http://www.mulsannescorner.com/newsmarch11.html (post date 4/26/11)Long time readers of Mulsanne's Corner will be familiar with Yoshi Suzuka. As you'll recall, Mr. Suzuka was responsible for the aerodynamics of Nissan IMSA GTP race cars that dominated IMSA GTP in the 1980s & 90s.
These days Yoshi is enjoying his retirement. But he isn't sitting still. Yoshi has been working on a Office Size scale wind tunnel. Yes, it's about the size of a small cat carrier and accepts 1/24 scale models, and it will even measure front and rear lift forces as well as drag.
Now some people are going to immediately scoff at this. But watch the videos, Yoshi has made a 5 part video series that shows the model functioning and him working through a test case. Understand that Yoshi doesn't make any claims that the data is accurate to full scale, simply that the trends are accurate. Yoshi used 1/7 scale models for the Nissan IMSA GTP program and designed and built NPTi's wind tunnel. According to Suzuka, he was able to achieve 2% and 4%, drag and downforce respectively, correlation to full scale with this tiny windtunnel. This being the closest correlation to full scale in any of the 14 wind tunnels he used throughout his 35+ year career. And the Nissan GTP program achieved results, so Suzuka must know a thing or two about what he's up to with his Office Size wind tunnel.
I was glued to these videos for like half an hour:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpMOpyLb ... re=related[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1IIMFOF ... re=related[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ww29IAN6 ... re=related[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpzRPfd9 ... re=related[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYmsFAGX ... re=related[/youtube]
Yoshi's website: http://www.suzukaracing.com/
I love stuff like this, it looks like so much fun. I believe he mentioned 0.5% repeatability in the videos above. I see no signs of him selling this desktop unit anytime soon, so we should create some plans ourselves! I'm sure many of you guys could offer suggestions for appropriate AC motors and controllers, fans, load cells, affordable linear slides, etc.
Rough BOM off the top of my head:
- Flat, rigid, lightweight base
- AC motor & controller
- Fan
- Ducting
- Load cells (2 for downforce/lift at each axle, 1 for drag) & readouts
- Load cell carrier mounted to linear slide for drag measurement
Also, it might be good to discuss the following:
- the merits of open & closed wind tunnel designs
- the necessity of a rolling road & simpler/cheaper ways to achieve a similar effect (boundary layer suction?)
- water tunnels vs wind tunnels for small scale models (tunnel design simplicity & operating cost vs reynolds numbers)