underbody scoop for mid engined car... worth it?

[bbbrad]

Hi I have a toyota mr-s and am planning on a v6 turbo conversion. I am wanting to offset the rearward weight increase by mounting as many components as forward as possible. I am wanting to mount the intercooler laying flat in front of the engine with an underbody scoop collecting the air travelling under the car. Possibly a naca style intake design. My question is, is there enough airflow under the car to collect? The rest of the car will be quite basic in aero terms, with 100mm ground clearance and no major wings or splitters etc. Any info would be a great help. Thanks in advance.
Brad

 

[GregLocock]

A NACA duct is designed to work with attached flow, the flow under a car is chaotic and not attached. So a NACA duct offers no particular advantage.

I don't think it is a terrible place to pick up the air from, aerodynamically, after all your choices at the rear of the car are pretty limited

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[fds5116]

Remember the Gordon Murray Brabham car that used an engine driven fan to cool the 'laid down flat' radiators (and incidentally produced great amounts of downforce). There is air down there, but it will have to be forced through the intercooler.

 

[ornerynorsk]

I would avoid that location solely due to road debris.

It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.

 

[JEt87]

Doesn't seem like a good idea (especially NACA-style).
At first it is quite hard to design a proper NACA duct that would work well.
Also NACA ducts work with a turbulent flow, that is not very suitable for cooling an intercooler core IMHO.
As far as a raised scoop is much easier to design and have a bigger flow volume it looks like a better alternative. Furthermore it works well in front-engined cars.
However, both NACA and raised scoop will suffer from dirt in the middle engine layout car. Cleaning front-mount and side-mount intercoolers could be quite tricky sometimes, so you definitely won't like cleaning it underneath a car.
And finally for a proper cooling an intake area of the scoop should be around 1/4 of intercooler core area. That could decrease ground clearance dramatically.
If I were you I would think about using MR's side scoops (hope there is enough free space).