United States Department of Transportation
i
Measuring Explosive Airblast of Remote Avalanche Control Systems (RACS)
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2022-06-01
[PDF-3.23 MB]
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Edition:Final Report
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Abstract:Ski areas and departments of transportation routinely use a variety of explosives-based and gas-based systems to generate overpressures resulting in loads sufficient to initiate snow avalanches. Various investigators including Johnson, Gubler, Miller and Simione, explored phenomenon such as effect of blast height on snowpack response, snowpack acceleration as a function of explosive blast, and air overpressures from select explosives or simulated remote avalanche control systems (RACS) systems. But while there had been some fundamental research into general explosive effects, snow response and failure, there had not been an independent effort to examine the actual in-situ performance of various operational explosive delivery systems and technologies. The purpose of this study was to obtain in-situ measurement of overpressures developed during the operation of actual RACS installations. The study required development and deployment of a data collection system custom-designed for harsh environments, to be used to measure air pressures over snow during explosive events at a variety of test sites. The acquired measurements of the performance of a cross-section of available remote avalanche control systems provides the practitioner community with data quantifying RACS system performance, that may be helpful in making future system deployment decisions.
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