• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2005.11a
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• pp.27.1-27.1
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• 2005

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.629-639
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• 2011

Based on Maxwell-Eucken(ME) model, which is one of structural models, a new model for predicting the effective thermal conductivity of variably saturated porous materials is proposed. The new model is a linear combination of three ME models having matrix, water, and air as a continuous phase. The coefficient of the corresponding linear equation is defined by a parameter referred to as 'the continuity coefficient', which provides a relative degree of continuity of each phase. The continuity coefficient of matrix is assumed to be linearly proportional to porosity. The model can be linear or nonlinear depending on how the continuity coefficients of water and air vary with water saturation. The feasibility of the proposed model was examined by both numerical and experimental results. Both linear and nonlinear models showed a high accuracy of prediction with $R^2$ values of 0.86-0.98 and 0.88-0.99, respectively. The numerical and experimental results also showed that the continuity coefficient of matrix was linearly proportional to porosity. Therefore, the proposed prediction model can be effectively used to estimate effective thermal conductivity of unsaturated porous materials by measuring porosity, water content and mineralogical compositions of matrix.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.171-180
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• 2011

For 21 rock samples consisting of granite, sandstone and the effective thermal conductivity (TC) was measured with the LFA-447 Nanoflash, and mineralogical compositions were also determined from XRD analysis. The structural models were used to examine the effects of quartz content and the size of minerals on TC of rocks. The experimental results showed that TC of rocks was strongly related to quartz content with $R^2$ value of 0.75. Therefore, the proposed regression model can be a useful tool for an approximate estimation of TC only from quartz content. Some samples with similar values of quartz content, however, illustrated great differences in TC, presumably caused by differences in the size of minerals. An analysis from structural models showed that TC of rocks with fine-grained minerals was likely to fall in the region between Series and EMT model, and it moved up to ME and Parallel model as the size of minerals increased. This progressive change of structural models implies that change of TC depending on the size of minerals is possibly related to the scale of experiments; TC was measured from a disk sample with a thickness of 3 mm. Therefore, in case of measurements with a thin sample, TC can be overestimated as compared to the real value in the field scale. The experimental data illustrated that the scale effect was more pronounced for rocks with bigger size of minerals. Thus, it is worthwhile to remember that using a measured TC as a representative value for the real field can be misleading when applied to many geothermal problems.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.23 no.7
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• pp.811-819
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• 1999

A theoretical model to predict the effective thermal conductivity of sands Is developed by considering the participating heat transfer mechanisms and their relationship to the model geometry. Comparison between the calculations and the measurements indicates that the assumptions to introduce two model constants (${\phi}_{af}$ and ${\delta}$) for model development were justified. As a results, the model was proved to predict the effective thermal conductivities of 2- and 3-component systems of two silica sands saturated with fluids or bonded with liquid binders in a reasonable accuracy.