Institut Français des Sciences et Technologies des Transports, de l'Aménagement et des Réseaux

Type de document

COMMUNICATION AVEC ACTES INTERNATIONAL (ACTI)

Langue

anglais

Auteur

LE TOUZ ; DUMOULIN

Résumé / Abstract

Facing the heavy organisational, financial and environmental constraints imposed by usual winter maintenancesalting operations, pavement engineers have been led to look for alternative solutions to avoid ice or snow depositat pavements surface. Among the solutions, one is self-de-icing heating pavements, for which two technologieshave been developed so far: one is based on embedded coils circulating a heated calorific fluid under the pavementsurface; the other one relies on the use of embedded resistant electric wires. The use and operation of such systemsin the world is still limited and was only confined to small road stretches or specific applications, such as bridgeswhich are particularly sensitive to frost. One of the most significant ?coil technology? example in Europe is theSERSO-System (Solar Energy recovery from road surfaces) built in 1994, on a Switzerland bridge. Many ofthese experiences are referenced in the technical literature, which provides state-of-the art papers (see for instanceEugster) and useful detailed information dealing with the construction and operational management of suchinstallation.The present study is taking part of the Forever Open Road Concept addressed by the R5G: 5th Generation Road, one of the major project supported by IFSTTAR. It considers a different design of self-de-icing road thatsimplify its mode of construction and maintenance, compared to the two technologies mentioned above. It shouldalso be noted that similar to pavements instrumented with coils, such structure could be used in the reversible wayto capture the solar energy at the pavement surface during sunny days and store it, to either warm the pavementat a later stage or for exogenous needs (e.g. contribution to domestic hot water). To complete our study we alsoconsidered the use of semi-transparent pavement course wearing in place of the traditional opaque one.In the present study, a 2D model was developed using FEM approach. It combines 2 numerical models. Oneis dedicated to the calculation of the heat transfer inside the porous layer between the fluid and the structureaccording to the geometry studied and the physical properties of the components of the system. The second oneaddresses the heat transfer inside the different layer of the pavement and was adapted to allow the insertion of asemi-transparent surface layer (for sun radiation). The temperature spatial distribution within the structure and itssurface is calculated at different time step according to the evolution of boundary conditions at its surface. Variouslocation in France were selected and calculation of the temperature field was carried-out over a year. Discussionon the performances of such system versus its location is proposed. Influence of a semi-transparent layer is alsodiscussed. Future works will compared numerical simulations with experiments thank to a dedicated test benchunder development and that will allow to test various structure in parallel.