Technical Paper
CAATS - Automotive Wind Tunnel Statistical Process Control
2024-04-09
2024-01-2542
This paper presents the application of statistical process control (SPC) methods to Windshear, a 180-mph automotive wind tunnel equipped with a single, wide belt rolling road system. The SPC approach captures the complete variability of the facility and offers useful process performance metrics that are based on a sound statistical framework. Traditional Shewhart control charts are explored, emphasizing the uniqueness of variability experienced in wide belt wind tunnels which includes significant, unexplained short-term and long-term variation compared to manufacturing. This unique variation is elegantly captured by the three-way control chart, which is applied to estimate the complete process reproducibility with different levels of repeatability of vehicle drag coefficient. The sensitivity of three-way control charts is explored including the evaluation of an alternate group assignment within the same dataset.