Discrete element analysis of heat transfer characteristics of concrete pavement under electrical heating for snow melting and deicing

The carbon fiber electrothermal method is an efficient approach for snow melting and deicing of pavements in the cold winter. The heat transfer mechanism needs to be explored for the carbon fiber electrothermal system design, especially how the microstructure affects the thermal behavior of pavement. To do so, a discrete element method (DEM) based heat transfer model considering the pavement microstructure has been established in the current study. The shape and content of coarse-grained aggregates have been represented by using the irregular polygonal aggregate method. The accuracy and feasibility of the proposed model were verified by comparing the numerical results with the measured data. On this basis, the heat transfer characteristics of pavements during snow melting and deicing using the carbon fiber electrothermal method have been investigated. The results show that the ambient temperature and the carbon fiber heating wire (CFHW) temperature are the two primary factors affecting the heating efficiency and the maximum temperature on the pavement surface. The spacing and buried depth of the CFHW also play a crucial role in determining the temperature rise rate and the uniformity of temperature distribution of the road surface layer. Furthermore, the effect of the aggregate content on the overall heating rate is not as significant as that of the specific heat capacity ratio of the aggregate to the mortar, suggesting modifying the thermal conductivity of aggregates to enhance deicing efficiency rather than changing the aggregate contents. The effects of the CFHW design parameters on the temperature distribution of the pavement surface are also investigated. The maximum and minimum temperatures of the pavement layer decrease gradually with the increase of the laying spacing and burial depth of the CFHW, but the temperature difference increases with the increase of the laying spacing of the CFHW and decreases with the increase of the burial depth. The research results can provide a reference for the optimization design of snow melting and deicing of pavements by the CFHW heating method.