GM's massive wind tunnel helps to make car design less of a drag

You are looking into the world's largest wind tunnel devoted to automobile testing. This tunnel is the heart of General Motors' Aerodynamics Lab in Michigan, where the automotive giant tests the shape and design of every car it develops. With a 5.5 x 10.5-metre test area, this cavern is where General Motors appraised its most streamlined cars from last year, including its electric model, the Chevrolet Volt, which has a drag coefficient of 0.28 (the lowest in the company's 104-year history), and the Opel Adam, one of the most fuel-efficient cars of its class, which was unveiled at September's

Paris Motor Show 2012.

"To simulate what happens when cars move through air, we move air past cars at speeds as high as 220 kilometres per hour," says Frank

Meinert, the lab's senior engineer. "In the 32 years that we have been in operation, we have run about 21,000 tests in total."

By: Madhumita Venkataramanan, Edited by: David Cornish

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via Wired.co.uk



http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2013/01/start/driving-data-with-the-wind