Original paper(Vol.46 No.5 pp.551)

Study on snow stacking weight for water repellent coating

Saito Hiroyuki; Takai Ken-ichi; Takazawa Hisayoshi; Yamauchi Goro

Abstract:When snow or ice sticks to radio communication antennas, it sometimes causes signal transmission problems. In many cases, the degree to which snow or ice sticks to antennas is based on the degree of adhesion.
Recently, several water repellent coatings have been developed to prevent such adhesive problems. In this paper, the snow adhesive property of these water repellent coatings was experimentally studied. The following results have been obtained.
(1) Fallen snow adheres to FRP samples much more than water repellent coatings.
(2) Fallen snow adheres to samples at plus 1.5 deg. much more than at -5 deg..
(3) Snow naturally falls off from the surface as a block when its weight reaches a certain value for both of FRP and water repellent coating.
(4) The estimated value of snow falling off coincides with the experimental value.

Key Words:PTFE, coating, repellent, snow, water, antenna, communication