Method for the evaluation of thermal properties and moisture management on ski boots

Winter sports are often performed in severe environmental conditions and this could represent a limit in terms of comfort and therefore performance. Since alpine skiing has the biggest number of practitioners among the winter sports and because the feeling of cold in the feet is one of the most common problem, a testing protocol has been developed to perform outdoor tests on ski boots in order to evaluate the thermal comfort for different shell’s design and for different liner’s material. The tests, performed on both male and female genders wearing the same shell with different liners at the same moment, showed that in certain conditions, especially the colder ones, there will be a big difference in terms of comfort using different liners in the same environmental conditions. Specific tests were made to ensure that such differences between the two feet wasn’t due to physiological difference from left to right feet; for this reason, data has been recorded using the same shell and liner for both the feet, obtaining negligible differences between the two. Moreover, the collected data can be used to product optimization in function of the target of use of the ski boot and liner, choosing the best materials to achieve specific behaviour in terms of heating, breathability and moisture management.