10 Jan 2024

CRREL Environmental Wind Tunnel Upgrades and the Snowstorm Library

Abstract: Environmental wind tunnels are ideal for basic research and applied physical modeling of atmospheric conditions and turbulent wind flow. The Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory's own Environmental Wind Tunnel (EWT)—an open-circuit suction wind tunnel—has been historically used for snowdrift modeling. Recently the EWT has gone through several upgrades, namely the three-axis chassis motors, variable frequency drive, and probe and data acquisition systems. The upgraded wind tunnel was used to simulate various snowstorm conditions to produce a library of images for training machine learning models. Various objects and backgrounds were tested in snowy test conditions and no-snow control conditions, producing a total of 1.4 million training images. This training library can lead to improved machine learning models for image-cleanup and noise-reduction purposes for Army operations in snowy environments.