Heat Transfer Model for the Snow-Melting Pavement with Folded Serpentine Piping Configurations

SYNOPSIS A non-sprinkling snow-melting pavement has generally adopted groundwater heat, ground heat, heated warm water, etc. as heat sources. The temperature level of the heat source is around 10-15•Ž except heated warm water and is by no means high. Therefore, we have to better understand the heat transfer between a heat injection pipe and the surrounding pavement. This is indispensable to economical and reliable design of the non-sprinkling snow-melting pavement. A theoretical model is proposed to evaluate the snow-melting performance of the pavements with folded serpentine piping configurations. The pavement heat exchanger is modeled as a straight panel incorporating both a going and return pipes can be treated as line heat sources to be added to the equation for vertical heat flow in the pavement. This results in a system of one-dimensional equations that is rapid for design calculations. The accuracy of the numerical model is shown from the comparison of the fluid temperature distributions along the heat injection pipe and of the vertical temperature profile in the pavement at three different experimental sites. The model could also lead the overall heat transfer coefficients between the fluid in the heat injection pipe and the surrounding pavement.