COMPARISON OF SINGLE AND DUAL PROBES FOR MEASURING SOIL THERMAL-PROPERTIES WITH TRANSIENT HEATING

Storage and transfer of heat in soils is governed by the soil thermal properties and these properties are therefore needed in many agricultu ral and engineering applications. In this paper we discuss solutions o f the heat flow equation applicable to single and dual probe transient heating methods, and describe measurements made on air-dry sand to sh ow how these methods can be used to obtain soil thermal properties. Me asurements show that the two methods yield similar values of thermal c onductivity. When determining thermal conductivity from the single pro be data, it is best to use nonlinear curve fitting and to include a co rrection term in the model to account for the presence of the probe. M easurements of volumetric heat capacity made by using the dual probe h eat-pulse method agreed well with independent estimates obtained using the de Vries method of summing the heat capacities of the soil consti tuents. The advantage of using the dual probe method together with the appropriate heat-pulse theory rather than the single probe is that al l three soil thermal properties, the thermal diffusivity, volumetric h eat capacity, and thermal conductivity, can be determined from a singl e heat-pulse measurement. Instantaneous heat-pulse theory can be used with the dual probe method to determine heat capacity from short durat ion heat-pulse data, but it should not be used to determine the therma l diffusivity and thermal conductivity.