Technical Paper
Unique Correlation Technique For Real-World Flow Simulation in the Wind Tunnel
1998-02-23
980033
An unique approach has been developed to simulate the real world flow condition in an indoor laboratory environment. An attempt has been made in this investigation to generate a velocity profile in front of the vehicle in a wind tunnel environment similar to the one existing in the outdoor driving condition. In order to establish this correlation several test vehicles from Ford car and truck vehicle lines were tested on the track to obtain representative real world road data. The same vehicles were tested in the Ford Motor's full scale wind tunnels. In each case, the frontal velocity profiles were determined using the same instrumentation as in the case of outdoor environment. This reference road data was then used to correlate with the frontal profile obtained in the wind tunnels.