A study for determination of thermal conductivity for geomaterials.

The measurement of thermal properties, such as thermal conductivity, thermal resistivity, heat capacity, and thermal diffusivity for materials, is essential for many civil and electrical engineering projects as well as numerous field applications, including heating the soil beneath a building, producing electricity, removing waste from thermal and nuclear power plants, and burying cables. Different geotechnical factors, such as the type of soil, water content, grain size distribution, density, and compaction factors, all affect the thermal conductivity of soil. Literature studies has been done related to work and presented in this paper. In previous research, heat source methods were used to test the thermal conductivity of soil. Consequently, doing laboratory and field measurements is expensive and time-consuming. In this work, a constructed probe is used to measure thermal conductivity. Glycerin was used to calibrate the manufactured probe. Water has a greater thermal conductivity than soil minerals, and particle to particle interface increases as density improves. As a result of these fundamental influences, thermal conductivity of the soil improves as water content and density improves. Therefore, obtained thermal conductivity values were represented and explained with graphs for considered materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]