A Novel Test Rig for the Aerodynamic Development of a Door Mirror

Door mirrors have a small but measurable contribution to the overall aerodynamic drag of a road vehicle. Typically for passenger cars and SUVs this is in the range 2.5–5%. It can be difficult to refine the shape of door mirrors as the improvements are, sometimes, too small to measure with any accuracy. A test rig has been developed which allows a full size door mirror to be tested in a model wind tunnel facility, which has better balance resolution, where the mirror is mounted to a partial vehicle body. This also results in a faster and cheaper method to develop shapes for door mirrors. The rig is described and the initial correlation tests presented. The limitations of the rig and some further applications are discussed.