Prompted by Dom Parsons winning Great Britain’s first medal of the Winter Olympics as a 100-1 outsider in the skeleton,
Professional Engineering earlier this month published afeature highlighting how advanced materials are helping to push the boundaries of sporting performance.
Team GB’s rivals alleged that British athletes had gained an unfair advantage from the aerodynamic ‘skinsuits’ they wore for the skeleton, but over the last four years (since finishing 10th at the Winter Olympics in Sochi), Mr Parsons has been working with Kristan Bromley, a four-time Olympian who started out as a materials scientist at BAE Systems, helping to design better equipment for the Winter Olympics athletes — before becoming one himself.
Now, he is one of the co-founders (with his brother) of Bromley Sports, which uses cutting-edge technology to improve performances.
Mr Bromley said that the aim of the four-year programme was to gain one or two tenths of a second over the course of a one-mile run, which equates to a 2-3% reduction in drag.
“There’s a lot of consistency in our sport, because you can’t create any energy from the run. You need to create efficiencies in areas that you’ve not explored before, and small changes can add up.”
In 2016, Bromley Sports started working with engineering company Versarien to incorporate graphene into its products. Versarien CEO Neil Ricketts said: “Using our graphene-enhanced carbon-fibre technology, Bromley has been able to make significant enhancements to its already world-leading sleds.”
Mr Bromley said Dom Parsons used a sled that was aerodynamically optimised for him and his geometry; it included a new shape of pan, created using computational fluid dynamic techniques and laser scanning.
“Using graphene allowed us to develop shapes that wouldn’t have been possible with just carbon fibre, which on its own can be quite brittle.
“Graphene can toughen the material systems up. When you’re at -20C and undergoing G-forces up to 5g, toughness is a factor.”