The shape, the height.pdf

The shape, the height February 14, 2011 Abstract What this paper demonstrates is how to design the shape of a half-pipe snowboard course to maximize the production of “vertical air” by a skilled snowboarder. The design of snowboard course is an open question. In order to find the shape, we took a little advantage of the ideas of dynamic programming. First, we choose a kind of curve model called spiral to simplify our calculation. And we simulated a cross-sectional of polynomial model of the shape of the course. By demanding VA(short for “vertical air”) on two assumed variable partial derivatives, we could figure out the best kind of shape of the course to maximize the VA. Furthermore, we considered the twist in the air. We found that how much a snowboarder could twist in the air is related to the curvature of the track. And for a “practical” course, we also found out some tradeoffs that we need to notice, such as safety and cost. And the shape applied in the FIS International Competition is mostly for the consideration of construction difficulty. In our paper the friction and air resistance is simplified to be linear related to the total length of the path. By our calculations, we found that there is a close relationship between VA and the full length of the curve; but there is no absolute relationship with the shape. For a normal-weight person, 18 ° slope and 26-metre-curve is fitted. We solute out that the cross-section shape is a fourth power curve, which may seems not practical for real life. Team # 9067 Page 2 of 10 Contents 1. Introduction 3 1.1 The goal of our model 3 2. The Description of the Problem 3 2.1 The force state of the player skiing in the halfpipe 3 2.2 The shape of the halfpipe 3 2.3 The skilled snowboarder 3 3. Models 4 3.1 Basic Assumptions 4 3.2 Definitions Symbols 4 3.3 The Analy