Wind tunnel – Something new in the air

After static wind tunnels on a 40% or life-size scale, then computer-assisted digital (CFD), here is a new rope to complete the arc of solutions from aerodynamicists. Perhaps even the most revolutionary...

Welcome to Catesby, a small village lost between London and Birmingham, to the ARP (Aero Research Partners) facilities. They had the good idea of ​​transforming an old double-track railway tunnel from the Victorian era into a dynamic wind tunnel. The dimensions are perfect: 2,7 kilometers with a perfectly straight length, with an invariable section of 8,2 meters wide and 7,8 meters high. Inaugurated in 1898 and abandoned in 1966, this industrial vestige, which required thirty million bricks, aims to enable perfect aero correlation between virtual and real data. For what ? Because the now tarmac track allows a racing car to stabilize its speed at 200 km/h for long periods of time, just long enough to record as much data as possible. Multimatic Motorsports (in charge of the program Porsche LMDh…) wanted to find out for sure by testing his old Mazda RT24-P DPi with Andy Priaulx at the wheel. “ Compared to conventional wind tunnels, it's better because it's real, declared Larry Holt, head of the American-Canadian structure. In a moving ground plane wind tunnel, the car is stationary and wind is blown onto it with a large fan, while a belt beneath the car rotates to simulate the road moving at a coordinated speed. It's a very sophisticated setup, but the car is still stationary. What Catesby offers is the measurement of aerodynamic performance with a car in motion, of a real road surface, of a controlled environment where you can drive 24 hours a day, whatever the season. This is the kind of consistency you need when looking for aero gains. »

Located a few kilometers from the Motorsport Valley where Multimatic Motorsports has its English headquarters, Brackley (35 minutes by car), the engineering office understood the advantage of the tunnel even before it was completed, and thus locked a significant amount of slots for the development of its customers' future vehicles. Mind-blowing!

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