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Maybe. I have been considering how to do this and believe that it may be possible. If I had a wind tunnel and proper instrumentation I could tell you for sure. Somebody with a sensitive fuel meter might be able to as well but I lack that.

My airspike concept is an extension of using wind deflectors ahead of the wheels. What if a wide but short, rectangular plate could be extended a couple of feet ahead of a car? Would the small object be able to block air so that a larger object could ride in it's slipstream and reduce the total amount of drag for a vehicle?

I don't know, but I believe that I have seen a similar concept used on some rocket nose cones. I believe that it could effectively reduce the apparent size of the frontal area of a car aerodynamically.

Thoughts?

Are you attempting to create a smoother profile by having an aerodynamically "dirty" front end of a vehicle ride in the vacuum behind your posited rectangular plate? I'd imagine that might help with something like a truck but not an already smoothed car like my Insight…

This is a concept that was tried in some aircraft wing designs. To mess up the air flow at the beginning of the wing so the resultant drag is less. It would be interesting to do that on an Insight and see the results in a wind tunnel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbulator


Wayne

Some discussion of this concept here:

100% Bluff Body Drag Reduction Theory (http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthread.php/100-bluff-body-drag-reduction-theory-11592-2.html#post150370)

If you did this, wouldn't it slow the car down a lot because you are pushing a giant rectangle in front of the car, taking huge amounts of energy to overcome the resistance? It seems like whatever you do to increase turbulence in the front will never be enough to overcome the energy needed to create that turbulence.

I think you have missed the point. You push a small rectangle in front of a larger one, the front of the car. We have wind deflectors ahead of the wheels for the same reason. NASA and others seemed to think it was worth while when they tested it. Did you read GreenBlue's link?

This reminds me of something I read about in Motor Trend... except this works on the back end.

http://www.motortrend.com/features/editorial/112_0912_technologue_aerodynamic_drag_improvement/index.html