Application of CFD code for simulation of an inclined snow chute flow

In this paper, 2-D simulation of a 61 m long inclined snow chute flow and its interaction with a catch dam type obstacle has been carried out at Dhundhi field research station near Manali, Himachal Pradesh (India) using a commercially available computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code ANSYS Fluent. Eulerian non-granular multiphase model was chosen to model the snow flow in the surrounding atmospheric air domain. Both air and snow were assumed as laminar and incompressible fluids. User defined functions(UDF) were written for the computation of bi-viscous Bingham fluid viscosity and wall shear stress of snow to account for the slip at the interface between the flowing snow and the stationary snow chute surface. Using the proposed CFD model, the velocity, dynamic pressure and debris deposition were simulated for flowing snow mass in the chute. Experiments were performed on the snow chute to validate the simulated results. On comparison, the simulated results were found in good agreement with the experimental results.