A MEASURING INSTRUMENT FOR THE HARDNESS AND THE ROUGHNESS OF THE SKI SLOPE- CORRELATlON TO THE GLIDING PROPERTIES OF SKIS PENETROMETER AND PROFILOMETER

ABSTRACT: The analysis of the ski slope is crucial for understanding the gliding of skis. Especially in ski racing a detailed knowledge of the parameters of the snow influencing the gliding properties helps to optimize the skis. Unfortunately, the analysis of the slope surface is limited to only a few parameters like. snoW temperature, air humidity and air temperature, so far. We proved that there is a large number of parameters concerning directly the snow surface like snow humidity, hardness, roughness, grain size, thermal conductivity and more that are strongly influencing the gliding properties. This paper presents a tool developed at the Swiss Federal Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research for measuring the hardness and the roughness of ski slopes. Results of gliding tests prove the correlation of these two parameters to better gliding