1989 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
Hydrodynamic Study on the Mechanism of Blowing Snow by Digital Image Processing Method
| Project/Area Number |
63550126
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for General Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Research Field |
Fluid engineering
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| Research Institution | Kitami Institute of Technology |
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Principal Investigator |
SAKAMOTO Hiroshi Kitami Institute of Technology, Faculty of Engineering, Professor, 工学部, 教授 (70003176)
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| Project Period (FY) |
1988 – 1989
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| Keywords | Blowing Snow / Snowdrift / Visibility Impediment / Optimum Road Structure / Digital Image Processing Method / Wind-Tunnel Test with Blowing Snow |
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| Research Abstract |
On previous year (1988), we established an image processing method to elucidate the mechanism of snow particles' motion. We also conducted a wind-tunnel tests producing artificial blowing snow using real snow particles in order to clarify the mechanism of snow particles' motion in a blowing snow, and to evaluate the performance of all kinds of snow-proof facilities using models. According to the initial results obtained from experiments performed the previous year, we carried out experiments to determine the optimum structure of roads to prevent the impediment of blowing snow.
(1) Hydrodynamic investigation on the optimum road structure to prevent impediment of the blowing snow : In general, there are two types of road structure; banking road-structure and cutting road structure. In this research, a water-channel test was created with regard to the two kinds of road structure by image processing with varied parameters, slope grade, road width, banking height, and cutting depth, to exami
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ne the optimum road structure to prevent the impediments of blowing snow from a hydrodynamic point of view. As a result, a banking road structure with a two-stages slope grade and a cutting road with a grade of less than 15 degrees proved to be the most effective. To identify the optimum road structures from a hydrodynamic viewpoint, we carried out the following two experiments to evaluate road structure performance by examining effective elimination of impediment of the blowing snow, namely, snowdrifts around roads and visibility impediments.
(2) Examination of the visibility impediments : We investigated the rate of the reduction of the visibility impediments on the optimum road structures by a water-channel tests and wind-tunnel tests. We mixed the snow-particle models in the water channel to measure snow-particle density distribution around the road to evaluate the reduction of visibility impediments. In the wind tunnel in which the artificial blowing snow was created, the quantify of flying snow was measured on all parts of the road, then evaluated.
(3) Evaluation of snowdrift prevention : In the wind tunnel with the artificial blowing snow, snowdrifts were observed around the road to examine snowdrift prevention performance.
As a result of examinations (2) and (3), the optimum road structure determined from a hydrodynamic viewpoint proved very effective. Less
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