Stagnation drag + Separation Drag + Wetted Area Drag = Total Aero Drag.
The hardest things for us car guys to grasp is that frontal area was not mentioned anywhere in the equation. This is why you could double the width of your tail-fin (if for some reason you wanted to) and it will not double it's drag.
Rob,
That the frontal area is not mentioned explicitly in your equation doesn’t mean frontal area has no bearing on the performance. Your second sentence essentially says that drag is independent of the frontal area--which is obviously incorrect.
While a drag coefficient is really a fudge factor allowing useful results to be easily extracted from the characteristics of the shape and fluid properties, your expression is made up of quantities that are very hard to determine.
If you think your equation is so superior, please explain, for example, what “stagnation drag” or “separation drag” is and how to predict it. Can you do so without involving frontal area? (And can you do that for non-streamlined shapes?). Your terms seem like alternate expressions for pressure drag and skin friction.
Al’s wing: Any aero appendage is going to add drag and therefore negatively impact performance unless its effect allows the vehicle to sufficiently overcome a stability and/or traction barrier.
