Patent ID: 7945388

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: a test bed mounted on a vehicle; a plurality of dynamic force sensors mounted on a first portion of the test bed, each of the plurality of dynamic force sensors mounted within a square of a grid; a plurality of visual markers located on the test bed in a grid; and a video recorder mounted inside the vehicle and directed towards the test bed to record a plurality of digital images of a plurality of impacts of the plurality of hail stones on the test bed along with the plurality of visual markers in the grid to identify, in conjunction with the plurality of markers within the plurality of digital images of the plurality of hail and of the plurality of visual markers, the orientation of each of the plurality of hail stones when each of the plurality of hail stones impact the test bed; wherein each of the plurality of dynamic force sensors has a housing for containing a plurality of sensors connected to a piezo-electric film to detect changes in a force over time where the force is detected through a protective sheet over the piezo-electric film and is transmitted to a data processing system along with the plurality of digital images from the video recorder to calculate, for each of the plurality of hail stones, an impact force based on a correlation of the orientation with a force data from the dynamic force sensors.