Friction-induced heating, melting, and refreezing of a snow grain in contact with a cross-country ski

This dataset contains the input data, COMSOL Multiphysics simulation model, and output results supporting the study by Mössner, Hasler, Siddiqui, and Nachbauer (2027), published in Tribology International 225, 112378 (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.triboint.2026.112378).

The study models the frictional heating, melting, and refreezing of a single snow grain during contact with a cross-country ski. A hypoplastic snow-contact model is employed to determine the apparent pressure distribution along the ski. This apparent pressure is further decomposed using roughness properties of the ski base into an asperity pressure representing individual ski-base/snow-grain contacts. A radially symmetric finite-element heat-transfer model incorporating phase change is then used to calculate the thermal evolution and melting of the ice grain. The simulations are performed in COMSOL Multiphysics 6.3–6.4 using the apparent heat-capacity method to account for the latent heat associated with melting and refreezing.

Contents:

• apparent_pressure/ – Apparent pressure distributions p_ap(x) along the ski (front and rear loading zones, e.g. S05L01, S05L08), used as input for the contact model, with accompanying plots.
• asperity_pressure/ – Time/position-resolved asperity pressure series p_asp(x) for rough (cp_r_*) and smooth (cp_s_*) grinds at normal loads of 350 N and 700 N, split into front (_f) and rear (_r) contact zones, with summary plots (_fr.png).
• runsurf/ – Triangulated 3D surface scans (STL) of the rough and smooth cross-country ski base grinds, obtained by optical 3D microscopy, used to derive asperity distributions (Table 1 of the paper).
• heat_r_F700_v08_T01_mod.m and .mph – COMSOL model file and exported MATLAB LiveLink script for the representative simulation case (rough grind, 700 N, 8 m/s, initial temperature −1 °C), implementing the boundary heat source, phase-change (apparent heat-capacity) formulation, and mesh/solver settings described in Section 2.3 of the paper.
• Base_T.txt/.png, Grain_T.txt/.png, Interface_T.txt/.png, Cap_T.txt/.png – Exported temperature and molten-ice-thickness time series at monitoring points in the ski base, snow grain, and interface, corresponding to Fig. 5 of the paper.
• Figures/ – Source figures used in the publication (heat_fig1–5).

Software: COMSOL Multiphysics 6.3/6.4 (COMSOL Multiphysics GmbH, Göttingen, Germany); surface data processed in MATLAB with the STLTool toolbox.

License: Data are made available under the CC BY 4.0 license, consistent with the open-access publication.

Citation: Please cite the associated journal article when using this dataset: Mössner M., Hasler M., Siddiqui S.A., Nachbauer W. (2027). Friction-induced heating, melting, and refreezing of a snow grain in contact with a cross-country ski. Tribology International, 225, 112378. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.triboint.2026.112378