A STEM Racing Team Meets a Professional Wind Tunnel

At a glance

• Facility: IARE Aerodynamics Laboratory, Dundigal — low-speed subsonic wind tunnel (600×600×2000 mm test section, 0–50 m/s) with a 6-component force balance
• Team: Aztech Motorsport — STEM Racing (F1 in Schools class)
• Date: 4 August 2026
• Outcome: Successful session, signed test report, a concrete design finding

The Challenge

STEM Racing teams design fast, but rarely get to test fast. In this international engineering competition, aerodynamics decides the result — the car covers a 20-metre track in about a second, and small changes in drag matter. Yet access to a real wind tunnel is exactly what a young competitive team cannot easily find: established facilities are booked out or unreachable through a switchboard. The design existed; the door to testing it did not.

What RIGS & Roads Did

RIGS & Roads connects engineering teams with the testing facilities they cannot otherwise reach, and matches the right test to the right lab. For Aztech Motorsport, that meant identifying a low-speed wind tunnel suited to a full-scale model car and coordinating a supervised session end to end — the requirement, the technical plan, the mounting approach, the paperwork, and on-site representation. The match: the Aerodynamics Laboratory at the Institute of Aeronautical Engineering (IARE), Dundigal.

Inside the Session

The session was led by Prof. Dwivedi of the Department of Aeronautical Engineering, assisted by two of the Institute's own fifth-semester Aeronautical Engineering students, Parth and Ashwik, and operated entirely by IARE staff. RIGS & Roads' Lead Test Engineer, Sampath Reddy, accompanied the Aztech Motorsport team. A full-scale test model of the car was mounted in the tunnel and studied across speeds from roughly 16 to 22 m/s using smoke flow visualisation, on IARE's six-component balance instrumentation (WBAL-00106). For a competitive engineering team, watching the smoke trace the air over their own car — seeing where it stays attached and where it breaks away — turns a design from a drawing into observable behaviour.

The Outcome

The session was completed successfully, with a signed test report jointly recorded by the team and the laboratory. It produced exactly what good testing should — a real, actionable insight. The smoke revealed that the halo caused the most flow separation over the car, with flow staying cleanly attached over the nose but breaking into an unsteady wake further back. The team left with a clear next step in their own words: a redesigned nose that diverts air away from the halo. Detailed interpretation of the measurements remains with the Institute's laboratory, whose expertise guided the team throughout.

With Gratitude to IARE

This engagement was made possible entirely by the Institute of Aeronautical Engineering (IARE), Dundigal, and its Aerodynamics Laboratory, who provided the facility, the instrumentation, and the time and guidance of Prof. Dwivedi and his students as a goodwill contribution to engineering education. RIGS & Roads is grateful. Facilities like IARE's, and educators willing to open their doors, are what make real-world learning possible for the next generation of engineers.

Why It Matters

This was our first wind-tunnel engagement — proof of the idea at the heart of RIGS & Roads: India has world-class testing infrastructure, and when it is made accessible, engineers of every level can build, test, and improve. One team, one tunnel, one successful test — and the beginning of a network.

Facility and technical supervision by the Institute of Aeronautical Engineering (IARE), Dundigal — Aerodynamics Laboratory. Test data interpretation remains with the Institute. Published with credit and appreciation.