Dynamics of snow melting on tents during possibly threatening precipitation

Lightweight tent structures are allowed under European codes to be designed for reduced snow load if the interior of a tent is appropriately heated. The dependence of the resultant snow load on snowfall rate is considered in this paper for such cases. A simple thermodynamic model of the heat flux is derived. Numerical simulation reveals the occurrence of a precipitation rate threshold value above which safety measure provided by heating becomes ineffective.

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