Force Breakdown for accelerating a car

[robinfisichel]

So I've been doing a mini investigation into the power draws on a car accelerating up to a aroudn 100 mph and came up with this graph.

I never really thought about it before but it appears from this graph that inertial forces (here i have only taken into account the acceleration of the main mass, not including any rotating component inertial draws) require the most energy to overcome.

Aero drag is relatively small in comparison, though the Cd of this vehicle is only 0.15.

The other lines are some mechanical losses (produced from an emiprical formula) and rolling resitance of the tyres.

would people agree with this?

Y axis = Newtons
X axis mph

 

[Lsos]

Yeah, that makes sense, especially with that VERY low drag coefficient. Although keep in mind, that it depends on your acceleration. If you have a fast enough missile, the inertia will be taking up most of the force until even thousands of mph, where as in this car you can already see the aero loads starting to catch up with the inertial ones...