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By Melissa Jones
Related links: Check Out Olympic Freestyle Skier Jennifer Heil! | Plastics and Sports | View All DuPont Hytrel Grades
I hope everyone had a wonderful Spring Break! I was lucky enough to spend a week in Breckenridge, CO learning how to snowboard. The snow was great, although as I discovered, a few inches of fresh powder does not make a crash landing any better. As I sat on the mountain-side contemplating the feasibility of a full body suit made of bubble-wrap, I remembered a call I had received a few months ago from the father of the women’s Olympic mogul skiing gold medalist.
Jennifer Heil's father called in with a very special request. Mr. Heil was trying to create a protective vest for his daughter to wear during practice that had a very interesting set of requirements. The vest had to be flexible enough not to restrict motion during mogul skiing, but strong enough to protect the spinal column in case of impact. He wanted a material that would remain flexible during activity, but harden on impact, effectively creating a protective cage for the wearer’s torso. Obviously the vest would be used in low temperatures and would have to be resilient enough to return to its original form after each fall.
Faced with the task of finding a material to protect Olympians I turned to Prospector and the Property Search for an answer. Initially we selected Sporting Goods as the primary use for this material and made sure that it would be available in North America. The next step was to look through Prospector’s list of features to see if any of the mentioned requirements could be met. I selected three independent features that seemed to satisfy my caller. The first being flexibility at a low temperature, which would allow the skier to move freely in the vest. Second we decided that the material must be resilient so that the vest could recover from each impact and be used again and again. The final criterion was clearly that the material be impact resistant at low temperatures to protect the skier during a fall. These features lead us to one material from DuPont, Hytrel 3078.
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I knew from past research on DuPont’s materials that the company had several products used for skiing applications. I recommended that he contact DuPont directly and provided the contact information using Prospector’s sourcing tool.
I was also able to give him the name of two US distributors, including the name of a material representative from one. For the sake of my snowboarding career I certainly hope that this vest shows up on the market soon. I’m sure it will be much more effective than a bubble-wrap suit.
April 4 , 2007
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