Studies Supporting the Development of an Automotive Adaptive-Wall Wind Tunnel

This paper presents numerical and experimental studies that support the detailed design-development of the automotive adaptive-wall test section. The areas studied include an assessment of the interaction of the wiper blades in an adaptive-wall test section with the vehicle wake, and the effect of actuator positioning errors on vehicle pressure-simulation accuracy. These studies showed that the errors induced by these test section design features on vehicle pressure-simulation were negligibly small. Also presented is the development of a one-step adaptive-wall algorithm, which adapts the test section walls to the final deflected position in just one iteration.