Snow property modeling and its application to particulate ice-snow flow computing in snowblower

Abstract

Snow properties are influenced by climate or region. For the efficient development of a snowblower, stable and quantitative performance evaluation method is required. We tried to reproduce the snow removal work using the Discrete Element Method (DEM) in this study. In addition to the conventional DEM, we developed potential model for reproducing the compaction of snow and air drag model to consider the properties of actual snow. And we have improved the snow property model for fallen snow simulation. As a result of present computational method, it was clarified that the detailed snow behavior in relation to snowblower can be successfully reproduced by simulation using the DEM. The obtained computational results were compared with the experimental results, and found that both results exhibit reasonable agreements. Therefore, we have succeeded in the computational reproduction of quantitative snow behavior in a snowblower using new snow property model.