Preventing snow accumulating upon inclined substrates using falling water film

This paper has concerned preventing snow accumulating upon inclined substra tes using falling water film. A cluster of physical models for a gas-water- snow system was developed and solved with a control-volume finite-differenc e procedure. The effects of various parameters on heat transfer and water f ilm temperature decrease were investigated. The results revealed that it is feasible to use falling water film to prevent snow accumulation upon incli ned substrates as long as the suitable initial film flow rate and temperatu re are adopted. It was clarified that among the influential factors of wate r film temperature decrease, the snowfall intensity, initial water film thi ckness and the substrate inclination play an important role. The intensity of the film temperature decrease mainly depends on the snowfall intensity a nd the initial heat capacity of the water film flow, which is a function of temperature and mass flow rate. An intensive heat transfer occurs in a ver y thin layer near the free surface of the water film. The numerical results were correlated in terms of effective Nusselt number, and Reynolds, Prandt l and Gukhman numbers. The maximum deviation of the numerical data from the correlation is approximately 15.6%, which only causes an uncertainty less than 3% in the simple prediction.