The one question I had was how much pressure difference between the top and bottom of a NHRA prostock spoiler '' not whose'' your reply was you could not give out information others had paid for.
So much for helping us out.
My reply was this '' ''
JL222
All I can say is that I try to help as much as I can without getting fired from my job and (I hate to say) as politically correct as possible to keep all parties satisfied. You NEED to understand there are confidentiality agreements that we sign with teams that test in the tunnel and if I were to talk about something learned at a test I could lose my job and could potentially have a law suite against A2 because of a little piece of paper called a contract. We take this VERY seriously at both tunnels ( AeroDyn & A2) and don’t care how many stick and stones thrown or eye rolls I get, I will NOT talk about other team’s data or information with out permission from them because that is information they paid for their personal use. There is a reason that more wind tunnels are not on here writing about information because they don’t want to deal with walking a line of what they can talk about and what they can’t then getting slammed for not telling someone what they want to hear. I am walking a fine line by being on this website to not give our customers the wrong idea. If I were a University student of professor that had access to a wind tunnel that I could run my own studies then that is a different story.
I can talk about general aero related questions and have been pretty specific in the past about some posts. If you have a question about a configuration any team has tested then that constitutes information that a team paid for to find the answer no matter how general you think it is. Are there some questions I can be more specific on? Absolutely. Do I have the time during my day to spend hours on here to answer all questions in the way they deserve in great detail? NO, but I know that for every person I do answer there will be one or more that is mad that I didn’t answer theirs in the way they felt I “should” answer.
There is no magic number for me to say well in the history of the NHRA 100% of pro stock spoilers have X amount of pressure difference from top to bottom. Bodies change, rules change, different manufactures have different things going on with the shapes of the car, scoops, spoiler angle, spoiler with wicker or without, underbody, fender shape. Even the lateral and longitudinal pressure distribution on a spoiler is not the same from left to right. With so many variables there I can’t just say X is the value you are looking for. If you think that is no help then you are not paying attention to what I am trying to educate you on. ALL of those variables will make a difference in the pressure reading you are asking for so I cant be general because I would have to tell you more information then just a single number. You can’t assume that one car has this aero characteristic so my car must be the same since it has 4 wheels and a spoiler. And that 1 single number will represent the pressure difference on a spoiler is the same for all is not a good assumption.
I will ask a similar question to you that you asked to me. What is the pressure inside a balloon? Or have a look at this picture and tell me what single pressure best describes the loading in the wings of this aircraft?
If it is a general question then please be a little more specific in what you want to know and why and maybe I can give you a general answer without a breach of my contract. I guarantee that the pressure difference is not the same as on your car as it is on a pro stock, so if this is something of great interest to you and you want to know the answer to help you better understand what is going on with your car then I recommend you do what all racers do.. R&D. Find a way to measure what is going on at the EXACT location you want to know so that you can get on here and tell all of us. On this (Year) (model) car in this (detailed) configuration at this location x inches behind and x inch below the rear spoiler at this angle and this dimension. This is the pressure I recorded. If you need help on how you could do this, I’m always available to help the best I can (give me a call) I might be able to be a little more specific on the phone then in an open Forum.
I appreciate the positive response from most of the members that I have got in phone calls and email. I will continue to help as much as I can, and if some of you expect me to just give out information because you feel you deserve them, then you are mistaken and I am not on here to give away information or something you might think of as general, but I signed contract stating that I would not talk about because someone tested it in the tunnel. Put it this way… If you came to the tunnel and spent $5000 to learn and develop your car, would you be okay with me getting on this forum and openly talking about your test, what you did, what you learned in detail? I think you would want the same respect I give all our customers.