, for a tenner you can get a bag of the small ones.
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