Researchers Create Hailstorm Indoors to Test Roof Damage

Posted on February 20, 2013



Researchers for the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS) have created an indoor hailstorm. The artificial hailstorm experiment is being used to test the impact of different hailstone sizes on different types of roofing material. IBHS engineers designed and built multi-barreled hail cannons for the experiment.

The cannons are mounted on the research center catwalk and place 60 feet above the test house. The cannons can deliver approximately 8,000 to 10,000 hailstones - with diameters of 1-inch, 1.5-inch and 2-inch - up to 76 miles per hour.

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