New vehicle wraps claim to increase fuel economy by as much as 25%
Say you've got a company making plastic vehicle wraps for advertising. One day, you drive your graphic'd-up car to the golf course, and after losing three balls trying to drive across a water hazard, you get to pondering the golf ball itself. Those distinctive dimples on the surface of a golf ball reduce aerodynamic drag, allowing your Titleist to sail over the fairway. What if you wrapped a car in a similar dimpled layer? Thus was born FastSkinz, a new venture of SkinzWraps. Instead of turning vehicles into garish mobile billboards for radio stations, FastSkinz applies a dimpled covering that is supposed to "trip" the boundary layer, changing airflow around the vehicle from laminar to turbulent, reducing wake turbulence, just like those dimples on a golf ball, or the fancy new Olympic swimsuits that mimic shark skin.
Call us skeptical, but what works for a round ball flying through the air might not have equal success when applied to an automobile. Not being aerodynamicists, we'll wait for independent test results to either verify or debunk the FastSkinz claims of an 18-to-20-percent fuel economy improvement. In the past, such large gains have been merely fantastical PR noise, and FastSkinz's own documentation is buried in acronyms and tends toward the obfuscatory; basically purporting that a vehicle wrap will substitute for reduced frontal area and a low coefficient of drag. There are also some equally uninformative videos, none offering the sustaining manna of clear understanding. Automotive airflow techniques are at the highest level of practice in racing, and you don't see mottled F1 cars. What those racing cars do sport, however, are other techniques of controlling and manipulating airflow, which are actually effective.
[Source: FastSkinz via MaxGladwell]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
jon 5:42PM (2/15/2009)
I have thought about this for a while now... It should help at least a little bit. Whether its worth having your car look like a golf ball, I don't know for sure but it should work to some degree.
Lance Armstrong's jersey does it too.
Reply
Richard 10:07PM (2/15/2009)
Indeed!
Mike 9:59AM (2/16/2009)
Don't anyone dare say this is a good thing.
It's all the insurance companies need to get out of paying claims on hail damage!
jlee 5:41PM (2/15/2009)
The reason this method works on a golf ball is due to solely to the rotation as it flies through the air. I'm assuming that since your car does not rotate...
Reply
Steve Bennet 5:47PM (2/15/2009)
It will rotate with this wrap... right into a pole.
Marshall 5:49PM (2/15/2009)
all you need is air moving over a surface, whether that surface is rotating or translating. golf ball would behave the same if there was no spin, just wont go same direction
skipper 7:07PM (2/15/2009)
In order for you to see a 25% increase in fuel efficiency as a result from improved aerodynamics, you would have to increase aerodynamic efficiency by 50%.
The claim is BS.
naggs 7:36PM (2/15/2009)
"FastSkinz applies a dimpled covering that is supposed to "trip" the boundary layer, changing airflow around the vehicle from laminar to turbulent"
uhm... what they forget to mention is that laminar = good and turbulent = bad for air resistance
do you honestly think nasa would not have figured this out already?
jpm100 9:13PM (2/15/2009)
In boundary layers, Laminar=Bad, Turbulent=Good.
The turbulent they speak of is not quite the same thing as "turbulence" off wing tip or off the back of a car.
Nick 9:45PM (2/15/2009)
I came up with exactly the same idea 3 years ago, and it was turned down by automotive engineers who told me it won't work.
I don't believe a word of their 25% mpg improvement.
Ligor 9:21AM (2/16/2009)
the dimples on the golf ball are mainly there to make sure the ball flies straight annd is not as affected by wind.
the distance it travels is not really increased much by the dimples, if no dimples than the ball would curl more and sometimes it will curl downwards (depending on how it catches the air) and so some will make the claim that it's distance has increased by the dimples.
If you look at soccer, lately the balls are beconing more prerfectly round and now players can put spins on the ball that curl it's direction way more than previous
I'm a huge soccer fan, adn sometimes on very hard shots as they give slow motion for goals you can see the ball traveling in an S-like line
naggs 2:13PM (2/16/2009)
everything i know about reducing the the aerodynamic drag for cars involves disrupting the boundary layer as little as possible until a clean break at the back, this product sounds like it is accomplishing the opposite
Derek 11:38PM (2/16/2009)
Naggs, that works if you can design your car to look like a Bonneville streamliner. For those of us who fit more than one person and cargo in our cars, there are generally several areas where there are necessary angles (top of the windshield, etc) that can cause flow separation. Inducing turbulence right before these points energizes the flow and allows the flow to remain attached. Depending on your car, if you ever see raindrops on the rear window streaming *upwards* this is due to detached flow and the drag-inducing eddies caused by it. So, laminar flow>turbulent flow>detached flow.
The Lancer used those "shark fins" to reduce detached flow and gain a slight reduction in drag and lift. Of course, we're talking something on the magnitude of 0.01 or 0.001 Cd when cars are generally in the 0.25-0.35 area. Gains? Yes, maybe. 25%. LMFAO.
Marshall 5:42PM (2/15/2009)
this is nothing new...Audi already did this with some of their cars, except the the dimpled surface is the bottom of the car...
Reply
Dustin 6:19PM (2/15/2009)
Lexus had a similar feature as well:
http://www.a52.com/index.php?f=deta&n=91
Tang 5:44PM (2/15/2009)
Yeah, I'm not sure this would work too well on the front or have any use on the back
Reply
Pat 7:54PM (2/15/2009)
The dimples will be filled with dead bugs on the front ;-) thereby losing the airflow!
Mazda FTW! 5:45PM (2/15/2009)
Oh jeez. Why can't they leave cars alone for a few years and go see if they can get the planes and ships to be more MPG efficient?
Reply
why not the LS2LS7? 6:45PM (2/15/2009)
Planes get more efficient with each model. Ships generally do too. How do you think panamax container chips came to be?
What do people complain about efficiency? Cars have almost doubled in HP in 15 years, we're not exactly suffering from being over squeezed for efficiency right now.
Polly Prissy Pants 8:53PM (2/15/2009)
"How do you think panamax container chips came to be?"
Not a day goes by without me being asked that exact same question.