An experimental study on thermal conductivity of iron ore sand cement mortar

• IOS was used as aggregate at different replacement levels to make IOS cement mortar.
• Hot-wire method and laser flash method were used to test the thermal conductivity.
• The effects of five major factors on thermal conductivity were evaluated.
• SPSS partial correlation analysis was conducted to determine the precedence factors.
• A prediction formulation between thermal conductivity and the factors was developed.

The objective of this paper is to determine the effect of water–cement ratio, total sand–cement ratio, river sand–iron ore sand ratio, temperature and density on the thermal conductivity of iron ore sand (IOS) cement mortar. The IOS was filtered by wet magnetic separator and incorporated in a cement mortar mixture. The hot-wire method and the laser flash method were used to test the thermal conductivity of the IOS cement mortar. Meanwhile, the SPSS partial correlation analysis was conducted to determine the precedence of the five factors according to their effects on thermal conductivity. After that, a prediction formulation of thermal conductivity was developed with MATLAB. Experimental results show that among the five factors, river sand–iron ore sand ratio ranks the best effect on thermal conductivity, followed by water–cement ratio, total sand–cement ratio, temperature and density in sequence.