Indoor snowfall simulation chamber for realizing uniform snowfall

In this paper, the snowfall simulation system with the expanded polystyrene beads (EPB) blow-off nozzle is described, which is for evaluating visibility performance of vision based sensors affected by environmental conditions. The EPB blow-off nozzle generates vortex flow when it feeds EPB snowflakes with compressed air, then the EPB snowflakes are equally distributed to multiple ejection ports and blow away in the specific space, in which the width of the space is controlled by the direction of each ejection port. Since the proposed system is designed based on the recycle process, the EPB snowflakes inhaled by the suction pipe are blow away and piled up on the bottom of the simulation system, and then they are recycled. The snowfall simulation system with the proposed EPB blow-off nozzle is verified by comparative experiments. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed system.