Document Type

Dataset

Source Publication Title

Soil Science Society of America Journal

DOI

https://doi.org/10.32855/dataset.2024.05.030

Production/Collection Date

4-22-2016

Production/Collection Location

Colorado School of Mines

Depositor

Kathleen Smits

Deposit Date

3-1-2024

Data Type

Experimental data

Abstract

A soil's grain-size distribution affects its physical and hydraulic properties; however, little is known about its effect on soil thermal properties. To better understand how grain-size distribution affects soil thermal properties, specifically the effective thermal conductivity, a set of laboratory experiments was performed using binary mixtures of two uniform sands tightly packed with seven different mixing fractions over the full range of saturation. For each binary mixture, the effective thermal conductivity, λ, capillary pressure, hc, and volumetric water content, θ, were measured. Results demonstrated that the λ–θ relationship exhibited distinct characteristics based on the percentage of fine- and coarse-grained sands. We further compared measured λ–θ properties with independent estimates from two semi-empirical models (Campbell Model and Lu and Dong Model) to evaluate the models' applicability in relation to physically based parameters associated with changes in soil mixing (e.g., porosity and grain size). Both models were able to fit experimental data but to varying degrees based on the number of physically based parameters used. In general, model improvements are needed to capture the λ–θ relationship solely on physically based parameters.

Disciplines

Earth Sciences | Engineering | Environmental Sciences

Publication Date

12-14-2021

Language

English

License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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