Investigation of the most essential factors influencing ski glide

There are many different parameters of a ski running surface (material, roughness, hydrophobicity, etc.). All the parameters have an influence on ski glide, some more and some less. Furthermore, some parameters with only minor relevance are commonly declared as critical, while truly critical parameters, as far as we know, never been investigated. In this thesis, we try to identify and structure the different stages of ski running surface preparation. In our experiments, we have applied well- established, commonly used treatments parallel with alternative preparations. The unexpected result of our experiments is that the treatments commonly used today are not as good as alternative treatments, namely; stone grinding and glide wax application are far from an optimal ski treatment if minimising friction over a given distance is the major goal.Godkänd; 2006; 20060925 (cira)