Abstract
This research aims to develop snow melting system around steel top of underground fire cistern by using heat pipe, for realizing quick finding of the steel top under heavy snow fall. Water in a fire cistern installed underground is heated by underground heat source, 10 ~15 °C. The iron top is put on snow melting panel made of reinforced concrete. Heat is transported from water to the snow melting panel by heat pipes, which melts snow on it. The experimental results obtained for two years show that this system can melt the snow around the steel top in winter season preferably. The numerical simulation using only weather data was found to predict temperature variations of the whole system with good agreements to the experimental data. Therefore, this simulation software can be used for designing this snow-melting system.
