Aeroacoustics. That’s a word that probably not in the vocabulary of much of the population. But it’s a primary use of the kind of wind tunnels you see vehicle’s go through during testing.
Instead of only measuring aerodynamic drag, a car under development goes through a series of controlled acoustic measurement sessions to understand the effects of wind and road noise toward cabin insulation.
Ford has developed a mobile wind tunnel specifically for the purpose of testing aeroacoustics that’s capable of reaching speeds of up to 128km/h – much higher than the typical testing speeds found under normal testing procedures.
While wind tunnels are extremely expensive to build and maintain, with costs upwards of 50 million US dollars, there’s also the pure inconvenience of it being immovable and occupying such a large footprint.
Ford’s portable wind tunnel gets around that by being constructed from two 16 metre shipping containers and one 12.2 metre container which acts as the control hub. Should the need arise, they can be taken apart and be ready for transport in a matter of hours, ready for their trip to the next Ford plant or test facility.
The longer containers contain the airflow vanes and a set of two 16-bladed fans each driven with a 186kW motor to replicate the high speed winds.
Ford says that this new method of wind tunnel testing is much more convenient for all the employees involved and will allow them to speed up testing time significantly without wasting time waiting for their slot to use a typical wind tunnel as before.
