Modelling Temperature and Energy Balances within Geothermal Paving Systems

Geothermal pavement systems are novel to the paving industry. It is the combination of ground source heat pumps and permeable pavements which treats urban runoff and utilises renewable energy for heating and cooling applications. An energy and temperature balance was developed for two experimental geothermal paving systems. The heat fluxes were analysed for a heating and cooling cycle to determine the thermogeological relationship for the systems. A 4(th) order Runge-Kutta numerical method was developed to model the heat fluxes and energy balance using measured temperature data and other environmental factors such as solar radiation, convection and evaporation heat fluxes for the pavement system. The model was statistically tested for its validity and it can be concluded that the Runge-Kutta technique proved to be an effective and reliable predictive tool.