Technical Snow: How Artificial Snow Differs from Natural Snow?

 Technical snow. We have already touched on this topic several times. We have already mentioned several times that technical or artificial snow, in short, so-called man-made snow, is not actually real snow. Today we will take a closer look at the specifics and unique properties of this human creation.

 

Artificial snow is produced by using a pressure pump to drive a stream of water to a sprayer, where it is broken into small water droplets of approximately 0.1 mm in size. The droplets of the broken water must not be much larger or much smaller than 0.1 mm. Larger droplets risk not freezing sufficiently, while smaller droplets risk evaporating after contact with cold air or being blown away by the wind outside the snow-covered area.

 

How Does Ski Wax Stick to UHMWPE Ski Bases? – Part 3

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SKI BASE MATERIALS · RESEARCH SERIES

How Does Ski Wax Stick to UHMWPE Ski Bases?

PART 3 OF 3

We know that there are main principles how waxes are connected to the ski base. Some waxes penetrate into the inside molecular structure of the ski base which is accessible for waxes only if wax is in the liquid state and ski base is more flexible due to heat. Some waxes stay on the surface and “fill” only surface imperfections and roughness where waxes are partly retained in the “open” surface structure mechanically partly connected with weak chemical bonds.

Attention: surface imperfections and roughness cannot be confused with grinded or imprinted additional structure created by stone-grinding machines or manual structuring equipment. Surface imperfections are related to flat ski base here.

How Does Ski Wax Stick to UHMWPE Ski Bases? – Part 2

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SKI BASE MATERIALS · RESEARCH SERIES

How Does Ski Wax Stick to UHMWPE Ski Bases?

PART 2 OF 3

To understand the way how the additionally applied wax sticks to the ski base, we need to go a bit deeper into the topic…

Here we do not distinguish between chemical bonds and mechanical retention in general as we did in the part I., but we concentrate on the position of the wax in or on the ski base.

If we speak about how wax sticks to sintered UHMWPE ski base types, we need to distinguish between 1. wax penetration into the inside structure in the ski base and 2. wax adhesion to the ski base surface.