Speeding up

It takes teamwork to prepare Paralympians. A group of Urbana aerospace engineering students conducted a series of experiments with half-scale and smaller models of racing wheelchairs and a mini-sized version of a crash dummy in the Department of Aerospace Engineering's wind tunnel. Their goals are to establish current benchmarks in a field without such numbers and to figure out how wheelchair racers can make aerodynamic improvements that will enhance performance speeds. Some ideas — such as tucking heads and torsos or attaching a windshield-like fairing to chairs — have produced measurable reductions in drag. Greg Busch, a member of the research team, said the engineering group hopes to be able to test other theories using human racers on the track soon.

View all in the sampling of the articles in the 2008-09 Annual Report.