Active Grill Shutters

[ehwatt]

Active grill shutters ? How much more MPG are we trying to squeeze out of this light , 3 cylinder vehicle ?
If I read a thread about active highway wind sails , I'm gonna lose it

Air thru the eng compartment is a "pumping loss". Reducing air flow reduces pumping loss, increasing efficiency.

 

[Ty]

I still can't understand why no one has pursued putting a small wind turbine on EV cars to help charging; at speed you would have a constant wind flow. Doing highway speeds you would be getting a 60 or 70mph wind to spin it; in city, 30 to 45mph. It has to have some kind of possibilities; doesn't it?

LOL... No. Unfortunately, it would take more power to spin the blades than they produce. The drag would take more power to overcome... Conservation of Energy is one of those laws you can't break (though those weirdos trying to use "brown gas" think so).

 

[Ty]

Air thru the eng compartment is a "pumping loss". Reducing air flow reduces pumping loss, increasing efficiency.

Pumping loss typically refers to actually pumping... In the case of automobiles, it refers to the pumping loss that occurs when you deactivate a cylinder by stopping the fuel flow to it. The engine still has to work moving air through that cylinder. A better way to do that is to have the valves stay closed. The piston will still have to squeeze the air but the air expands back pushing the piston down in an equal force (minus very little loss past the rings). This way, the engine only has to overcome the metal on metal friction loss of the cylinder rather than also losing the power it takes to pump air.

 

[Ty]

I'd like to have a set of thermostatically controlled shutters. My Ford diesel takes FOREVER to warm up in the winter (settling for a pizza box for now). It's a '97, so aerodynamics was never a consideration when Ford designed this thing.

I used an engine warmer in Minot, North Dakota. It warmed up okay. (I also found that if you put a 100 Watt "My Heat" ($20) on the center console, and just ran the cord out the door and plugged it in, you could avoid having to scrape windows. I'm 5 years window scraping free now!

 

[ehwatt]

Pumping loss typically refers to actually pumping... In the case of automobiles, it refers to the pumping loss that occurs when you deactivate a cylinder by stopping the fuel flow to it. The engine still has to work moving air through that cylinder. A better way to do that is to have the valves stay closed. The piston will still have to squeeze the air but the air expands back pushing the piston down in an equal force (minus very little loss past the rings). This way, the engine only has to overcome the metal on metal friction loss of the cylinder rather than also losing the power it takes to pump air.

You are correct in the above, Ty, but what I am talking about is in the environment around the engine, where air (free stream dynamic pressure) enters a sort of high pressure plenum, goes thru radiator fins, and around other obstructions in a low pressure plenum losing energy before it exits. This is termed "cooling drag" and it is a pumping loss, it's just from a different kind of pump. Another example would be ventilation for the passenger compartment.

Cooling system design involves sizing of inlet, radiator and exit for all modes of operation and are much bigger than necessary at higher speeds. Aircraft usually use cowl flaps at the exit but that may problematic in the Elio. So shutters may be the way to go. How much will it help? Any is some and a little bit from a lot of places soon adds up, hence our Elio looks like it does: form follows function.

 

[NSTG8R]

I used an engine warmer in Minot, North Dakota. It warmed up okay. (I also found that if you put a 100 Watt "My Heat" ($20) on the center console, and just ran the cord out the door and plugged it in, you could avoid having to scrape windows. I'm 5 years window scraping free now!

It's got a block heater, and it does the trick when I'm heading out to work in the single digit weather, but unfortunately, at work there's no place to plug it in. Starting the beast after work is 'sketchy' at best...wouldn't recommend lighting a cigarette anywhere near the exhaust (raw fuel vapor). I did buy a little heater (100w) from Autozone a couple weeks ago. Hoping it'll allow me to breath inside the truck without fearing I'll frost the inside of the windshield.

 

[Gas-Powered Awesome]

I still can't understand why no one has pursued putting a small wind turbine on EV cars to help charging; at speed you would have a constant wind flow.

And just as a refresher, according to C.P. Snow the Three Laws of Thermodynamics are:

1. You can't win.
2. You can't even get even.
3. You can't get out of the game.

And some say: 0. You have to play the game.

 

[Critter]

Our company got a patent in 1917 for a vane shutter system covering a radiator to control the cooling properties. Weston Fulton was unhappy that the heater in his truck was never warm in the winter. After he worked with it. Received a patent. The automotive industry made him very wealthy.
Http://www.google.com/patents/us1331100
Have a display where the old plant was about Fulton and Robertshaw history. Now a big Walmart complex on Kingston Pike in Knoxville.

 

[W. WIllie]

A lot of G1 Insighters have been using a "radiator air block'' system, similar to the shutter aspect since 2000, along with a "hot air intake mod" to gain app. 1-3% better miles per gallon results.
Of course those people are "Hypermilers".

HTH
Willie

 

[KenK]

Wonder what the coefficient of drag is on that Dodge Ram with shutters open vs closed and what that realistically translates to for MPG gains.

Saw this in the comment section of the original article: "This is just getting back only some of the aerodynamics lost to pedestrian impact regulations, which eliminated the sloped hood, which was probably the single most important thing you could do to lower drag"

Does Elio get away from the sloped hood regulations because its an auto-cycle?