Optimized artificial snow

Shorter winters and less snow are jeopardizing the increasingly popular pastime of skiing. For some 5,700 ski resorts worldwide, it’s also a concern for their bottom line. As a result, more resorts are turning to artificial snow to combat the changing climate.

Snow is artificially made by machines that atomize tiny water droplets that freeze into ice crystals. To do this efficiently, the particle drop size must be optimized for the environmental conditions. Liu et al. studied the subtleties of snow machine nozzles to create snow more efficiently.

The researchers tested how the gas-to-liquid mass mixing ratio impacts snow formation. They also investigated the impact of the distance between two nozzles, using a laser particle-size measuring instrument, particle image velocimetry, and high-speed camera. The study is the first of its kind to consider the fluid mechanics and heat and mass transfer of artificial snow generation.

“Our study not only contributes to the optimization and promotion of the artificial snow-making technology, but also contributes to the coupling research on the fluid mechanics’ dynamics and the heat and mass transfer,” said author Bin Liu.

The results identified the best gas-liquid mixing ratios for uniform particle size distribution in different environmental conditions. The authors hope the work can be used to make better artificial snow machines by adding an automatic control system that automatically adjusts the nozzles for different environmental conditions. The authors plan to optimize snow machine energy usage next to help reduce energy consumption.

Source: “Effect of the arrangement of two nozzles on morphology, velocity, and particle size distribution of artificial snow-making spray field,” by Bin Liu, Hengxiang Hu, Lisen Bi, Panagiotis E. Theodorakis, and Tao Zeng, Physics of Fluids (2023). The article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0148801 .