Trust those crazy guys at NASCAR to come with weird ways to test their cars, all in the name of replicating actual conditions. The NASCAR team, owned by Gene Haas, worked with Jacobs Engineering and came up with WindShear Inc., a treadmill designed to test their cars.
Old school method of wind tunnel testing has been replaced because it didn’t give totally accurate results, especially for those cars traveling at very high speeds. It was argued that wind tends to stick to floors at 200+mph speed. So enter WindShear.
It is a one-millimeter thick continuous steel belt that rolls at over 180mph, and features sensors under the bed that can take readings at each individual wheel. That combined with wind tunnel technology, the system can also thrust 2.85 million cubic feet of air over the vehicle every minute to accurately recreate the driving conditions on a NASCAR track.
Source: OhGizmo
