Assessment of structure effects on the thermal conductivity of two-phase porous geomaterials

The effect of structure on the thermal conductivity of geomaterials is studied for solid–fluid combinations representing a wide variety of two-phase porous geomaterials. Nearly 200 thermal conductivity data sets from the literature were analyzed for geomaterials made of natural soil particles, crushed rock particles and sedimentary rock. Two analog models are studied to quantify the effect of structure. It appears that the effect of structure increases with decreasing fluid/solid thermal conductivity ratio and structure effects are negligible from a ratio of approximately 1/15 and higher. A new simplified model is proposed to compute the effective thermal conductivity as a function of the fluid/solid thermal conductivity ratio and the structure of geomaterials. The model applies well to independent data of homogeneous and heterogeneous materials including industrial cement concrete.