Effects of body angles on the aerodynamic characteristics in the flight period of ski jumping: a simulation study

ABSTRACT

The flight period of ski jumping involves aerodynamic considerations. Reasonable controls and adjustments of in-flight body attitudes are beneficial to improve the aerodynamic performance of athletes, thus obtaining a longer flight distance. Here, the aerodynamic forces and moments of a simplified body-ski model in the flight period are calculated via the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method, considering influences of head angle, hip angle, and body-ski angle, and the contributions of each body part are discussed. Results show that the hip angle and body-ski angle dominate the aerodynamic performance, and the skis and the trunk contribute most to the aerodynamic force and moment. In addition, based on CFD results, the hip angle and body-ski angle are selected as design variables, and optimisations for lift area and lift-to-drag ratio are conducted via the combination of Kriging models and genetic algorithm. When the lift-to-drag ratio reaches its peak (which is beneficial to the early flight), the athlete should keep a flatter body attitude, leading to a relatively low lift area and drag area. Properly raising the posture of the body can get a higher lift area, which is beneficial to balance the gravity and prolong the athletes’ flight distance in the late flight.

KEYWORDS:

• Ski jumping
• aerodynamic forces
• body angles
• computational fluid dynamics
• optimization

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the key R&D plan of China for Winter Olympics [Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China, Grant No. 2020YFF0304602] and the key R&D Plan of Liaoning Province [Department of Science and Technology of Liaoning Province, Grant No. 2020JH2/10300112].