Road Weather Management Program
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Best Practices for Road Weather Management Version 2.0

Title:

Consolidation, Melting and Refreezing Process of Snow on Roads by Vehicles

Abstract:

In order to investigate the relation between the mechanical properties of snow/ice on roads and the traffic volume, some experiments were performed in the Cryospheric Environment Simulator (CES). In these experiments, the artificial new snow made by a snowfall machine was deposited almost levelly on the floor of the cold room. After that, the snow was compacted by the shuttle action of a vehicle, meanwhile, the density and the hardness of snow and the skid resistance number (BPN) of the snow surface were measured, under several snow temperatures of 0, -3, -5, -10 and -15 degrees C. At every snow temperatures, the skid resistance number decreased with the traffic volume. The skid resistance numbers were more than 45 at the snow temperatures of -5, -10 and -15 degrees C even on the maximum traffic volume in this experiment of 486. On the other hand, the skid resistance numbers at the snow temperatures of 0 degrees C and -3 degrees C were less than 45. In particular, in the case of the snow temperature of 0 degrees C, very slippery snow surface was formed when the traffic volume exceeded 200. When the snow surface was melted by the solar radiation and the free water content of snow changed from 0% to 10% and 15%, the snow hardness decreased suddenly and the skid resistance number increased suddenly conversely.

Source(s):

13th Standing International Road WEather Conference (SIRWEC), Nagaoka Institute of Snow and Ice Studies (Japan)

https://sirwec.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Torino-D-18.pdf

Date: 2006

Author:

Kobayashi, et al

Keywords:


Pavement friction

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