Designed and printed these nice and tidy traction board mounts, hopefully they won't mess with my optimized aerodynamics to much.
Very pleased with the results, they're held in place firmly yet are easy to remove with a specific tool.
(repost because not all pictures got uploaded)
Designed and printed these nice and tidy traction board mounts, hopefully they won't mess with my optimized aerodynamics to much.
Very pleased with the results, they're held in place firmly yet are easy to remove with a specific tool.
So I just got my RTT and I've been busy trying to optimize it's aerodynamics to reduce the impact on fuel consumption.
I intent to tafel trough Europe with it and thanks to the orange man fuel prices keep rising.
The default mounting was angled back slightly and simulation confirmed this would create a lot of drag.
Playing around with the angle of the RTT and different aerodynamic elements led me to the 3D printed spacers and nose.
I'm still tracking fuel consumption and I have no results to share yet, but the car feels much more stable and the whistling is also gone since I added the nose.
So I bought this rooftop tent for my 2005 RAV4 and I've been thinking of ways on how to minimize the effects of it on the fuel economy of the vehicle.
The boring answer of course is drive slower, but I find the technical challenge way more interesting.
I've made a rough CAD model of my car and the rooftop tent and using Simflow for some basic CFD simulation.
To start with the roofrack, I bought a pair of fancy wingbars from Thule and 3D printed my own mounting parts so I can mount them as low as possible on the roof. I have a lot of experience with FDM printing structural parts.
Now the idea of this all started when I had just ordered my RTT and I noticed that my rear crossbar was about 25mm lower than the front.
The size of the tent is 2x1,35x0.2 meters, which is quite a large surface to be angled like that at speed.
So I got to simulating in the free version of Simflow and tried different angles and added all kinds of elements to front and back, top and bottom and combining different things.
I now settled up on have the RRT raised at the back to be level and add a 3D printed nose cone to the front.
I'm interested your interpretations, tips and recommendations.
I'm currently print the option I think gave the best theoretical result so far.