Thermal conductivity of nineteen igneous rocks, II estimation of the thermal conductivity of rock from the mineral and chemical compositions

A methodology for determining thermal properties of rocks

“…However, thermal properties of rocks would play an important role for extremely environmental sensitive projects such as disposal of high-level radioactive waste in deep underground disposal sites or repositories [24,25]. In this direction, attempts have been made wherein rock has been powdered to determine its thermal conductivity [26][27][28] or its chips have been used [29]. However, these studies would not yield accurate results, mainly, due to the lack of representative matrix of the rock mass [30].…”

Tracking the thermal properties of the lower continental crust: Measured versus calculated thermal conductivity of high-grade metamorphic rocks (Southern Granulite Province, India)

“…Several attempts have been made in the past to calculate the TC of rocks indirectly from its mineral composition (e.g., Birch and Clark, 1940;Beck and Beck, 1965;Horai and Baldridge, 1972;Brigaud and Vasseur, 1989;Pribnow and Umsonst, 1993;Jessop, 2013;Fuchs et al, 2013). All these approaches, however, were confronted with various shortcomings.…”

Heat-flow measurements at shot points along the 1978 Saudi Arabia seismic deep-refraction line; Part I, Results of the measurements

“…Thermal conductivities have been estimated from the modal mineral compositions of the rocks by several methods. This procedure ordinarily yields the thermal conductivity of the rock to within +_10 percent (Birch and Clark, 1940;Horai and Baldridge, 1972;Sibbitt and others, 1979). Estimates of thermal conductivity for the rocks of table 1 were computed using the thermal conductivity data of Horai (1971) for the individual mineral phases and the modal mineral compositions given in table 1.…”

“…Estimates were computed from the serial and parallel combinations of Birch and Clark (1940), the geometric-mean combination of Woodside and Messmer (1961), the Hashin-Shtrikman variational-bounds technique (Horai and Baldridge, 1972), and the continuous-phase formulation of Sibbitt and others (1979).…”

“…The values accepted were selected after comparison of published measured values (Clark, 1966;Sass and others, 1971a;Horai and Baldridge, 1972;Sibbitt andothers, 1979, Smith andothers,, 1979) with the calculated ones. At shot point 1, the average value of thermal conductivity for shales for 17 sets of data, 6.28+0.72 mcal-cm-l-s'l-°C"l (Clark, 1966), was used.…”