Enhancing the Performance of Electrically Heated Pavements with Stripes of Thermally Conductive Asphalt Concrete: A Numerical Investigation

Asphalt pavement surfaces in cold regions are exposed to snow and ice build-ups which require extensive maintenance for safe driving. An alternative and emerging solution to prevent this concern consists of embedding electrical heating elements—so-called ribbons—within the asphalt concrete. An additional concern of asphalt pavements in cold regions is low-temperature cracking which reduces their service life. A mitigation technique for this distress is modifying the asphalt concrete with, e.g., steel fibers. Besides ameliorating the mechanical performance at low-temperature levels, such fibers also enhance the thermal conductivity of the asphalt concrete. This chapter investigated the thermal performance enhancement of electrically heated asphalt pavements as fibers are included within the paving material. The investigation was performed in silico with the two-dimensional heat equation applied to a domain representing a heated pavement; ribbons were modeled as discrete heat sources. Three different paving materials were considered: without fibers, with fibers, and with vertical stripes of asphalt concrete each having a different fiber content across the width of the pavement. The heat equation was applied to an idealized case to calculate the available heat flux at the surface of the three different paving materials. For the considered case, it was demonstrated that stripes of fibers augment the available surface heat flux across the entire pavement width.