Case Study: Apollo Engineering Design Group achieves a 95% reduction in development time redesigning a wheeled‑bobsled yoke with ANSYS Mechanical

Apollo Engineering Design Group - Customer Case Study

Apollo Engineering Design Group was hired to re-engineer aging four-person wheeled-bobsleds that gave riders a rough, uneven experience. The vehicle’s two-piece fiberglass body is joined by a long, poorly supported steel yoke whose load conditions changed after suspension and wheel modifications (including removal of a mid-vehicle axle), so Apollo needed to reassess strength, stress, strain and fatigue to ensure safety. They partnered with ANSYS and used ANSYS Mechanical for the analysis work.

Using ANSYS Mechanical, Apollo performed strength calculations, structural and fatigue simulations, and iterated on yoke geometry and thickness until a viable design was achieved—comparing simulated fatigue results to AWS steel code as part of verification. The virtual workflow let them test hundreds of yoke variations in a week, cutting an expected six-month build-and-test cycle to an eight-week project (about a 95% reduction in development time), meeting the deadline and substantially reducing prototyping and testing costs.

Apollo Engineering Design Group

Josh Adams

Founding Principal