Ski jump trajectory with consideration of air resistance

In the case of the ski-jump type energy dissipation, the jet trajectory will be greatly affected by the air entrainment and the air resistance. It is necessary to consider those factors when estimating the trajectory of the jet flow. In this work, the effect of the air resistance on the jet trajectory is theoretically and experimentally investigated. A comprehensive resistance coefficient is proposed. To determine this coefficient, experiments of five models are conducted with the circular-shaped flip bucket placed at the point of the takeoff of ski jumps. It is shown that, this coefficient of the lower jet trajectory is only related to the approach flow Froude number, while that of the upper jet trajectory is dominated by both this Froude number and the deflection angle. Furthermore, the present methodology is validated by experimental data in this work and the maximum errors are not larger than 3.2% and 8.6% for the lower and upper jet trajectories, respectively.