A bobsleigh run consists of two main phases: a short push phase, during which the athletes accelerate the sled to around 30 km/h, followed by a roughly 60-second descent over approximately 1.5 km, where speeds can exceed 130 km/h.
My internship focused on the descent phase, with particular attention to women’s monobob, introduced at the 2022 Winter Olympic Games. The work was carried out at LadHyX, École Polytechnique, as part of Samy Ben Hamoudi’s PhD research under the supervision of Professor Christophe Clanet.
I first processed wind-tunnel measurements and 3D scan data to build an OpenFOAM-based digital twin of the experimental setup. The numerical model was then compared against wind-tunnel measurements across the range of speeds encountered on track.
The resulting workflow provides a numerical framework for assessing the aerodynamic impact of parameters such as athlete position, helmet geometry, and vehicle configuration.
The second part of the project focused on the La Plagne bobsleigh track, a ~1.5 km course with around 200 m of vertical drop and 19 highly banked turns.
Using a photogrammetric 3D reconstruction produced by IGN together with measurements collected during the 2022 World Cup, I reconstructed the trajectories followed by the bobsleighs along the track.
Combining these reconstructed trajectories with the aerodynamic digital twin provides a basis for studying the interaction between vehicle dynamics, trajectory, and aerodynamic performance, and for identifying track sections where trajectory optimization could provide measurable performance gains.
[Back to Homepage]List of Talks and Conferences
- Sport Physics 2024, Rennes, December 2024 : Aerodynamics of bobsleighs: wind tunnel and CFD results, Maxime C.N. Roux, Samy Ben Hamoudi and Christophe Clanet, (abstract), (slides)