Ford's new system takes wind tunnel testing on tour - https://t.co/K020WdSF5i pic.twitter.com/zvVNKaiyqD
— Gizmag (@gizmag) May 9, 2016
How much does a quiet, refined cabin mean to you? According to industry market trends, it is one of your key deciding factors when shopping for a new vehicle! Gone are the days when you only cared if a truck could haul a 15,000-pound trailer. Now you also want to know if there will be wind noise when you're cruising along the interstate.
We all want a piece of the finer things in life, and Ford is working to give them to you.
For instance, when Ford's aerodynamics laboratories weren't enough to test and re-test the drag coefficient and in-cabin wind noise of new vehicles as much as the engineers wanted to, they got a little creative.
Ford created the world's first mobile aeroacoustic wind tunnel.
Built inside of two attached 53-foot shipping containers, the portable wind tunnel can be packed up, delivered to an assembly plant, and unpacked within hours. Instead of shipping vehicles from the assembly plant to a wind tunnel, Ford can now bring the wind tunnel directly to the factory.
The advantages are huge. Firstly, it cuts test cycle times from weeks, down to hours, allowing for more tests, and more refinements to be made. Second, and perhaps more importantly, the noise engineers running the wind tunnel tests are right there on site with the manufacturing associates. If a change needs to be made in the assembly process, all key parties are there in person to work it out.
When great minds come together, big innovations happen.
Visit Kocourek Ford Lincoln Inc. to test drive some highly-refined, and still ruggedly capable, new Ford vehicles in Wausau.