Rolling Road Wind Tunnel

At first glance I thought this rolling road made by Haas Automation and Jacobs Engineering was a picture of a toy car on an inverted belt sander.

“The one-millimeter thick continuous steel belt will roll at over 180mph, and features sensors under the bed that can take readings at each wheel. At top speed the wind tunnel fan will circulate 2.85 million cubic feet of air per minute! The facility will be available for rental to motorsports teams and manufacturers when it opens later this year. And yes, that’s a genuine actual-size race car up on the rollers.”

Via: OhGizmo and Jalopnik

14 Comments


  1. This is very reminiscent of the systems described in “The Roads Must Roll!” (1940) by Robert Heinlein.


  2. Thats insanely awesome, looks like they fixed the little problem of cars in wind tunnels


  3. Hey RSMilward,

    I had never heard of that book before, sometimes it just takes some time for the technology to catch up to crazy ideas.

    Just imagine if that steel belt ever broke. That guy would be sliced in half.


  4. Haha this is massive, i also thought it was a toy car at first


  5. All I can say is about damn time… Oh and I bet NASCAR is going ape s*** over it. Soon they’ll by Budweiser, Florida and Sony. It’ll be the first economy based on ovals.



  6. I’m with mr mario, I thought it was a model or something at first.



  7. I always thought engineers were cocky. As if they couldn’t move the desk just a little farther from the death machine.


  8. Clark: because it’s a steel belt 1mm thick, which is effectively a blade at high speed. And steel does eventually fail from stress when repeatedly flexed.

    No one should ever stand in front of this thing.

    Notice no one is in the vehicle and it’s strapped down.


  9. Metal fatrigue


  10. i want member this sit

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