EQUILIBRIUM HEAT AND MOISTURE TRANSFER IN SOILS HEAT SOURCES

In this paper the moisture and heat transfer around heat sources in soils is studied. Determining the conditions for the drying out of the soil is an important issue when evaluating the thermal field around buried sources, i.e. high voltage cables or nuclear wastes, because the soil thermal conductivity decreases markedly, when the moisture evaporates, causing a strong increase of the source temperature. In this paper a method to calculate the values of temperature and water content that determine the onset of a dried out zone around the heat source, is proposed.