A novel technique for measuring and sensing rain

Kundgol, AS

Abstract

Rainfall passing over a given area is a highly dynamic process; it changes constantly in form and intensity. It varies constantly on short spatial and temporal scales that makes real time measurements of the amount of rainfall challenging. Measuring and sensing rain is important to be able to understand and control our urban environment. Traditionally, rainfall analysis for hydrologic modelling use spatial measurements collected at various sparsely spread observation points using rain gauges working on various principles such as weighing type, tipping bucket, capacitive type etc. An accurate representation of spatial model of rainfall is essential for hydrological operational purposes such as forecasting of river flow, flood irrigation planning and modelling of catchment areas. Measurement of drop size distribution are also exploited to investigate microphysics of precipitation and to improve rainfall remote sensing estimation techniques. However, the high initial costs of convectional rain gauges prevent collection of data with high spatial resolution. The research looks at investigating the sensor stack to be a part of an integrated sensor approach to develop a device architecture for the development of low cost integrated rain sensing and measuring the rain.
The device architecture consists of three main stacks – energy generation layer, sensing layer, processing layer. The raindrop on impact causes vibration on the device surface. This force exerted by the raindrop causes a deflection and is measured indirectly by the use of a thin film piezo sensor. As part of the work, we find there is a good correlation between the vibrations caused and the size or volume of the raindrop by indirectly measuring the impact force of the raindrop. The working range of the device is between 100ℎ

Citation

Kundgol, A. (in press). A novel technique for measuring and sensing rain. (Thesis). University of Salford

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Acceptance Date: Mar 1, 2015
• Deposit Date: Jul 27, 2015
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 27, 2015
• Award Date: Mar 1, 2015