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In recent years unsteady phenomena and turbulence environment are getting more and more important for the aerodynamic and the aeroacoustic performance of road vehicles. In this paper an investigation about Side Window Buffeting is presented. Aerodynamic and aeroacoustic measurements were carried out in Pininfarina wind tunnel both in low and high turbulence conditions. Turbulent flow has been generated by using the Turbulence Generation System (TGS). Pininfarina introduced its TGS in 2003 in order to better simulate the atmospheric and road conditions and their effects on full scale vehicles. In the present paper, the basic tool for flow field investigation is the Stereoscopic Particle Image Velocimetry probe (SPIV). Both the average and instantaneous velocity flow field in the area of the side window are measured by such a technique. The velocity maps are acquired simultaneously with pressure measurements inside the vehicle cabin.

The Bioregenerative Life Support program CAB (Controllo Ambientale Biorigenerativo) is a key element of the Italian Space Agency (ASI) Medicine & Biotechnology scientific program, set forth in the ASI Activity Plan 2006-2008 [01], [02], [03]. The CAB program team performed a one-year feasibility study of a controlled biological life support system (BLSS), allowing the regeneration of resources and the production of food for life support in long duration missions, under the prime contractorship of Thales Alenia Space - Italia, defining: State of art in the field Functional and technical requirements for the BLSS Functional architecture and preliminary sizing of a BLSS for planetary surface Development plan with associated scientific activities and technological demonstration.

Acoustic comfort is a key selling point leading vehicle manufacturers to invest money and resources in research activity. As a consequence the localization of internal and external noise sources of the vehicle is becoming more and more important. The “Beamforming” technique is a well-known method, based on an array of microphones, suitable to identify the external noise sources of a road vehicle. This technique is able to localize the noise sources by estimating the amplitudes of plane, or spherical, waves incident toward the array. For many different reasons, such as the unknown position in the space of the noise sources, the processing time, the algorithm simplicity and so on, the investigation is generally made only on a virtual plane (planar Beamforming) and not in the full three-dimensional space. As a consequence the results accuracy, especially in terms of Sound Pressure Level (SPL) is not entirely satisfactory.

Aeroacoustics of road vehicles is becoming more and more important as it directly affects the comfort of the passengers. The tests made in the wind tunnel, in low-turbulence flow conditions, show results that are qualitatively different from those measured on the road. To get a better understanding of this, Audi and Pininfarina decided to carry out a test campaign on some cars, both on the road and in the wind tunnel, in various turbulent flow conditions. In the case of road measurements, some typical turbulent flow conditions, like those caused by atmospheric wind and those produced by the traffic, have been investigated. Wind tunnel measurements have been performed both in the base wind tunnel (in Audi and in Pininfarina) and in the presence of turbulent flows generated, in the Pininfarina wind tunnel, by the Turbulence Generator System, already described in previous SAE papers [1,3,5,7].

Aim of the Closed Habitat Environmental Control Sensors (CHECS) project has been the setting up of a complete, lightweight sensing system for monitoring the ambient conditions of plant growth in space missions. A complete sensor system has been developed and tested, based on a deep knowledge of plant needs, and on the typical plant behaviour in stress conditions. The main characteristic of the system is its compatibility with Silicon technology. This means high integrability, reduced dimensions, low weight, redundancy, simplicity and high reliability. All the sensors composing the systems have been produced by means of well developed solid state technology, including the MicroSystem Technology (MST) and Porous Silicon Technology (PST). The latter has proved in the last year to have considerable advantages over other approaches.