Automatic Controls for the Carbon Fiber Tape-Based Deicing Technology

Abstract

Snow and ice on roads are hazardous. Many methods are applied for road surface deicing. Most of these methods, however, suffer from one or more of the following shortcomings: low energy efficiency, large labor requirements, high cost, or potential to damage roads. This paper presents the design of automatic controllers and the analysis of their efficiency as applied in a carbon fiber tape (CFT)-based resistive heating deicing technology. Two automatic controllers based on surface temperature—an on-off controller and a fuzzy logic-based controller—are implemented in an experimental deicing facility with CFT-based deicing technology. The fuzzy logic-based controller retrieves the weather forecast information and considers many different scenarios. A LabVIEW interface is used for remote monitoring of the deicing process. The experimental results show that both types of automatic controllers are very effective in preventing the ice from forming on the sidewalk surface, and both are significantly more efficient than manual control in terms of operating cost, with the fuzzy logic-based controller being the most efficient. The fuzzy logic-based controller represents the major technical contribution of this paper, and with certain adaptation, it is also applicable for other resistive heating-based deicing technologies.