Building the perfect blade

U of C physicist looks at ice-metal interfaces to make bobsleighs go faster

Louis Poirier, shown here measuring the curvature of a blade, is working on models to calculate the friction of different runner designs at different speeds and on surfaces that have a variety of ice characteristics and profiles. / Photo: Ken Bendiktsen

With sleds flashing down the track at more than 140 kilometres per hour, bobsled is an exciting sport to watch. But few think about the science involved under the sled.

Going faster and getting atop of the Olympic podium requires a winning—and complicated—combination of cutting-edge technology fused with athletes pushing themselves to their limits.

Louis Poirier is hoping his research will lead to even faster bobsleds. The former internationally competitive bobsledder quit his sport to concentrate on his PhD in the University of Calgary’s Department of Physics and Astronomy.

New rules in the sport have played a big role in Poirier’s work. After the 2006 Olympics, the sport’s governing body announced that the steel runners of the sled, sometimes called blades, had to be standardized. This meant everyone had to process the metal in the same fashion.

This was a critical decision to the sport because until then, some teams created runners with various steel alloys altered with various temperature treatments to change the properties of the steel. “The new rules took a few variables out and—to a certain degree—it removed some of the advantage that the larger, richer nations enjoyed,” says Poirier who competed for Canada’s national development team for five and a half years.

But it also meant that old blades had to be discarded in favour of the standard version. As a result, both scientists and athletes were sent back to the drawing board to try and design the world’s quickest runner.

Louis Poirier

Blades can cost anywhere between $2,000 and $10,000 with ones that give reasonable performance starting at $6,000. In the World Cup, athletes are only allowed to register two sets of runners for the season. However in pre-season testing, it’s not unusual for top teams to test at least half a dozen different sets.

But even with standardized blade construction, there’s still plenty of room to legally make the bobsleds slide faster. And that’s where physics comes in.

Poirier is part of a multi-disciplinary research group looking at the physics of ice-metal interfaces. He’s working on models to calculate the friction of different runner designs at different speeds and on surfaces that have a variety of ice characteristics and profiles.

Will Poirier’s research be put on ice next February in time for Vancouver’s winter games? Probably not, with both time and money running out before his designs are ready for track testing.

But his work is helping the next crop of athletes.

Poirier is working with the Foothills Bobsleigh Club in Calgary. “The relationship really is win-win in that they can’t afford the $8,000 to $10,000 for competitive runners. I give the club profiles so they can build runners at a reasonable cost. In return, they pay for the equipment so I can have samples to test my model.”