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A recent study sheds new light on the interaction of materials and roughness effects on ski friction.
With the Winter Olympics behind us, now is a good time to reflect on the extent to which tribology contributed to the sports we enjoyed watching. Clearly the major reason for playing sports on ice and snow at all is that frozen water offers the possibility for human beings to move across the land at very high speeds.
Skiing, which dates as far back as the seventh millennium BC, was introduced as Olympic sport in the 1924 Winter Games in Chamonix, France, and remains a very popular winter pastime in many parts of the world. While wooden skis were the norm up until the middle of the 20th Century, the use of polymers began as a ski base in the 1 9505, and ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) has remained the standard surface For snow contact, both for amateurs and professionals.
F.P. Bowden of the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University was the first tribologist to examine the processes...