Wind Tunnel Experiments and Numerical Simulation of Snow Drifting around an Avalanche Protecting Dam

To learn about wind flow and snow drifting around avalanche dams, experiments were done in the Jules Verne Climatic Wind Tunnel. The paper reports the results from numerical wind flow simulations that were done to support the findings from the wind tunnel. Satisfying the model similitude criteria for the wind tunnel configuration was difficult due to the inevitable small geometric scale of the model, while on the contrary the snow drifting conditions in the facilities were full scale. By comparing numerical wind flow results of full scale and model scale dams with the snow pattern observed in the wind tunnel, it was possible to conclude that albeit poor model similitude, the snowdrifts on the windward side of the wind tunnel model are likely to indicate the full scale natural situation.