Calorimetry of a Multicomponent System for the Analysis of Frozen Soil Specific Heat Test Considering the Effect of Latent Heat

Abstract

To reveal the errors caused by using temperature as the reference parameter during the testing of frozen soil specific heat, the compositional evolution of frozen soil during testing was analyzed. The heating process of the soil sample is regarded as a superposition of the temperature increase in each phase and the melting of ice. On this basis, we propose the calorimetry of a multicomponent system for the analysis of frozen soil specific heat test considering the effect of latent heat. The specific heat of warm frozen soil is calculated basing on a laboratory test and the methods proposed herein. The tested values of unfrozen water content were compared with the values of unfrozen water content calculated by the inverse method of specific heat, and the tested values of specific heat were compared with the values calculated by the mass-weighted average method and the values calculated by the conventional method. The results show that the specific heat of frozen soil directly determined by the heating-temperature measurement method includes the effect of the latent heat of phase change and thus cannot be used in the scientific calculation of the temperature field. The specific heat of the frozen soil determined by considering the effect of latent heat has higher accuracy and broader applicability than the conventional method.