The role of technology and research for a safe development of alpine skiing
Petrone N.
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Padova, Padova, Italy.
Introduction
The development of alpine skiing is strongly correlated not only with the communication ability of equipment manufacturers and touristic districts, but also with the perception of high levels of safety in the skiing resorts. This aspect is believed to be one of the strongest conditioning factors preventing potential users from entering the sport or influencing the public institutions due to high social costs from injury treatment and rehabilitation. Technology and research focused on the increase of safety levels can play an important role.
Methods
Technology applied to the sport equipment development is able to improve the technical properties of boots, binding and skis with two possible contributions to safety: better performing equipments (i.e. tuning devices applied to skis and boots) enhance the skiers performance reducing fatigue and discomfort, therefore reducing some of the falls and accident risk factors. Furthermore, safety oriented solutions applied to the equipment (i.e. lateral release rear bindings, shock absorbing materials) are the results of material technology and engineering design applied in combination with an increased knowledge of the mechanical behaviour of the knee and the musculoskeletal system. Technology has reached nowadays such high levels of miniaturization and cost sustainability that wearable sensors and adaptive devices with embedded electronic control can be included in serial products oriented to subject specificity.
On the other hand, researches oriented to skiing safety has to focus not only on safer equipments as mentioned, but on safer slopes and skiers behaviours. The safe design of slopes, the crashworthiness of safety barrier, the speed control and prevention, the study of skier’s behaviour in the resorts shall become topics of coordinated research between different research groups throughout the world.
Results
The application of sound technologies like motion capture and instrumented components have contributed to give a wider knowledge on the behaviour of high performance boots and skis during laboratory tests. Boots with stiffening plates have been studied in a motion capture setup enabling to quantify the local displacement behaviour of the boot during sagittal or lateral bending (Figure 1.a,b). Field tests with instrumented boots helped in the identification of the edge change as the most demanding twisting instant in slalom skiing.
Figure 1. (a,b) Experimental deflection analysis on boots by means of motion capture systems. (c,d) Experimental analysis of instrumented anthropomorphic dummies against nets and safety barriers.
The development of full scale skiing simulators based on different technologies such as elastic bands, servo-controlled motors or sloped treadmill seems to give high contribution to safety as these devices can be used for teaching, training, evaluating and rehabilitating.
Experiences in the measure and simulation of most common falls and impacts are undergoing [1], with reference in particular to the impact of instrumented anthropometric dummies against mats and nets (Figure 1.c,d), as well as the simulation of boot induced or phantom foot injuries.
Conclusions
Given the aim of improving the safety level in alpine skiing and disseminating the perception of increased safety of modern equipment and skiing resorts, great contributions can come from shared research project that enable the full transfer of high technology potential in the field of alpine skiing.
[1] Petrone N. et al., ISSS09, Garmish, 2009.