DESIGN, DEVELOPMENT AND TESTING OF HYBRID-ELECTRIC SNOWMOBILE FOR REDUCED NOISE APPLICATIONS

Defence R&D Canada – Suffield has undertaken a research project to investigate the practicality of an operationally quiet hybrid-electric snowmobile.

This paper reports on the design of, and the testing conducted with, a prototype noise-reduced hybrid-electric snowmobile. The project goals were to ascertain the practicality of such a design and to determine the baseline achievable noise reduction prior to any optimization. The project has overcome most of the technological hurdles, producing a solid basis for future work. The vehicle performed well in military user testing.