NA-2239 -- An Analysis of the Transient Temperature Distribution in Pavement Heating Installations

Throughout the world, there are an increasing number of snow melting or glaze-ice preventing installations using heating units embedded in the pavement. In spite of the obvious advantage of this method compared to chemical and mechanical methods of snow and ice removal, high installation and operating costs have held its application to only the most critical areas. One method for reducing both installation and operating costs is through a better design of the system, which in turn requires a thorough knowledge of the heat transfer characteristics of the system. Schnurr and Rogers developed a two-dimensional model for the steady state situation and studied the effect of heater spacing, wind velocity, and snowfall rate on the performance of his system. Williamson attempted a transient analysis of the problem but assumed a one-dimensional model and constant heat flux on the pavement surface. The present paper will present a transient analysis of the two-dimensional model with more general boundary conditions and is, in essence, an extension of the work presented in both Refs 1 and 2. Due to the large number of variables involved in the problem, a general analysis, in this paper, is prohibitive and only an example of the application of the model will be presented. A great deal more complete information may be found in Ref 4, including data on heat transfer rates.