For certain highway segments in northern climates, snow drifting can create hazardous driving conditions or necessitate nearly continuous plowing, excessive use of chemicals, or road closures. An emerging alternative to wooden, plastic, or metal snow fences are living snow fences (LSF)—trees, shrubs, and prairie grasses strategically planted to act as windbreaks. These not only provide a longer-lasting, low-maintenance, and cost-effective solution to snow drifting but they also sequester carbon, enhance wildlife habitat, improve erosion control and water quality, and reduce flooding. Unfortunately, field and laboratory testing approaches are impractical for LSF design studies because of the high costs and effort required to reproduce their wide range of possible conditions, including different plant species, topography, prevailing wind conditions, and roadway geometry. To develop recommendations on design and placement of living snow fences, this study is developing 2-D and 3-D computational fluid dynamics models to incorporate aerodynamic transient snowdrift development (creep, saltation, and suspension) and computer-aided design and drafting 3-D drawings to enable site-specific analysis. Once the model has been field tested and completed, it will be used to assess the effects of freeway interchanges and roadway sections on the performance of snow storage and to identify critical design parameters affecting the performance of LSFs.
Principal Investigators:
Xianming Shi, Civil and Environmental Engineering, WSU
John Petrie, Civil and Environmental Engineering, WSU
Sponsor: Illinois Center for Transportation
Scheduled completion: December 2020