Analytical analysis of borehole experiments for the estimation of subsurface thermal properties

• New analytical solutions for modeling borehole thermal experiments.
• In-situ estimates of subsurface thermal conductivity and diffusivity.
• Validity of standard asymptotic expressions and their corresponding asymptotic time.
• Error in the subsurface thermal properties estimated with standard solutions.
• Assessment of the experimental configurations reducing errors in the estimates.

Estimating subsurface thermal properties is required in many research fields and applications. To this end, borehole experiments such as the thermal response test (TRT) and active-line-source (ALS) method are of significant interest because they allow us to determine thermal property estimates in situ. With these methods, the subsurface thermal conductivity and diffusivity are typically estimated using asymptotic analytical expressions, whose simplifying assumptions have an impact on the accuracy of the values obtained. In this paper, we develop new analytical tools for interpreting borehole thermal experiments, and we use these tools to assess the impact of such assumptions on thermal property estimates. Quite importantly, our results show that the simplifying assumptions of currently used analytical models can result in errors in the estimated thermal conductivity and diffusivity of up to 60% and 40%, respectively. We also show that these errors are more important for short-term analysis and can be reduced with an appropriate choice of experimental duration. Our results demonstrate the need for cautious interpretation of the data collected during TRT and ALS experiments as well as for improvement of the existing in-situ experimental methods.