Ford Motor Company is helping college students achieve their racing aspirations by providing wind tunnel time and engineering support to Formula SAE teams.
Formula SAE is a college-level racing and design competition where students plan and build a new open-wheel race car each year to pit against those from other schools. Unlike a well-funded professional racing team, teams at the SAE Formula level are financially limited, and must utilize only in-house student designs – although automotive companies are permitted to provide some guidance.
The wind tunnel time and engineering support provided to Formula SAE teams by Ford can be invaluable. According to Ford V-6 Systems Engineer Joe Hendrickson, “besides testing time for a race car on a track, [wind tunnel testing is] the most valuable testing you can get.” It gives teams a chance to gather numerical data relating to the aerodynamics of their car design, which can validate their work, or point them toward what needs to be tweaked before the big event.
For more, watch the video above.
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