Electric Cable-Heated Pavement (ECHP) is an energy-driven de-icing technology for transportation infrastructure that utilizes electric cables installed within the pavement surface layer to maintain surface temperatures, effectively melting ice and snow during winter conditions, thereby enhancing road safety and reducing weather-related transportation disruptions. This study establishes a 3D time-dependent numerical heat-transfer model assessed against an analytical solution and a published component-level experimental benchmark to investigate the thermal and energy performance of ECHP. A controlled set of 53 simulation scenarios, covering five thermal structural configurations, three burial positions, and twelve named functional materials, is used to examine the combined influence of material properties, their spatial placement, and cable position relative to the pavement-layer interface. The results provide three complementary views of preheating performance: pavement-surface temperature and heat flow, near-field directional heat redistribution, and surface-layer sensible-energy accumulation. Material properties and structural placement jointly shape the thermal response: conductivity contrasts act through the location and extent of the modified regions to redistribute heat, while sensible-energy accumulation also depends on volumetric heat capacity. Burial-depth effects are configuration-dependent because moving the cable relative to the SDBC–HMAC interface changes the surrounding materials and heat-transfer paths. Among the representative configurations, II-on-FC produces the strongest pavement-surface response and the highest accumulated energy, while the asymmetric coating produces the largest enhancement in mean upper-side near-field heat flow. These findings provide configuration-dependent guidance for selecting materials, burial positions, and substructures according to the thermal effect to be enhanced.
This study presents an integrated experimental and lumped-parameter characterisation of a single 100 Ah prismatic LiFePO₄ cell extracted from a stationary-storage battery architecture. Open circuit voltage, charge-discharge cycling and hybrid pulse power tests were combined to quantify heat generation and identify effective thermal parameters using a lumped-parameter thermal-network formulation. Full charge and discharge cycles at standard and maximum rates showed that cell temperatures will increase beyond the recommended range, with discharging causing more heating than charging under the same conditions. Despite this, the thermocouple and infrared-camera measurements indicated an approximately uniform temperature distribution over the cell surfaces, with no sizable localised hot spots. Hybrid pulse power tests across 50–80% state of charge quantified the heat generation rate, which decreased from 11.2 W to 8.8 W when state of charge varies from 50% to 80% under the tested conditions. Lumped-parameter analysis of the measured transient and steady-state temperature responses yielded an effective specific heat capacity of approximately 890 J/kg·K and effective directional thermal-conductivity estimates ranging from 0.7 to 2.7 W/m·K. This is consistent with the way these prismatic cells are manufactured. For convective heat transfer coefficients of approximately 22–32 W/m2·K, the corresponding convection resistance decreased from about 0.63 K/W to 0.43 K/W with increasing airflow, and the enhanced airflow reduced temperature gradients within the cell surface. The overall uncertainty of the estimated thermal parameters was below approximately 7% across all operating and airflow conditions, demonstrating good reliability of the experimental measurements. The resulting cell-specific dataset provides experimentally identified thermal parameters that may be used as inputs for future electrothermal modelling of stationary battery systems.
