Thermal conductivity anisotropy of metasedimentary and igneous rocks

Abstract

Thermal conductivity anisotropy was determined for three sets of metasedimentary and igneous rocks from central Utah, USA. Most conductivity measurements were made in transient mode with a half-space, line source instrument oriented in two orthogonal directions on a flat face cut perpendicular to bedding. One orientation of the probe yields thermal conductivity parallel to bedding (kpar) directly, the other orientation of the probe measures a product of conductivities parallel and perpendicular to bedding from which the perpendicular conductivity (k perp) is calculated. Some direct measurements of kpar and kperp were made on oriented cylindrical discs using a conventional divided bar device in steady state mode. Anisotropy is defined as k par/kperp Precambrian argillites from Big Cottonwood Canyon have anisotropy values from 0.8 to 2.1 with corresponding conductivity perpendicular to bedding of 2.0 to 6.2 W m-1 K-1. Anisotropy values for Price Canyon sedimentary samples are less than 1.2 with a mean of 1.04 although thermal conductivity perpendicular to bedding for the samples varied from 1.3 to 5.0 W m-1K-1. The granitic rocks were found to be essentially isotropic with thermal conductivity perpendicular to bedding having a range of 2.2 10 3.2W m-1K -1 and a mean of 2.68 W m-1 K-1. The results confirm the observation by Deming [1994] that anisotropy is negligible for rocks having kperp greater than 4.0 W m-1K-1 and generally increases for low conductivity metamorphic and clay-rich rocks. There is little evidence, however, for his suggestion that thermal conductivity anisotropy of all rocks increases systematically to about 2.5 for low thermal conductivity rocks. Copyright 2007 by the American Geophysical Union.