A parameter optimization method to determine ski stiffness properties from ski deformation data

The deformation of skis and the contact pressure between skis and snow are crucial factors for carved turns in alpine skiing. The purpose of the current study was to develop and to evaluate an optimization method to determine the bending and torsional stiffness that lead to a given bending and torsional deflection of the ski. Euler-Bernoulli beam theory and classical torsion theory were applied to model the deformation of the ski. Bending and torsional stiffness were approximated as linear combinations of B-splines. To compute the unknown coefficients, a parameter optimization problem was formulated and successfully solved by multiple shooting and least squares data fitting. The proposed optimization method was evaluated based on ski stiffness data and ski deformation data taken from a recently published simulation study. The ski deformation data were used as input data to the optimization method. The optimization method was capable of successfully reproducing the shape of the original bending and torsional stiffness data of the ski with a root mean square error below 1 N m2. In conclusion, the proposed computational method offers the possibility to calculate ski stiffness properties with respect to a given ski deformation.