Re: maybe .. 3145 miles per gallon


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johns <johns321@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in article
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Engineering students in Vancouver, BC just produced a car
that gets 3145 miles per gallon in competition with similar
cars. Second place went to a car that only got 1800 miles
per gallon. It is somewhere on the web. I got it second
hand in email from astonished friend. I could use a car
that gets that kind of milage. Hmm, I would have to gas
up about twice a year. My annual cost of operation would
be $6

johns ( I swear I am not lying about this :-)



These aren't the sort of vehicles that you can hop in and drive down to
the
local Piggly-Wiggly and pick up a six-pack of Burpo Beer.

There are some awfully extreme measures taken for the sole purpose of
attaining the highest fuel efficiency.

One example, the tires are grossly over-inflated....

Actually they'll probably be solid tyres on vehicles like that.

It's quite easy to run a simulation of a vehicle that can get those sorts of
economy figures. I won't run through the equations but they are all on my
website.

If we assume a vehicle weight with driver of 230 lbs, coefficient of rolling
resistance of 0.006, frontal area 3 sq ft, cD of 0.15 running at 17 mph (the
test in question has a minimum speed of 15 mph for 9.6 miles), then the
wheel horsepower required to drive the vehicle computes to 0.077 bhp.

Add in 10% for transmission losses and that becomes 0.086 bhp at the
flywheel.

The engines used are fairly basic Briggs and Stratton petrol lawnmower
engines so we can assume a BSFC of 0.5 lbs of fuel per horsepower per hour.
That then gives us a fuel consumption of 0.0057 imperial gallons per hour
and a fuel consumption of just under 3000 mpg.

Juggle with the assumptions a bit more and it isn't hard to get a
consumption of over 3000 USA mpg.

What's more interesting is trying to design a more normal vehicle with
exceptional fuel consumption. You just need to minimise weight, frontal
area, cD and rolling resistance as much as possible. Throw in a more
efficient diesel engine and you could have something like this..

Weight 1000 lbs
cRR 0.010
Frontal area 10 sq ft
cD 0.25
BSFC 0.4

At 70 mph such a vehicle would require 8.5 bhp and be doing about 155 mpg.
With a 20 bhp engine fitted it would have a top speed of 100 mph and
adequate acceleration to keep up with other traffic.
--
Dave Baker
www.pumaracing.co.uk
Usenet - a collection of people who only open their mouth to change feet.


.

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