Studies on development of an electrothermal method of measuring the soil thermal conductivity

The paper presents the studies on development of a simplified electrothermal method of measuring the soil thermal conductivity, that may be used directly in the field. A measurement system has been designed and built, that is connected to measuring sensors located in the examined soil. Two types of sensors, i.e. active and passive ones were used. The passive sensors were provided with thermistors used for temperature measurement, while the active one, apart from the thermistor, was provided with a heating element of resistance type. The study has shown that the proposed method, consisting in measuring the steady heat conduction between the measuring sensor and soil, allows to determine the value of the soil thermal conductivity with satisfying accuracy. Moreover, the method is conducive to significantly smaller disturbance of the soil structure, being a reason of measurement errors occurring while using traditional methods. Mathematical processing of the research results has been carried out with the help of STATISTICA software.