MEASUREMENT OF SNOW PROPERTIES FOR MOBILITY APPLICATIONS: THE UNFROZEN WATER CONTENT

The free water content of snow has been used in over-snow vehicle mobility studies only in a documentary manner. The free water content of snow is indicated by the terms dry, moist, wet, very wet, or slush. Throughout the range of conditions, thee variation of free water obviously has a significant effect of the snow strength parameters used in vehicle performance evaluation. During a testing program this past winter (1983-1984) at the Keweenaw Research Center which involved vehicles attempting to negotiate snow obstacles, free water content was measured and included as snow characterization data along with density, grain size, and snow temperature. Of particular interest to this paper was the difference in test results of two snow obstacles having the same classification of the two types of snow used to form the obstacles was measured, by calorimetry, to be 16% and 26%.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • From the Proceedings of the International Conference on the Performance of Off-Road Vehicles and Machines (8th), Volume 3. Held at Cambridge, England, on August 5-11, 1984, AD-A150 653, pp1149-1155.
• Corporate Authors:

  Michigan Technological University, Houghton

  Keweenaw Research Center
  Houghton, MI  United States  49931
• Authors:
  • Harrison, W L
  • Gimmestad, G G
  • Lee, S M
• Publication Date: 1984-8

Media Info

• Pagination: 7 p.

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Calorimeters; Density; Grain size (Geology); Mobility; Moisture content; Snow; Snowmobiles; Strength of materials; Temperature
• Subject Areas: Highways; Maintenance and Preservation; Vehicles and Equipment; I62: Winter Maintenance;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00396782
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Feb 28 1986 12:00AM