AlmostFast wrote:
im surprised there hasn't been more comments on this article. This is really cool technology. Its stuff like this that makes me want to get out of the aerospace industry and into the bike industry. i hate all the wind tunnel black magic, its the same as our acoustic chambers at work. As an engineer i know you can make any data show what you want, if you are allowed to tweak / tune the input. This little black box could come up with a better universal / real world environment so that you can better predict how products will perform in real life situations, and therefore better design them for real world situations. Just to set the record straight... A similar project has been around as far back as January of 2010. It was called "Chung-On-A-Stick", in honour of the inventor of virtual elevation. It's since been named AeroStick by the company that's developing it, Alphamantis Technologies. It's also been covered by this article back in March 2010: http://nyvelocity.com/...ness/2010/wang-chung
I can't speak for Robby Ketchell, the Slipstream Sports aerodynamicist mentioned in the article, but as the inventor of the AeroStick, I don't think this will be the end of wind tunnels. We actually think we'll be complementary to wind tunnel data. And perhaps even a gateway drug to get people to understand wind tunnel data better.
We currently measure airspeed and wind angle, and that's very different than the iBike. Our software is extremely robust and very accurate for CxA vs yaw estimates. We are in beta testing right now and hope to have some results available for the Interbike time frame.
As developer of the original "portable wind tunnel" project, I would be happy to answer any questions you may have.
Andy
AndyF
bike geek