Prof. D. N. Singh

K. DEVID

M.Tech.
Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai, India flex_david@yahoo.com

DETECTION AND ESTIMATION OF SOIL THERMAL RESISTIVITY

Soil thermal properties are of great importance in many engineering problems where heat transfer takes place through the soil mass. Some of these problems are the design and laying of high voltage buried power cables, ground modification techniques, employing heating and freezing etc. For such situations, it is essential to estimate the resistance offered by the soil mass in dissipating the heat generated through it.
A laboratory and a field thermal probe have been fabricated, and calibrated, to evaluate the soil thermal resistivity based on the principle of transient method.
To estimate soil thermal resistivity empirical relationships have been developed and based on these relationships a computational algorithm (DDTHERM) has been developed. Efficiency of these relationships as well as the algorithm has been established with the help of experimental results available in the literature.
Efforts have also been made to develop an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model capable of predicting soil thermal resistivity.