Dassault designs the sled of the American team that aspires to the podium in Sochi 2014

With the 3Dexperiencie platform from Dassault Systems, Solidworks, the American team has created its new bobsled, Night Train 2, with which he will run at the Sochi Winter Games to win the gold medal.

3D design software Dassault Systèmes has been used to create the sleigh (bobsled) for four people (Night Train 2) who will compete for gold at the Sochi Russia Winter Games 2014.

The project Bo-Dyn Bobsled responds to the wish of veteran driver and Nascar champion Geoff Bodine, who decided to build a sled made in America and with which his country would secure a place on the podium. After seeing how the United States team was forced to use the sleds that the Europeans had discarded at the Winter Olympics in 1992, Bodine applied all his high-speed racing know-how along with Bob Cuneo's design engineering capabilities to create a new generation of sleds..

The result of this collaboration was the design of a new sled, el Night Train, with which the American team in 2010 managed to win the Olympic medal for the first time in 62 years and with which he will compete this Sunday 23 February in Sochi.

The design team opted for the Solidworks application, based on the 3Dexperiencie platform of Dassault Systems, to create a faster sled to overcome the challenges of the Sochi Games. The speed of these sleds often exceeds 90 miles per hour and races are won by hundredths of a second.

Aware of the strict official rules and the challenges of reducing increasingly faster times in competition, Bodine knew that the 3D design tool they used for the first generation of Night Train would not be enough to build the world's fastest sled..

The original aerodynamics of the sled had been optimized to fit the fast layout of the Vancouver circuit (Canada) where the competition was held 2010. The Sochi Games circuit, however, includes three difficult uphill sections that require precise handling to achieve maximum speed through the curves.

“Solidworks helped us design the new sled using lighter materials and create multiple 3D prototypes on the computer until we reached the result we wanted., before starting to build and manufacture”, explica Geoff Bodine, Bo-Dyn Bobsled Proect.