Extreme weather indoors at UOIT drives media to Automotive Centre of Excellence

The weather inside was frightful. But that’s just the way the United Kingdom’s SKY 3D channel wanted it as a television production team travelled all the way across the Atlantic to film a groundbreaking documentary on severe weather at the Automotive Centre of Excellence (ACE) at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT). The segments filmed in both 3D and 2D will be aired later this year on National Geographic Channel in the United States.

The unique aspects of the SKY 3D/National Geographic documentary work showcased ACE’s capability to deliver made-to-order extreme weather. Given that the weather inside ACE was far worse that the conditions of an actual snowstorm crossing the Greater Toronto Area on media invitation day, journalists were quick to pick up on the contrast that the weather was worse… indoors.

Selected media coverage:

• CBC News Toronto (Friday, February 24, 2012 at 17:36, report by Lucy Lopez);
• CTV News Toronto (Friday, February 24, 2012, at 20:01, report by Austin Delaney);
• Global News Toronto (Friday, February 24, report by Rob Leth);
• Winter’s deep freeze found in Oshawa (Toronto Sun, Saturday, February 25, 2012, report by Simon Kent); and
• Studio 12 CHEX Television Durham (Friday, February 24, 2012, at 4:45, report by Rita Nave).

For four full days, UOIT’s world-class five-storey engineering test facility was transformed into a full-scale film production set. Crews simulated the often-disastrous impact of hurricane-force winds, freezing rain and blizzard conditions inside ACE’s climatic wind tunnel. ACE engineers generated powerful wind speeds topping 245 kilometres an hour inside and bone-chilling temperatures that dipped below minus 15 degrees Celsius.

The Pioneer Productions team also captured dramatic images of a simulated earthquake, using the power of ACE’s Multi-Axis Simulation Table which can test any product for structural durability and the detection of noise and vibration in a three-dimensional envelope using six degrees of freedom.