San Diego, Calif. - Two days before the Summer Olympics begin, USA Luge will bring a taste of the Winter Games to San Diego as two-time Olympian and 2009 World Champion Erin Hamlin will visit the San Diego Air and Space Museum’s Low Speed Wind Tunnel (LSWT) to conduct tests for the upcoming luge season. The test will take place on July 25.

Hamlin, of Remsen, N.Y., will be testing new sled configurations and geometries, in addition to race suit fabrics. The test will be conducted by USA Luge head coach and two-time Olympic medalist Mark Grimmette, Stephen Ryle, Aerotest Engineering Manager for the LSWT and Douglas Bohl, PhD, Associate Professor at Clarkson University in Potsdam, N.Y.
Grimmette, of Muskegon, Mich. and Bohl, of Potsdam, N.Y., have been working together as part of a larger collaboration between Clarkson University and USA Luge, aimed at increasing the aerodynamic efficiency of the team’s equipment.

USA Luge has been testing at the facility since 2004. Virtually all of the top cyclists in the world for the past seven years have tested at the San Diego Low Speed Wind Tunnel. USA Bobsled also tested in the tunnel for the first time last month.
The testing methodology and expert staff draw both world-class athletes and top aerospace companies.

To date, the LSWT has conducted nearly 100,000 hours of testing and has been used extensively in numerous military and civil aerospace development programs, including those of the F-106, B-58, F-111, F-16, Global Hawk UAV, Tomahawk Cruise Missile, and Advanced Cruise Missile. In addition, it has recently served the testing needs of Cessna, Boeing, Gulfstream, Northrop Grumman, General Atomics, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin. As the only wind tunnel in the nation capable of performing low-speed flutter testing, Boeing has used the facility extensively to test all its commercial airliners, from the 707 to the new 787 Dreamliner.

Members of the media are invited to come to the facility, located at 3050 Pacific Highway in San Diego, at 11:30 AM on July 25.