Kvach;
There is certainly a precedent for aerodynamic braking. The old Mercedes
300SLR race cars used this at Le Mans in the mid- '50s, back when everyone
was using drum brakes. A panel behind the driver was hydraulically raised to
near- vertical and it was effective enough to be banned. Pork-Pie can
probably elaborate on this.
If you've ever watched the History Channel, you may have seen perforated
dive brakes on Navy SBD dive bombers or the expanding- plate speed brakes on
the rear fusilage an F-86, etc. Of course, the faster the speed, the more
effective aeordynamic braking is. I suspect the key to getting it to work
safely is to make the transition from "closed" to "open" stable and
nonviolent.
Regards, Neil Tucson, AZ
-----Original Message-----
From: Salt Hawk [mailto:salthawk@coldreams.com]
Sent: Monday, October 21, 2002 9:11 PM
To: land-speed@autox.team.net
Subject: Stopping the streamliners
After watching Nolan streak by to eternity this last week I have done
something I never gave any thought to, how to stop one of these things. My
first question is what ever happened to the catch fence that Strout built
for
this purpose.
Anyway the answer has to be wind resistance, something that will
always deploy and make a significant alteration in the speed of the vehicle.
My idea would be a rotating nearly flat plate. It would be mounted on a
solid
piece of moly that ran threw the liner and pillow blocks that were bolted to
the super structure. On the outside they would run the full length of the
rotatable plate and be slightly back of the center of the plate. They would
deploy simply by pulling a rotating pin, the leading edge would flip down
and
hit a stop, rotating them upward could allow them to act as a wing
momentarily and lift the vehicle. They rotate down from having a very slight
angle of attack The idea is that while they could be used for downforce,
that
is not their purpose, basically they would just add a ton of resistance and
be
failsafe, their significance would rapidly diminish as the speed decreased,
but after say a mile of deployment , the chutes should be able to safely
deploy and do their job. Burklands streamliner uses a rear airbrake with
the
same intentions, more complicated and perhaps creates some problems with
chute
deployment. I figure this should be adaptable to most any streamliner. So
rattle this around if its not the answer maybe it will trigger some thought
towards the answer. Kvach
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/// what is needed. It isn't that difficult, folks.
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