Road Weather Management Program
photos of lightning, trucks plowing snow, an empty road before a storm, and an evacuation
Office of Operations 21st century operations using 21st century technologies

Best Practices for Road Weather Management Version 2.0

Title:

Simulation of a Geothermal Bridge Deck Anti-icing System and Experimental Validation

Abstract:

The design of heated bridge deck anti-icing systems requires assessment of long-term performance under expected future weather conditions. A method of simulating the performance of such a system has been developed. The system studied in this work uses a bridge deck with embedded hydronic tubing and a ground-coupled heat pump system with vertical borehole heat exchangers as a heat source. The models of each component and their integration into the simulation of the whole system are described. Validation of the simulation method has been attempted by making use of operating data collected from an experimental heated bridge deck installation. The collection of data, estimation of the model parameters, and comparison of the simulation results with the measured data are discussed. Results indicate that the system simulation of the heated bridge deck is able to predict performance with reasonable accuracy under a range of weather and operating conditions.

Source(s):

82nd Transportation Research Board (TRB) Annual Meeting; Oklahoma State University, School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Date: 2003

Author:

Liu, Rees, Spitler

Keywords:


Anti-icing/deicing
Bridge
Winter maintenance

PDF files can be viewed with the Acrobat® Reader®.

Office of Operations