Last year I advised a group of students on a fun senior design project: The Adjustable Sidecut Ski. Here's the abstract from the report and a few pictures for fun. The objective of sharing this information is to spark a discussion.... Also, Kelvin is at the ski convention in Las Vegas right now and he informed me over the mobile that a major ski company has a similar prototype, so I guess this is my way of saying "bring it on!" .
Abstract The goal of this project was to build a pair of skis that would allow the user to manually adjust the sidecut of the ski. By doing this, it enables a skier to make adjustments suited to their skiing preference on different terrain. Sidecut is a geometric parameter of the ski that determines its turning radius. A few designs were proposed but the two-piece design was built and tested. This design has a solid top layer with an adjustable bottom layer. The bottom layer consists of a channel cut length-wise down the ski to allow for adjusting the ski's waist dimension via a screw. The top and bottom layers of the ski are bonded at the tip and tail of the ski, as well as secured at the waist via a binding platform. The two-piece design was made using traditional ski-layup techniques. Theoretical calculations showed that the sidecut radius can be varied up to a maximum of 5 meters. The prototype ski was tested at a local ski area and qualitative results showed noticable difference in the turning ability of the ski when adjustments were made. Some drawbacks of this design include noticeble decrease in torsional stiffness compared to a regular ski without the adjustment feature.
Team: N. Dillion, J. Bearden, S. McGaffin, E. Suarez
Advisor: K. K. Leang
2006
I'll be starting my Senior Design project next winter. Unfortunately, we traditionally have somewhat rigid, pre-defined projects (we work in multi-disciplinary teams).
I was at atomic's launch of the D2 concept last week. The "double deck technology" is pretty similar to this concept (!)
It looks kind of hitech and fascinating to flex by hand, but it skied pretty bad (the split construction made it very torsionally soft) the empty space in between was sealed with some PU-ish rubber laminated in the layup.
The difference is that atomic has split the tips, your version looks smarter.
The D2 Variocut had a very soft tip, was very light, had near to no speed stability and edge grip in hard turns. it was a ski pretty much just for show. It still remains to see if it is any good on a better ski construction, it might be.
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