Flanders Bike Valley opens up ‘affordable’ wind tunnel testing to brands

Bike and auto company conglomerate Flanders Bike Valley has now opened up an ‘affordable’ option for OEM brands to wind tunnel test their goods before going to market.

Opening up its labs from just €1,000 for up to four helmet tests, the state-of-the-art facility provides a plethora of standardised testing methods to enable brands to benchmark their aerodynamic performance.

Bike brands are granted access from €2,000 for a fleet of three bikes, while wheelset makers can test four units for the same price.

Bike tests are now scheduled to run December 11th to 15th; wheel testing January 28th to February 2nd and helmet testing on March 5th to 9th.

“Flanders Bike Valley has the ambition to help brands, manufacturers and designers to identify their products’ relative strengths and weaknesses in terms of aerodynamics,” the organisation says. “Testing will be purely focused on identifying the relative position of products in the market to be able to discover if and how much room for product improvement there is in the product compared to other products in the market.”

Once complete, brands will be handed test data alongside masked results of other products from the same category tested in order to understand how they fair against competition.

Founded in 2013, Flanders Bike Valley was founded by Ridley, Lazer Sport, Bi Racer, Vox dale and auto biz Flanders Make. Over 70 members now make up the organisation.