INCLINED BODY AND FLEXED BOARD—MECHANICS IN CARVING TURN OF ALPINE SKIING

Alpine skiing is a traditional Winter Olympics event. The carving turn technique in this competition contains a lot of mechanics phenomena, which is very suitable as a practical case to be used in mechanics course and in the introduction of popular science. In this paper, D’Alembert’s principle and beam’s bending theory are used to study the two key characteristics of alpine skiers’ body inclination and snowboard deformation during carving slalom, respectively. The results indicate close relationship between the carving outcome and body inclination/snowboard deformation. The mechanics model in this paper is simple and easy to understand, and it contains clear knowledge points. It can be used as a teaching case for mechanics courses to cultivate students’ practical ability for solving practical problems, and it can also be used as a popular science case to demonstrate the application of mechanics in people’s daily life.