-
The new General Motors of Canada (GM) Automotive Centre of Excellence (ACE) at UOIT has been designed to be a state-of-the-art R&D facility for the automotive sector and many others including the aviation sector, luring industry partners from around the world to access its equipment and expertise. Construction of the high-tech centre began in 2007 at UOIT’s Durham Region campus east of Toronto. The climatic wind tunnel, which is the jewel in the centre’s crown, is large enough to accommodate cars, buses, trucks, trains and airplane wings.

The centre will house research and development tools in the areas of vehicle dynamics, noise and vibration, thermal climatic wind tunnel, structural durability testing and the ability to accommodate future automotive fuels like hydrogen.

According to George Bereznai, the Dean of Engineering at UOIT, “Planning for the centre started in 2003 as part of a large technological investment by GM with support by the Ontario and Federal governments, in recognition that the technology of automotive design and manufacturing was changing rapidly, new hybrid and electric vehicles were coming along, along with extensive automation, and there was a lot of competition from overseas automakers. “General Motors is making a multi-billion dollar investment, principally in Oshawa, and since UOIT was just starting at the time, the governments saw the value of having this type of facility at a university in close proximity to industry - close to the manufacturer and design community but on a campus where the designers would come to campus instead of students and professors going to the manufacturer.

“This set-up creates more of a two-way street. It allows us the opportunity to broaden the centre to any OEM but also to broaden out the use of the facility to anything that is motive, such as planes, wind turbines and trains.”

The development of the centre wouldn’t have been possible without GM’s support, and the company has committed to buying a full shift in the facility for the first two years of operation.

The strength of the team at ACE was bolstered by the addition of Gary Elfstrom, who was recently named Director of Business Development for the facility. Elfstrom was a co-founder and later vice-president of business development at Aiolos Engineering, a Toronto-based global company that designs, builds and maintains test facilities around the world, including wind tunnels. In fact, Aiolos is the company that designed the ACE wind tunnel.

“There isn’t anything available in the U.S. or Canada right now that can do what the ACE can do, which is to say, any of the competing auto companies can come here with a problem, do a test and figure out with some help from the university how to make it better,” said Elfstrom. “This is something very unique; in fact, there’s only one other facility like this in the world and that’s in Stuttgart, Germany.”

As an example of other clients that are interested in the ACE facility, Elfstrom points to a Quebec car company call HGT Supercar. “They designed their car entirely with computational fluid dynamics and computational structural,” Elfstrom explained. “Now they think they might need to do some validation of the aerodynamics, particularly of cooling systems - the underflow, the through-flow, all those kinds of things. That you need to do under true atmospheric environmental conditions. This organization could not afford their own system.”

The Automotive Centre of Excellence wind tunnel assembly arrives at the University of Ontario Institue of Technology construction site in June 2009.

On a larger scale, Elfstrom notes that Bombardier is looking at examining the icing of components for their aircraft. The ability to have a chunk of a wing examined at once is a key advantage of the ACE facility. “You can’t do scale icing (tests) truly effectively,” says Elfstrom. “Not to mention thermal management of a cockpit. This is something you can’t do through computational work √¢‚Ǩ” you have to validate it. (By using a facility like ACE) you drive down the time for development.”

The climatic wind tunnel has extreme weather capabilities and a rotating chassis dynamometer that can be swapped in and out with a moving ground plane or rolling road. This will be the first wind tunnel in the world where these climatic test and aero systems co-exist.

The climatic wind tunnel will have:

· A variable nozzle with a range from 7 to 13 m2

· The ability to create wind speeds exceeding 240 kph;

· A 100°C temperature range, from -40° to 60°C;

· The ability to produce five to 95% humidity; and

· A solar array to replicate the effects of the sun.

· 710 kW dynamometer on an 11 m diameter turntable

The simulations will include:

· Air humidity;

· Air speed;

· Air temperature; and

· Intensity, spectrum and direction of the sun.

Along with extreme weather conditions, it will test road load conditions, vehicle stability and variable wind directions using a rotating chassis dynamometer.

Two environmental chambers will be located beside the wind tunnel allowing for a variety of tests under controlled conditions of temperature and humidity, such as cold starts, extended idles and hot soaks. The large chamber will also include a solar array and a dynamometer to accommodate road load conditions.

A four-poster shaker will be located in one of three environmental chambers. It will have the ability to test full vehicle body structures for durability and the detection of buzz, squeak or rattle. In addition, a multi-axial simulation table (MAST) will be located in a semi-anechoic chamber to test products for structural durability and the detection of noise and vibration in three dimensions.