Cédric Touchette, holder of the Guinness record for fastest speed on a gravity-powered street luge (157.41 kmh/97.81 mph) decided to take up a new challenge: pass the symbolic mark of 100 mph, with no engine. Among the other thrill seekers interested in this challenge was Louis-Étienne Bouchard-Pouliot, an account manager at Creaform Inc., developer and manufacturer of portable 3D measurement technologies.

“Our luge team, the 3 Bobs, broke the world speed record in September 2008, and we came very close to the 100 miles per hour [mark] at that time,” says Bouchard-Pouliot. “Since then, we have tweaked our gear, but we had a hard time figuring out how to improve the aerodynamics of our luges to gain even more speed.”

CFD pushes back the speed limits in street luge

Bouchard-Pouliot and his teammates asked Creaform’s digital simulation team to help them out. The goal: using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to simulate air flows to reduce the aerodynamic drag and break their very own speed record.

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