Snow Engineering

The first people living in snowy areas had probably no special need for controlling snow drifts as they adjusted their life to nature and accepted the seasons with minimized innovation.

The traditional building turf hut from Alaska is well adapted to drifting snow conditions (Børve).

As knowledge and technical development increased, man became more and more dependent on transportation and an infrastructure which had to be kept open all year long. This is probably one of the first areas where snow control was systematically put into use. In an early written description Mr. G. D. B. Johnson (1852) analysed the effect and consequences of snow drift around roads and railroads in Norway. This, retired foreman for road maintenance, gave a remarkable description of snow drift around fences, buildings, and road cuts. He even studied the effect of snow fences used in combination and his work is probably one of the first written scientific studies within the field of snow engineering.

“The influence of snow drift over flat ground around an ordinary ten-foot fence, with one inch space between the vertical boards”*

* Some words about driving snow, drifting snow and snowdrifts with description about the way, on which it is expected that the same damaging effect on roads, on meadow and fields etc, can in many places be prevented or be weakened, Johnson, 1852, Cristiania, Norway.

The field of snow engineering has developed since Johnson did his work. Snow drift analysis is more often included in the design of roads, railroads, buildings and in planning of new housing estate environments. Physical experiments in wind tunnels, water flumes and in full scale are still used for prediction of snow drifts. Unfortunately, these kinds of experiments are time consuming, expensive and not easily available for the common engineer, so the need for a more commonly available tool for predicting possible snow drift formations is certainly present.

The development in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) for modelling of snow drift has reached the point that drifts around building volumes in terrain can be investigated. These techniques are still not applicable on a commercial basis. However, the expected improvement of computer capacity and numerical modelling are starting to make computer aided techniques capable of handling more complex flow problems.

Summer and winter situations around a building in Hammerfest, Norway. 

Skriv ut

Sideoversikt