Exa PowerFLOW used to to digitally simulate and optimize fastest four-man US bobsled

Exa® Corporation, a provider of fluids simulation (CAE/CFD) solutions for product engineering, announces that its PowerFLOW® software was used by USA's bobsled engineers to digitally simulate and optimize the fastest four-man US bobsled ever. This sled brought gold to the USA this month in an Olympic victory--the first for the men in 62 years.

Driver Steven Holcomb immediately credited the sled's speed, "Our Night Train sled--it's like fire." Even initial test runs proved that the Night Train was, at a minimum, shaving a tenth of a second off the fastest times of previous sleds--a remarkable advantage in these competitions where often mere hundredths of a second separate the medal winners.

"After winning the first World Championships in 50 years last season, we were hopeful this highly engineered sled would again be a champion in Vancouver," commented Bob Cuneo, President of Chassis Dynamics and Chief Engineer for the USA Bobsled team. "PowerFLOW simulation and collaboration with Exa's engineering experts allowed us to visualize and analyze flow structures and aerodynamic effects simply not possibly in a wind tunnel. We were able to make numerous design iterations in extremely short timeframes, resulting in this final, highly optimized gold-medal winning design." All simulation runs on the sled were performed with Exa's OnDemand service, leveraging hosted IBM supercomputing power that delivered results in mere hours--key for developing complete new designs in weeks.

"Exa is delighted to have helped the US team achieve this historic result," remarked Dr. Brad Duncan, Director of Aerodynamics for Exa Corporation. "Building these sleds is a unique art, and we are thrilled to have collaborated with the team to allow rapid and systematic exploration of innovative ideas. PowerFLOW's ability to quickly produce highly accurate results on fully detailed geometry allowed the design team to virtually eliminate expensive wind tunnel tests." Duncan continued, "In fact, we were able to meet extreme time constraints and allow the team meet their goal of re-engineering the design, quickly, before the 2009 World Championships."

Phil Kurze, President of the Bo-Dyn Bobsled Project, an organization with a singular mission to raise funds to make USA sleds more competitive said, "This win validates all the hard work. We knew that aerodynamic superiority would definitely help the USA team in their quest for Olympic gold." Kurze continued, "Many sleds in Vancouver achieved 90-plus MPH. The Night Train's aerodynamic sled improvements became even more significant in Vancouver due to the speed of the track, and helped our team achieve a record performance over talented global competition."