Douglas Bohl (right), a Clarkson University engineering professor, discusses luge design with Gordy Sheer, a 1998 Olympic silver medalist and director of marketing and sponsorship for USA Luge.“We've wanted to do this for years, but didn't have the resources,” says Gordy Sheer, director of marketing and sponsorship for USA Luge.
Luge is the only Winter Olympics gravity sport measured to 1/1000th of a second, so tiny changes in drag can greatly affect times.
“We'll build a computer model of a sled with a slider on it, compute the drag, examine the flow going past and finally put an actual sled in Clarkson's wind tunnel to make drag measurements,” says Bohl.
Eventually, a sled will be built based on the team's research and taken to the low speed (sub-sonic) wind tunnel at the San Diego Air and Space Technology Center where USA Luge sleds are tested.
