Application-specific design of sports equipment from anisotropic fiber-reinforced plastics with stiffness related coupling effect

Abstract Floating sports equipment such as snowboards experience extreme loads during riding it. A common style in riding a freestyle snowboard is to use a handrail to slide sideways on it. During this maneuver the steel edge of a snowboard could easily hook into the handrail, researches worked out. This will lead to an abrupt interruption in the athletes motion. This problematic aspect is eliminated by using an all new anisotropic layer design (ALD)snowboard which was developed and tested by the Professorship of Lightweight Structures and Polymer Technology (SLK) in cooperation with the Competence Center for Structural Lightweight (SLB e. V.).