FEM Analysis Of Heat Transfer In Porous Asphalt Pavement

This study examines the cooling performance of porous asphalt pavement and the effectiveness of an addressed type of pavement for the mitigation of urban heat island effect by using FEM modeling.The porous asphalt pavements present lower surface temperature as compared to non-porous dense-graded asphalt pavement under high temperatures during summer weather.The city of Lahore is considered a case study keeping in view the trends of changing temperature due to the invigorating urbanization process in Lahore.A FEM model was developed using material thermal properties and hot summer environmental conditions.The data of daily total solar radiation,wind velocity,and the air temperature was collected from the Pakistan Meteorological Department(PMD).The developed model was used to identify the cooling efficiency of porous asphalt pavements.Developed FEM model indicates that porous asphalt pavement reflects the radiations and temperature drops throughout the porous pavement layer(top to bottom)as compared to dense graded asphalt.A temperature drop of 6℃ was found at the surface when porous asphalt pavement was used instead of conventional dense-graded pavement.The Sensitivity analysis was performed for all the factors including the wind velocity,solar radiations,daily peak air temperature,and daily lowest air temperature by increasing and decreasing the base value up to 10%.Sensitivity analysis indicates that increasing the intensity of solar radiation highly affect the pavement temperature.Moreover,the difference in daily peak air temperature and daily lowest air temperature has a significant impact on the surface temperature of the pavement.The increased difference in air temperature has increased the surface temperature significantly while the drop indifference of air temperature decreased the surface temperature as well as delays the impending of peak surface temperature.