Sustainable Snowfighting: A Comprehensive Study of the EPOKE Sirius Combi 4900

The California Department of Transportation's (Caltrans) fleet of sand and salt spreading machines utilizes dated technology to handle a task that is both extremely material intensive and important from a road safety standpoint. This study involved an engineering assessment of the EPOKE Sirius Combi 4900 spreader. This machine is seen as a potential replacement for equipment that was designed without any of the modern sensors or micro-computers available to today's engineers. Both the new EPOKE machine and an example of the conventional V-Box spreader were tested side-by-side to assess the improvements from one generation of equipment to another. Testing primarily consisted of quantitative mapping of the spread pattern created by each machine. Though the study is still ongoing, current data show that updating the fleet with more modern equipment such as the EPOKE Sirius Combi 4900 would drastically aid Caltrans' snowfighting efforts each winter. Through added capabilities such as liquid and solid pre-wet spreading combined with improved metering and material placement, the EPOKE machines would bring Caltrans' winter maintenance fleet into the 21st century. Both motorists and the environment would be better served by this sophisticated technology.