Experimental study on the thermal conductivity of aeolian sand from the Tibetan Plateau

Aeolian sand is an important factor, which can affect the permafrost environment and infrastructures on the Tibetan Plateau. The thermal conductivity of aeolian sand is an important parameter for analyzing the thermal regime of the ground in cold regions. This paper presents the test results of the thermal conductivity of aeolian sand sampled from the Tibetan Plateau in unfrozen state with temperature 20 °C and in frozen state. The aeolian sand samples were measured with water content ranging from 3% to 15% and dry density ranging from 1400 to 1650 kg·m− 3. The results show that the thermal conductivity increased with water content and dry density. Some methods that have been developed for calculating the thermal conductivity of soils are applied to predict the thermal conductivity of aeolian sand. However, these methods all have significant deviations. From the test data, a simple model is proposed as a function of the degree of saturation and the volume fraction of each phase to calculate the thermal conductivity of aeolian sand. The calculated results obtained from the proposed model agree well with the test data. The mean deviations are 2.15% and 4.28% for the unfrozen and frozen states, respectively.