IMPACT FORCE OF SNOW AVALANCHE ON A MOVABLE HUMAN BODY

Abstract

 Information of impact force is expected to assist in trauma severity evaluation for snow avalanche accidents. The study employed a coupled human-snow avalanche model to simulate the impact force on a movable human body in several snow avalanche conditions. The simulation results with the movable body had a smaller impact force than the fixed one, which might be due to a part of the impact energy from the snow avalanche transferring to the movement of the human body. The body motion differed in various flow conditions. It was categorized by flow depth into push, crash, and slip types, corresponding to deep, intermediate, and shallow depths. Their energy ratios were correlated with the Froude number, showing the linear relation in the push type, the independent relation in the crash type, and the exponential relation in the slip type. The empirical equation of the energy ratio for each motion type was proposed finally and expected to help assess the injury and vulnerability of snow avalanches for people in the backcountry.