Great idea....believe me, the wheels are turning in everyone's heads. Not sure when and how we can accommodate something like that, but it would be cool. Failing that, at a minimum we can "give" people aero tidbits and information that may not be as sensitive to the particular rider (e.g. equipment setups) via videos or FAQ entries, etc...

---

Chris Yu
Applied Technology
Specialized Bicycle Components
@chrisyuinc

I've always been curious where most of the cost of a high quality wind tunnel comes from.
ie. Is it from the large "tunnel" itself? Or R&D? Or from the "drag sensing equipment" or something else?

Hey Dan,

Yeah, Specialized had been toying with the idea for the last 4 years or so (before my time with the company). There were times where it started rolling, then backed off again for one reason or another. The big requirements the entire time were: near our HQ and needed to be designed completely by us (allowing us to control every part of the process and the ability to modify or change things down the road).

About a year and a half ago, I joined the team and happened to come in at a time when the ball was rolling again. Around that time, (as you mention and Jordan knows well) a tunnel at Swift was decommissioned and offered at auction. We had some interest in re-purposing pieces of it (most notably the fan), but decided against mostly due to restriction on ultimate size. Pencil to paper started just about a year and a half ago and once we showed a viable design for the space that we had, Mike was all for it and pulled the trigger. Here we are now!

---

Chris Yu
Applied Technology
Specialized Bicycle Components
@chrisyuinc

Hey, I think it's great that you're getting into the sport! It's never too late! You're already setup pretty well with that Shiv - as for the helmet, I hear your concerns and it's a common one that we've heard over and over again. All I can say is to stay tuned this summer....

---

Chris Yu
Applied Technology
Specialized Bicycle Components
@chrisyuinc

Yea, that's an interesting question. In a short span of time, we went from triage mode - figuring out which select group of products and prototypes got to have tunnel time - to the situation you've posed: figuring out how to prioritize what goes into it. For now, I'm juggling all the different groups and athletes to make sure everything hits the right timeline (in terms of product launches or important races for our athletes). There's literally a line at my desk internally looking for time to test - and I'm certainly not complaining! No limit or restriction on what will go in - anything flies. My new motto has become: "why not?"

Though we might need to put a cot in the control room...

---

Chris Yu
Applied Technology
Specialized Bicycle Components
@chrisyuinc

The cross-section is 16' wide by 10' tall. The cool part is that it's 30' long, which is unusually long for a tunnel this size. This was one of the original design targets (maximizing overall size of the test section) and knowing that we only needed to hit reasonable human speeds at the top end meant that we could get away with a lot without resorting to an insane fan power requirement.

---

Chris Yu
Applied Technology
Specialized Bicycle Components
@chrisyuinc

Thanks for taking the time to answer, and for being candid. Best of luck with this, I am pretty sure that you'll need some rigorous and transparent triaging processes very soon, but in the mean time those people in line offer great "bribing" opportunities: ask for a king size cot ;)

Haha, as cool as a Death Star would be, I'm an aero dork so the wind tunnel beats it in my book.

That's a good question - and honestly I'm not sure. We're obviously spending time in it on the big stuff like bikes, but we make a lot of other things that have faster design to production times that could make it out to market sooner after seeing time in the tunnel. I know, it's a bad answer but it's the best I can do.

---

Chris Yu
Applied Technology
Specialized Bicycle Components
@chrisyuinc

I know that's in pink (red?) but I don't think it's too far off. The top end XC racers are going so fast and races can be decided by so little - why not?

---

Chris Yu
Applied Technology
Specialized Bicycle Components
@chrisyuinc

Hey John,

Yup, you hit the nail on the head. We will continue to design the fastest bikes that we can using the tunnel, but a huge secondary use is to do what you're suggesting. We can show riders how to best use what they have already and go over things that matter aerodynamically, and things that may not matter so much (and by how much). Of course, a lot of things are rider dependent, but other things may not be that sensitive. Bottom line is we want to have it as interactive as possible outside of our product R&D activities.

---

Chris Yu
Applied Technology
Specialized Bicycle Components
@chrisyuinc

You might be joking, but again - why not?

I'm sure you guys have seen those youtube videos of the commuters in Europe on the bike paths getting blown all over the place. Or those of you that commute - how much does it suck when you're trying to get home and you're riding right into a headwind? Aero matters. Even for commuters.

---

Chris Yu
Applied Technology
Specialized Bicycle Components
@chrisyuinc

Oh Andy, you're definitely welcome. Let me know the next time you're in the Bay Area!

---

Chris Yu
Applied Technology
Specialized Bicycle Components
@chrisyuinc

Yay!!! I'm going to Disneyland!!! ;-)

(I know, I know -- it's just an expression.)

---

AndyF
bike geek

Haha, that is awesome...I did almost exactly the same thing. I had a small tunnel in my 7th grade science fair. Lots of straw cutting!!

---

Chris Yu
Applied Technology
Specialized Bicycle Components
@chrisyuinc

Hey, good question. Honestly I don't know for sure, but I would just apply anyways and let our HR figure that out!

---

Chris Yu
Applied Technology
Specialized Bicycle Components
@chrisyuinc

By far, the highest cost would typically come from the design (e.g. the man-hours to design the facility and run appropriate sims/calcs to verify the design). Usually you would contract that work out, but we were fortunate enough to have some world class experts consult with us from the beginning and between Mark Cote and I, we had enough tunnel background to hack something out ;-). As for the build itself, the cost is in the fans and balance equipment. Everything else is like constructing a building (albeit one with very precisely defined walls).

---

Chris Yu
Applied Technology
Specialized Bicycle Components
@chrisyuinc

With it being that long will you do any multi bike interaction testing? In other words looking at how much benefit one gets at various draft distances and optimal drafting position (Direct vs V shape etc).

Hi Chris, I have some questions:

- Taking into account that you have developed the wind tunnel from scratch, why have you decided to go with rollers instead of a solution that represents better real world conditions (like a treadmill)? Some of the wind tunnels here in Europe have that type of equipment (Magny-Cours and Mercedes' one) and some manufacturers take a different approach to rear end design due to this. M.N. Godo said in one of his papers that ground modelisation was one of the limiting factors to achieve perfect WT-CFD correlation. Do you think that this can play a big role in correlation?

- Are you able to measure torque to spin (rotational drag)?

- Can you explain us your approach to WT pedalling tests? I know that M. Cote did some testing to know which static position of the legs gives the same average drag but this was limited to 0º yaw and a bike model. Do you extrapolate those results for other yaws/bikes like Cervélo does or do you have a pedalling mannequin like Trek and Speedplay?

Thanks for your answers

---

http://cds-0.blogspot.com

Hi Chris,

Maybe I'm asking some dumb questions so excuse my ignorance. How much space does the wind tunnel take in side that warehouse? Are there any plans to add other things inside that warehouse to complement the windtunnel? Would that be possible? Classrooms, road simulation testing? Rider testing and development I could see this as a real plus for the Specialized factory riders. Sorta an "All-in-One" Bike and Rider development facility.

Awesome. Thanks.

Convenient how close you are to Ames too... :P

(My uncle is one of the windtunnel wizzes there)

---

The question of who is right and who is wrong has seemed to me always too small to be worth a moment's thought, while the question of what is right and what is wrong has seemed all-important.

-Albert J. Nock

Reasonable. Any idea on the power draw at 30mph? I'm assuming you went with variable speed fans rather than variable pitch?

---

__________________________

I tweet!

Absolutely. We wanted to be able to study all sorts of configurations - for team time trials, what's the optimal order for a set of riders - for mass start races, where in a pack is the best to be (and if/how the relative importance of each piece of aero equipment changes). So in summary, yes.

---

Chris Yu
Applied Technology
Specialized Bicycle Components
@chrisyuinc

Good questions! I'll answer below:



The beauty is we're free to put in any apparatus that best answers the question that we're trying to ask. For bike and equipment R&D, having a robust setup allows us to have very repeatable measurements which makes it easier to determine how/what we've changed. I've looked a bit at ground effect and for the vast majority of the bike/rider system (e.g. everything but the wheels), it's essentially a negligible impact. I believe the Godo study was on wheels. We looked at, but for now have avoided, a rolling road setup since it's just so hard to setup a test with the precision that we want...it's added complexity that does not necessarily gain us much. However, when we're talking about riders, we are very much interested in how to make the tunnel experience more representative of the real world riding. The trick is balancing that with high enough precision to still be useful. We have some ideas there...


Yup, we are getting setup to do so. The thing to remember though is any measurement of rotational drag in the tunnel will include rolling resistance (the so-called power-to-spin measurement will include rolling resistance and aerodynamic drag from rotation). So to tease out the aerodynamic drag component, we can measure the Crr in our test lab - or we can use the same tire and mounting load (normal force) for comparative studies.


Yea, Mark's study was enlightening, and we will continue to look at that at yaw. For R&D stuff, I still think that we need a setup that's as robust as possible so we can get the best possible precision. There's nothing worse than not knowing for sure whether you have something that's better or not just because the variability in the measurement is so high. If and when we find that we absolutely need a pedaling mannequin, that will happen. And cool side note: since it's our test section we can do stuff like: have a mannequin on a stinger separate from the balance - so we can swap out bikes and not worry about putting the mannequin back in exactly the same spot.


No prob, anytime!

---

Chris Yu
Applied Technology
Specialized Bicycle Components
@chrisyuinc

Not a dumb question at all. The tunnel is just over 100ft long. We've taken over essentially 1/3 of the floor space in that building and sectioned it off for the tunnel. We currently have one control room, but it was designed for an identical one on the opposite side of the test section. So as you've mentioned, we'll have more space for either a rider lounge, fit studio, or workshop, depending on what we're doing in the tunnel. We already have a locker room and showers in that area so we are setup to test riders comfortably. I like the "all-in-one bike and rider development faciltiy"...may need to steal that one!

---

Chris Yu
Applied Technology
Specialized Bicycle Components
@chrisyuinc