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Designing tomorrow’s snow park jump

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Abstract

Recent epidemiological studies of injuries at ski resorts have found that snow park jumps pose a significantly greater risk for certain classes of injury to resort patrons than other normal skiing activities. Today, most recreational jumps are built by skilled groomers without an engineering design process, but the Snow Skiing Committee (F-27) of the American Society for Testing and Materials is considering the inclusion of recreational jumps in their purview which may lead to a greater role for engineering jump designs in the US in the future. Similar efforts are underway in Europe as well. The purpose of this work is to review the current state of the science of snow park jumps, describe the jump design process, and outline the role that modelling will play in designing tomorrow’s snow park jumps.

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Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge useful discussions with and helpful suggestions from J. Brodie McNeil, A.Wisniewski, and a terrain park manager who requested anonymity.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO, 80401, USA

    James A. McNeil

  2. Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California, Davis, CA, 95616, USA

    Mont Hubbard

  3. Department of Mathematics, U.S. Military Academy, West Point, NY, 10996, USA

    Andrew D. Swedberg

Authors
  1. James A. McNeil
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  2. Mont Hubbard
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  3. Andrew D. Swedberg
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Correspondence to James A. McNeil.

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McNeil, J.A., Hubbard, M. & Swedberg, A.D. Designing tomorrow’s snow park jump. Sports Eng 15, 1–20 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12283-012-0083-x

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