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  • Hail Storm Simulator

    All new aircraft engine designs are required to undergo foreign object damage (FOD) testing before they are certified to ensure safety.

    Included in these requirements is the ability to injest large quantities of hail at high speeds. Davis has designed and manufactured systems capable of delivering up to four simultaneous streams of continuous high speed hail.

Hail Storm Simulation for Engine Certification

Davis has been designing and manufacturing hail delivery systems for more than 15 years for clients such at the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and Pratt & Whitney Canada.

  • Cutaway view of hail storm simulator

The hail storm simulator works by dropping a stream of small ice balls (typically ~12 mm in diameter) using a gravity feed into a stream of extremely high speed air. At the point where the ice balls are introduced to the stream, the air stream is constricted to generate a zone of supersonic flow and accelerate the ice balls to the point where they may exit the barrel at over 250 m/s (900 km/h).

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