Ford’s Portable Wind Tunnel Tests New Vehicles at Plant

Ford is patenting a way to harness the wind and take it on a road trip.

The Dearborn-based automaker has developed a mobile wind tunnel to test vehicle aeroacoustics as part of the quest for ever-quieter vehicles.

The portable wind tunnel looks for unwanted noise in early production vehicles so they can be fixed quickly. The beauty of being portable is it can be set up at an assembly plant. Vehicles can be plucked directly from the assembly line for testing on-site. No time is wasted shipping vehicles to the main wind tunnel.

The first stop: the Flat Rock Assembly Plant in Michigan that makes the Ford Mustang and Fusion (pictured). The mobile unit will stay there for weeks or even months before moving to another assembly plant. When the time comes, the entire operation can be broken down within a day, shipped to any Ford plant in North America by truck, and then reassembled and ready for testing within hours.

Ford chose Flat Rock to debut the mobile lab because it is near the company’s main wind tunnel in Allen Park, Mich.

Allen Park is a $50 million full-sized lab the size of an office building and equipped to do advanced aeroacoustic work for future vehicles as well as aerodynamic work to improve fuel economy. By contrast, the portable wind tunnel is built inside two 53-foot shipping containers that are fastened together and there is a third, 40-foot container with an office and the controls.

Ford officials will not say how much the portable wind tunnel costs, just that it is a fraction of the cost of stationary wind tunnels. That is because it does only aeroacoustics, not advanced aerodynamics, and therefore does not need all the specialized measuring and analysis equipment. All that is needed is a steady stream of wind and some sensors  inside the vehicle being evaluated. A machine provides a controlled airflow and there are two 16-bladed fans with a 6-foot diameter, powered by a 250-hp electric motor to create a sustained 80-mph wind. It can run 24 hours a day with two workers.

“This project was born from a desire to be the best when it comes to controlling and limiting the cabin noise customers are so sensitive to,” said Bill Gulker, Ford wind noise core supervisor. “And our new mobile wind tunnel saves our engineers time and increases productivity.”

If an assembly issue is causing unwanted noise, the problem can be found and fixed faster since everyone is on site. “Now, we’re able to detect even the most subtle noises,” said Gulker. “We can identify an area in need of improvement, have key people gather, communicate quickly, and resolve the issue without delay.”

The other advantage is the mobile lab frees the Allen Park wind tunnel, with its specialized instruments and higher cost to operate, to concentrate on product development.

Ford has filed patents on the test system. It joins a fleet of mobile testing facilities that includes three environmental evaluation chambers.

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