Estimation of the Thermophysical Properties of the Soil together with Sensors' Positions by Inverse Problem

Abstract : The report is basically divided into two main parts. In the first part, we introduce a numerical strategy in both 1D and 3D axisymmetric coordinate systems to estimate the thermophysical properties of the soil (volumetric heat capacity (ρC)s , thermal conductivity λs and porosity φ) of a saturated porous medium where a phase change problem (liquid/vapor) appears due to intense heating from above. Usually φ is the true porosity, however when the soil is not saturated (which should concern most cases), φ may be taken equal to the part of water in the pores. This is of course an approximation which is correct for the energy balance but which neglects the capillary forces and the migration flow of the liquid inside the porous media; a complete model of such an unsaturated model is out of the scope of this work. In the second part, we present a similar strategy to approximate the value of diffusivity α and the sensors’ positions in the case of dry porous medium where no phase change is present.