Hydronic heating has been used to prevent ice formation and snow accumulation on road surface pavements with the aim of improving driver safety. A two-dimensional heat- and mass-coupled model for melting snow on a hydronically heated pavement is described. The extended Darcy law and continuity equation were adopted to describe water flow caused by moisture and temperature gradients. To solve the complex nonlinear equation set, an explicit finite difference method is used. The snow-melting model was evaluated with data measured from snow-melting experiments performed at the Harbin Institute of Technology in Heilongjiang, China. Results show that the model is capable of providing good simulations of the evolution of temperature and surface conditions during snowmelt. Simulation comparisons indicate that including the effects of melted snow on thermal properties is important in the simulation of temperature and surface condition during snowmelt.
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