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Fan Array and Noise Mitigation

2:10
49:10
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At 2:10 in

How Does A NASCAR Wind Tunnel ACTUALLY Work? Behind The Scenes in an Official Testing Facility!

What happens here

Gary highlights the array of 22 fans at the very end of the tunnel, which are responsible for generating the powerful airflow. Each fan is about 100 horsepower. He emphasizes that these are not necessarily the most efficient fans, but they are chosen for their quiet operation to minimize noise pollution for nearby residents. He quips that they didn't want the police knocking on their door due to noise ordinance violations. Each fan generates significant torque, equivalent to a small block Chevy engine. To protect these fans and any potential debris from reaching them, a robust catch net is installed in front of the fan array.

Goal: Understand the power source and environmental considerations.

Tools and materials

  • Catch Net — Protecting fans from debris
  • Fans — Generating airflow

What they say

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about, in our case, 130 mph. And then as it goes through the test section and it empties out in the diffuser, that diffuser is slowing down the air in a very uniform manner. So it's not about quality of the air flow, but it's about recovering all that energy that you've put into the air because we've got 2400 horsepower that we're putting into that air. And we would like to recover as much of that as possible. If we don't, we would have to have 5 or 6,000 horsepower to do the same job. The other thing is you don't see any fans in the front. The fans are all at the rear for a very simple reason. Air coming off the fans is really a turbulent mess. You don't want a turbulent mess coming into the test section for this car. You want the air to be very smooth and very uniform. So, if you put the fans in the back, you're sucking the air through the honeycomb and then it is very smooth and very well defined when it hits the car. And that's how you can measure it with that precision. The turbulence doesn't really do you a lot of good when you're in the testing phase. Yes, there is turbulence out on the racetrack and that's unavoidable, but the turbulence is a big variable. We don't want large scale turbulence because you never get the same answer twice. This kind of works like a carburetor. Was that the venturi effect? How it in a sense? Although it's interesting you say that. Yes, you could kind of describe it as a ventury, but it's ex it's exactly the opposite reason that we have a ventury in a carburetor. A ventury is designed to generate a low pressure to suck the fuel up into the carburetor. We're not about uh

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