Development of the Kettering University Snowmobile for the 2009 SAE Clean Snowmobile Challenge 2009-32-0177

Affordable clean snowmobile technology has been developed. The goals of this design included reducing exhaust emissions to levels which are below the U.S Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) 2012 standard. Additionally, noise levels were to be reduced to below the noise mandates of 78 dB(A). Further, this snowmobile can operate using any blend of gasoline and ethanol from E0 to E85. Finally, achieving these goals would be a hollow victory if the cost and performance of the snowmobile were severely compromised. Snowmobiling is, after all, a recreational sport; thus the snowmobile must remain fun to drive and cost effective to produce.

The details of this design effort including performance data are discussed in this paper. Specifically, the effort to modify a commercially available snowmobile using a two cylinder, four-stroke engine is described. This snowmobile was modified to run on a range of ethanol blended fuels using a closed-loop engine control system. Additionally, a new exhaust system which features customized catalytic converters and mufflers to minimize engine noise and exhaust emissions has been developed. Finally, a number of additional improvements have been made to the track and suspension of the snowmobile to reduce friction and to diminish noise.