Gallery: The engineering of U.S. Olympic Sochi bobsleds

Feb. 11, 2014
In this photo gallery, we show how the U.S. Olympic two-man bobsleds from BMW and four-man bobsleds from Bo-Dyn Bobsled Project Inc. are designed.
Feb. 16
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Feb. 22
Feb. 23

You're going to see two different designs for the bobsled event at the Sochi Olympics. The U.S. Olympic two-man bobsled teams in Sochi 2014 are riding in bobsleds designed by BMW of North America, LLC, Woodcliff Lake, N.J. The U.S. Olympic four-man bobsled teams in Sochi 2014 are riding in bobsleds designed by nonprofit Bo-Dyn Bobsled Project Inc., Lake Placid, N.Y. All the bobsled events are scheduled to run February 16 to 23, and they alternate between qualifying and final (medal-earning) runs. In this photo gallery, we review the Bo-Dyn bobsleds followed by the BMW bobsleds. Both teams apply years of racecar experience to design their sleds. They also used plenty of software modeling and analysis before prototyping. Here's a video on the Bo-Dyn engineers explaining their design ...and here's a video from inside the sled on a run.

Here's the first story we did on the bobsled designs in 2010 ... and another we did in 2011.

About the Author

Elisabeth Eitel

Elisabeth Eitel was a Senior Editor at Machine Design magazine until 2014. She has a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Fenn College at Cleveland State University.

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