Abstract
THE flow of heat away from buried electric cables, steam pipes, etc., is directly proportional to the conductivity of the surrounding soil. It follows that a knowledge of soil conductivities is necessary to the engineer. Unfortunately, there are almost as many values of soil conductivity as there have been experimenters in this field. Austin1 suggests that the lack of consistency has been inevitable due to the lack of standardization of apparatus and probably even more so to the loose specification of the soil sample. The composition of soil varies enormously, and so also does the water content and the tightness of the packing, yet these quantities must have an immediate bearing upon the value of the conductivity.
Similar content being viewed by others
Article PDF
References
Austin, Symposium on Thermal Insulating Materials, Amer. Soc. for Testing Materials (1939).
Gemant, J. App. Phys., 21, (Aug. 1950).
Jakob, “Heat Transfer” (Wiley).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
WEBB, J. Thermal Conductivity of Soil. Nature 177, 989 (1956). https://doi.org/10.1038/177989a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/177989a0
This article is cited by
-
Experimental study and three-dimensional visualization model on the thermal conductivity of unsaturated frozen soil based on nuclear magnetic resonance
Acta Geotechnica (2023)
-
Thermal Conductivity of Soil
Nature (1957)
-
Thermal Conductivity of Soil
Nature (1956)
Comments
By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.