A Cost-Effective Alternative to Moving Floor Wind Tunnels in Order to Calculate Rolling Resistance and Aerodynamic Drag Coefficients 2014-01-0620

This study investigates the practicality of vehicle coast down testing as a suitable replacement to moving floor wind tunnel experimentation. The recent implementation of full-scale moving floor wind tunnels is forcing a re-estimation of previous coefficient of drag determinations. Moreover, these wind tunnels are relatively expensive to build and operate and may not capture concepts such as linear and quadratic velocity dependency along with the influence of tire pressure on rolling resistance. As a result, the method elucidated here improves the accuracy of the fundamental vehicle modeling equations while remaining relatively affordable. The trends produced by incorporating on road test data into the model fit the values indicated by laboratory tests. This research chose equipment based on a balance between affordability and accuracy while illustrating that higher resolution frequency equipment would further enhance the model accuracy.