Leading up to Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, I decided to design the 4-man bobsleigh.

I found a copy of the International Bobsleigh & Skeleton Federation (IBSF) rulebook, go through a multitude of research papers on bobsled aero analyses and surfaced a racing bobsleigh fit for the upcoming Winter Olympic Games.

Behold the Rumble Bee CryoShell 4-Man Bobsleigh

Bobsleigh racing is one of the fastest Olympic events and can reach up to 100 miles an hour. Hence, there is the ongoing search for optimizing the shape to reduce the drag as much as possible while still being strong and safe enough to carry the crew down the ice tracks. 

CFD simulations are performed to gauge the pressure drag in different conditions i.e. banking sleigh or straight downhill. There are added boundary conditions such as the distance between the sleigh and the wall, which is variable along the track. In most CFD runs, the kinetic friction coefficient and air viscosity are assumed constant. 

An eye for detail must be taken to cater for the gap between the front and rear cowling, as this will affect the Reynolds number and with it, the airflow transition. This tiny gap influences the drag in other parts of the bob, such the flow inside the nose and crew.

It is ideal to establish easy changes in the gap between the cowlings without modifying the whole cowling to better study the differences of flow behaviour.

I adorned the bobsleigh with the colours my home country, Malta in the hopes for a Maltese Bobsleigh challenger in the near future ??

https://www.instagram.com/_rumble_bee/?hl=en