Going for the Gold with Aerodynamic Luge Sleds

Here's an Idea

Luge is one of the three sliding sports on the program at the 2022 Winter Olympics being held in Beijing this month. The sport requires athletes to barrel down an ice track on small sleds accelerating to speeds of nearly 90 mph.

Traditionally, lugers design and build their own sleds, often through trial and error. Now, Clarkson Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering Professors Doug Bohl and Brian Helenbrook, in collaboration with Colby Mazzuca of Aeroworks, are using advanced computational and experimental methods to optimize sled geometries for developing faster, more aerodynamic sleds.

On this episode of Here's an Idea™, Professor Bohl discusses the new approach to help shave off those extra 1/1000ths of a second that can be the difference between silver and gold at the Olympics.