Taycan Wind Tunnel testing

[Mr.Smith]

The video shows some points on how the next gen Taycan gets better efficiency.

Sponsored

 

[f1eng]

I enjoyed that.

I spent thousands of hours in a wind tunnel optimising Formula 1 cars but only a few on road cars but I had found the wheels made a big difference 40 years ago and it was crucial that they were rotating to get the correct flow field.

No road car wind tunnels could rotate the wheels back then, Pininfarina were the first iirc.

 

[Mr.Smith]

I enjoyed that.

I spent thousands of hours in a wind tunnel optimising Formula 1 cars but only a few on road cars but I had found the wheels made a big difference 40 years ago and it was crucial that they were rotating to get the correct flow field.

No road car wind tunnels could rotate the wheels back then, Pininfarina were the first iirc.

Are wind tunnels as important with advanced computer simulators now?

 

[f1eng]

Are wind tunnels as important with advanced computer simulators now?

Yes.

Computational fluid dynamics is good in certain areas but if, for example the separation point is not correctly predicted, and IME it almost never is, the results are wrong.

I am old and out of date though so the models/maths may be better now but we used to look where the separation points were in the wind tunnel then fudge surface roughness in the CFD so the computer model correctly predicted them.
The thing is several factors have an influence and the fudge factors do not translate to big design changes so it is possible to go very wrong developing using CFD unless tunnel validation is done in parallel.

It would be nice if it was actually as good as many people think, fewer mistakes and much cheaper...

Sponsored