Computational model for the thermal conductivity of soil-rock mixture

Soil -rock mixture (S-RM) consists of a mixture of soil and crushed rocks, and their thermal conductivity is highly important in underground engineering. Currently, research on thermal conductivity is primarily focused on soil and rock individually, with minimal attention given to S-RM thermal conductivity. This paper aims to develop a model capable of accurately calculating the thermal conductivity of S-RM by conducting an in-depth analysis of the macrostructure of soil and crushed rocks. First, a series -parallel model of S-RM was developed based on the series -parallel concept of resistors. Second, considering that the intermixing of fine-grained soil and coarsegrained crushed rocks during the fabrication of S-RM results in reduced porosity and elevated saturation - factors that influence thermal conductivity - a refinement has been applied to the generalized thermal conductivity model proposed by Co te <acute accent> and Konrad. The proposed modified model of thermal conductivity is applicable to the S-RM. Finally, the modified model was proven to have high accuracy in predicting the thermal conductivity of SRM through testing.