What is it about?
Large daily and annual surface temperature cycles diffuse into the ground with decreasing amplitude and increasing time lag, both direct functions of thermal diffusivity. Observations of these two dominant surface cycles have often been used in the past to estimate the thermal diffusivity of the ground. We show that weather patterns introduce a rich spectrum of additional frequency components into the surface temperature signal, and that these greatly enhance the interpretation of thermal diffusivity when assessed in the frequency domain.
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Why is it important?
Ground thermal diffusivity is a useful parameter for many purposes such geotechnical (e.g. laying gas pipes and electrical cables), agricultural (e.g. predicting germination times), geophysical (e.g. heat flow modelling) and weather forecasting (e.g. predicting frost).
Perspectives
Measurements that used to take years can now be performed in weeks or months with equivalent accuracy. Furthermore, our method allows previously unattainable statistical analyses of uncertainty.
Dr Graeme Beardsmore
Hot Dry Rocks Pty Ltd
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: A Fourier Spectral Method to Measure the Thermal Diffusivity of Soil, Geotechnical Testing Journal, July 2019, ASTM International,
DOI: 10.1520/gtj20180300.
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