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Best Practices for Road Weather Management Version 2.0

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Title:

Simulation Based Investigation on the Design of Hydronic Snow Melting System

Abstract:

Hydronic heating systems that circulate a heated fluid through pipes embedded in a bridge deck or roadway may be used to eliminate or reduce dangerous driving conditions caused by snow and ice. The first important task in sizing such a system is determining the required heat flux. Current guidance for required surface heat fluxes is based on a one-dimensional steady-state heat balance of the snow melting surface. This approach is limited by the fact that real systems are almost never operated continuously through the winter. Also, two-dimensional effects, such as pipe spacing and bottom losses are neglected by the current methods. This paper describes a parametric study to investigate the impact of idling time, heating capacity, pipe spacing, bottom insulation, and control strategies on system snow melting performance. An experimentally validated hydronic snow melting system simulation has been run for several different North American locations, using up to ten years of weather data. With all parametric variations, 528 simulations were run.

Source(s):

83rd Transportation Research Board (TRB) Annual Meeting; Oklahoma State University, School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Date: 2004

Author:

Liu, Spitler

Keywords:


Snow
Ice/Frost
Pavement condition
Pavement temperature
Bridge
Anti-icing/deicing

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