AUTOMOBILE DRAG COEFFICIENTS

by John H. Lienhard

Click here for audio of Episode 1520.

Today, aerodynamics and automobiles. The University of Houston's College of

Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and
the people whose ingenuity created them.

The first cars were made before the Wright brothers flew and before they'd even
started doing wind tunnel tests. Wind tunnels were used in airplane design from the
start. Car designers were far slower to see that aerodynamics also affected their work.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Germany set up a number of high-level technical
universities, which put them way ahead in aerodynamic research. In 1921, it was the
Zeppelin Airship Works that first studied automobile streamlining in wind tunnels.

Automobile drag can be a serious gas-eater. When I was a kid, I entertained myself on
long auto trips by putting my hand out the window and turning it at various angles to
the wind. The forces, even on a child's small hand, were quite strong. And small
changes in the shape and orientation of my hand made huge differences.

The usual measure of aerodynamic efficiency is the drag coefficient, CD. It compares
the drag force, at any speed, with the force it'd take to stop all the air in front of the
car. Drag coefficients for the first boxy autos were up over 0.7. Instead of letting the
air slip past, they brought most of it to a halt.

In most of today's cars that figure is down to a scant 0.3. Of course there's more to it
than just lowering the drag. It's easy enough to reduce drag if we let ourselves create
other aerodynamic problems when we do. A car has to be designed for negative lift.
The wind should press it solidly down against the road. And cars must not be
vulnerable to crosswinds.

As early as 1907, a streamlined racing car called the Rocket reached 132 miles per
hour before it became airborne. It had a low drag coefficient, but it was still a bad
aerodynamic design.

Streamlining was the new design icon in the 1930s, yet that was more an illusion of
speed than real drag reduction. Only a few cars had been wind-tunnel tested. The
famous Chrysler Airflow was the exception, with far less drag than most of the cars
following it.

It took time for engineers to see that they had to smooth the bottom of an automobile
as much as the top. It took time to see that sharp corners on the front of a car were
terrible drag-inducers. Only in the last generation did 18-wheelers sprout those
strange-but-effective, drag-reducing cowls over their cabs. And only since WW-II has
wind tunnel testing been a regular part of car design. Only recently has accurate
computer simulation let engineers use rapid trial and error to improve aerodynamic
designs.

That's why today's cars offer so little drag. And of course they're looking more and
more alike. As designers work with increasing knowledge of design limitations, they
close in on optimal designs that cannot vary much from one car to the next. It's just
because our cars are such fine machines that we no longer look at the wild sunspray of
possibilities -- which got us to where we are.

I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston, where we're interested in the way
inventive minds work.

(Theme music)

Flink, J. J., The Path of Least Resistance. American Heritage of Invention &
Technology, Fall, 1989, pp. 34-44.
 (Image courtesy of the Ford archives)

The 1928 Model-A Ford still showing no

concessions whatever to good aerodynamics

What Is the Car Drag Coefficient?

21 Oct 2018, 10:00 UTC ·

by Daniel Patrascu

Home > News > Auto Guide

Aside from being responsible with catching the eye of the

customers, the design of a car is in part accountable for the
performances of any given vehicle. And one of the most
important figures car companies are watching for when
designing a new car model is the drag coefficient.
 5
photos

The drag coefficient comes in the form of a figure that can have lasting effects on top speed,
stability, fuel consumption and more. But what does that figure mean?WHAT IS THE DRAG
COEFFICIENT
A drag coefficient is a number used in fluid dynamics to determine the resistance
encountered by an object moving through a fluid. In real life, all fluids have a tendency of
resisting object passing through them with a force which acts opposite to the relative motion
of the respective object.

For cars, the drag is the force with which the surrounding air pushes against the car as the
vehicle travels as if trying to stop it or slow it down.

For an automobile, that means a car moving down a road would be opposed by the air
which it travels through with a force that is dependent on the design of the car and the
speed it travels at - drag increases with the square of speed.

Because of this, the effects of drag are mostly felt at higher speeds, meaning cars have to
be designed in such a way that they reduce the drag coefficient as much as possible.

But a higher drag coefficient also impacts more than the performance of a car at high
speeds. The higher the number, the more difficult the car to control, the more fuel it uses,
the more acceleration is affected.
Calculating the drag coefficient involves a complicated math formula that takes into account
speed, density of the air, and the reference area, meaning the surface of the car. The layout
of the wind tunnels where the cars are tested could also affect the drag coefficient.

Design-wise, one of the components that affect the drag coefficient is the front end of a
vehicle.

Reducing drag too much when designing a car could lead to an undesired effect: too much
lift, which in turn could lead to the vehicle’s traction being affected.CARS
Generally, a production car has a drag coefficient of between 0.25 and 0.3, while SUVs
have a higher figure because of their boxier shapes, between 0.35 and 0.45.

Somewhat contra-intuitive, the drag coefficient of high-performance cars like the ones used
in Formula 1, or the production Caterham Seven, is far worse than that of say the cube-on-
wheels Hummer H2.

The Formula 1 cars come in at between 0.7 to 1.1, depending on the settings chose by
teams for each of the circuits the cars race on. By comparison, the Hummer H2 has a drag
coefficient of around 0.57.

The reason behind this is the fact that Formula 1 cars need drag so that they can generate
enough downforce for high-speed cornering. As we said earlier, a low drag could mean
more lift, hence more drag means more downforce.

Important to note is the fact that the drag coefficient is a highly volatile figure. When this
figure is determined for a certain car, it only refers to that particular car, in that particular
configuration, and not the entire model line.

For instance, the most aerodynamic production car currently available on the market is
the Mercedes-Benz CLA 180 BlueEfficiency, with a drag coefficient of 0.22. That figure is
not valid for all CLA models, but only for this particular version, equipped with the stock
body kit. Any modification, like say a new bumper, changes the figure.

Today, the top five cars with the lowest drag coefficient start with the mentioned Merc and
continue with the 2017 BMW 520d EfficientDynamics (also 0.22), Tesla Model 3 (0.23), Alfa
Romeo Giulia Advanced Efficiency (0.23) and Audi A4 2.0 TDI ultra (0.23).