Case Study: Snow Analysis at SLF, Switzerland

At the SLF (WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research) in Davos, Switzerland XamFlow is used as the standard evaluation software to analyse micro-CT images of snow.

“We could really benefit from the XamFlow ecosystem. The quite complex moving window analysis and custom fitting algorithms worked with a few clicks for a whole profile with ~25 samples and ~300 VOI’s. The fit autocorrelation models fits ~40 parameters of different models to the microstructure.” – Rafael Ottersberg, SLF

Data

Workflows

Micro-CT provides the raw 3D data from which numerous quantitative metrics are derived. These metrics are used to characterize the snow structure:

  • Volume fractions

  • Specific Surface Area (SSA)

  • Correlation Lengths

  • Connectivity Density

  • Chord lengths

../_images/casestudy_slf_snow_parameters.png

Schöttner et al.

Further, workflows allow automatic analysis of weak snow layers prone to fracture and causing slab avalanches. Snow profiles and layers are analyzed with a ‘’Moving Window VOI (Volume of Interest) Analysis’’ where overlapping sub-volumes across the depth of a snow sample are automatically analyzed in XamFlow. Time-series analysis allows study of time-lapse scans of samples subjected to controlled temperature gradients and the impact on the snow metamorphism.

Mechanical properties like compressive strength, and numerical simulations of physical characteristics such as thermal conductivity calculated using FEM solvers integrated in XamFlow, are correlated to develop better avalanche release models.

References

The influence of snow microstructure on the compressive mechanical properties of weak snowpack layers Jakob Schöttner, Berit Zeller-Plumhoff, Pascal Hagenmuller, Philipp Weißgraeber, Philipp L. Rosendahl, Henning Löwe, Jürg Schweizer, Alec van Herwijnen, Acta Materialia, Volume 302, 2026, 121657, ISSN 1359-6454, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actamat.2025.121657