GM Studio - Where Aerodynamics Meet Art

When science collaborates with art the results can be incredible. Aerodynamics is a critical part of vehicle development, performance and overall design. In this video, find out how aerodynamicists and designers work together to create a balance.

GM Studio - Where Aerodynamics Meet Art Nina Tortosa: The fun part of the job is working with the designers and gets to see their ideas and their new concepts. My name is Nina Tortosa. I am aerodynamicist at General Motors and my job is to make vehicles more feel efficient by reducing them. I come in and take a studio surface and that you could just go on to the third scale model and we’ve put it in the link tunnel and then link it onto here. We’re standing inside the General Motors aerodynamics laboratory and what you can see behind me is our fan that hovers over the air. It has a 43 feet diameter and the close circuit fan tunnel. Aerodynamic is important because being almost the cost effective way of increasing feeling cotton by making this more aerodynamic it makes this more efficient and easier to cut through here. Clay Dean: Aerodynamics in terms of production vehicles can mean very slippery. So the car is low drag, so the car goes to the air slipper, cleaner and miles through the beyond since operate and can drive. Aerodynamics also is quiet inside the car. If anything that sticks out of a car its trigger on some great noise. Robert Boniface: Aerodynamics is probably more important for vehicle that wants to get good fuel economy than it is for vehicle that wants to build fast because fuel economy is all about efficiency. Nina Tortosa: A degree in aerospace engineering and aerodynamicist works on aerodynamic performance whether it’s vehicle or an aircraft or both. I'm a private so I fly pepper warriors. You get a different perspective on the world in here. I love to see everybody is a little tiny ant. So it’s a different feeling and I like to go sailing. Those are kind of the things that drove me towards aerospace engineering and I often like to working on vehicles too. Right now, I'm working on the Chevy bolt. That’s in a very aggressive aero target. It’s been fun trying to take the studio, ideas in there and their spelling in the surface and try to make it more aerodynamic. Robert Boniface: But we spend a lot of time in the wind tunnel trimming these surfaces, getting a rounded corner in the fronts over the air has minimal disturbances that goes around the corner. Every count of drag as we call it means I can’t go as far into your battery power. Nina Tortosa: We’ve changed it quite a bit from what was showed at that the concept but it has some features in there that are there for aerodynamic and it’s not something you see very often. But that’s kind of it and you have to really to see the prep and you can look we did that for aero. Robert Boniface: We are looking at things that are unique in different narrow where we take a grill and the grilled surfaces and the grill actually closes up and makes it a flesh front of the car which is good aero wise but we have to balance it to cool the car. Nina Tortosa: We get to discuss what looks good and what works aerodynamically and they're not always the same thing. A lot of times they pulls us in different directions until we have to compromise or we had to find an alternative that that still meets what they want to achieve with this written look and what I need to choose to the experience. Robert Boniface: We’re looking at components in the rear of the car which you call active aero which it will have a spoil that could lift and move and actually maybe even, maybe even flaps on the tails like it kind of flip out like a plane because you square the back of the targets wherever the car is. Nina Tortosa: We’re trying to balance aerodynamic performance with the design. It was then an amazing experience that went a lot from this final holiday. They view vehicles and how they think about them. I think they learn quite a bit on what makes the vehicle aerodynamic. Robert Boniface: Some of the aero things can be really cool. I mean they could create such a drama, since the feeder in the car that we see it driving down the freeway. Something start happening and people can see it around you and it kind of telegraphs about the technology of the car that “Wow look at the cars doing, give me a living on it. Isn’t that neat?”