Innovative metallic solutions for alpine ski bases

Ski manufacturers are interested in improving ski performance in terms of rapid sliding, excellent trajectory control, and reduced maintenance. A possible approach to achieve this goal is based on substitution of the base material, moving from the standard ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene to metallic solutions. Despite their elevated mechanical properties, however, metallic materials exhibit a poor sliding behavior, at least in their original manufacture condition. Although the interaction between the ski base and snow is still an open field, the authors investigated the relationship between ice friction and material hydrophobicity. The wettability behavior of surfaces can be managed by surface patterning techniques, among which laser surface texturing (LST) is a promising method, permitting surface feature modification from the micrometer- to millimeter-scale, and attractive for industrial applications. Herein, the tribological properties of two metallic materials are investigated and a process to reduce the sliding friction against snow is proposed. The LST is used to realize dimple patterning on the metallic surfaces, where the laser parameters are used to control the dimple geometry and surface wettability using untreated substrates as a reference condition. Finally, characterization using a prototype snow tribometer was performed to determine the friction coefficient and sliding performance of the laser-treated metallic surfaces.