A geothermal heat flow probe for in situ measurement of both temperature gradient and thermal conductivity

Christoffel, David; Calhaem, I. M.

doi:10.1088/0022-3735/2/6/301

Cited by 12 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…He not only measured thermal conductivity of sediment samples in the laboratory, but also inferred the thermal properties of the sediment from the cooling curve of the penetrator. Later, Christoffel & Calhaem (1969) and Lister (1970) introduced a heated penetrator probe to measure sediment conductivity in situ together with the thermal gradient. Previously, accurate measurements of sediment thermal properties had been obtained from sediment cores, e.g.…”

Section: Methods Missions and Measurementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Planetary heat flow measurements

Hagermann

2005

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A.

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The year 2005 marks the 35th anniversary of the Apollo 13 mission, probably the most successful failure in the history of manned spaceflight. Naturally, Apollo 13's scientific payload is far less known than the spectacular accident and subsequent rescue of its crew. Among other instruments, it carried the first instrument designed to measure the flux of heat on a planetary body other than Earth. The year 2005 also should have marked the launch of the Japanese LUNAR-A mission, and ESA's Rosetta mission is slowly approaching comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Both missions carry penetrators to study the heat flow from their target bodies. What is so interesting about planetary heat flow? What can we learn from it and how do we measure it?Not only the Sun, but all planets in the Solar System are essentially heat engines. Various heat sources or heat reservoirs drive intrinsic and surface processes, causing 'dead balls of rock, ice or gas' to evolve dynamically over time, driving convection that powers tectonic processes and spawns magnetic fields. The heat flow constrains models of the thermal evolution of a planet and also its composition because it provides an upper limit for the bulk abundance of radioactive elements. On Earth, the global variation of heat flow also reflects the tectonic activity: heat flow increases towards the young ocean ridges, whereas it is rather low on the old continental shields. It is not surprising that surface heat flow measurements, or even estimates, where performed, contributed greatly to our understanding of what happens inside the planets. In this article, I will review the results and the methods used in past heat flow measurements and speculate on the targets and design of future experiments.

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Section: Methods Missions and Measurementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Planetary heat flow measurements

Hagermann

2005

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A.

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“…In the past the underground heat flux was measured in a similar way for geothermal research, namely by determining the temperature gradient as shown by Christoffel and Calhaem [1969]. The new aspect in the presented method, is that we determine the gradient by a complete and consistent profile of temperature over the range of depth, T(z), by sixteen sensors, not only by two measurement points.…”

Section: Experiments In a Terrestrial Soil Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prelaunch performance evaluation of the cometary experiment MUPUS‐TP

et al. 2004

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[1] This paper discusses test results obtained in both laboratory and terrestrial environment conditions for the ''Multipurpose Sensors for Surface and Sub-Surface Science'' Thermal Probe (MUPUS-TP), which has been developed for the European Space Agency Rosetta cometary rendezvous mission. The probe is intended to provide in situ long-term observations of the thermal evolution of the comet nucleus and will measure a thermal conductivity profile with time in the top 30 cm of the comet nucleus. The basic operating principles of the probe are briefly described, including typical test results gathered in terrestrial snow and soil. The tests in snow provide verification of the probe as a useful tool for monitoring the metamorphism of snow on the Earth. The tests in soil are intended to demonstrate the probe's suitability as an alternative to other methods of energy measurement currently practiced in soil physics research. The tests of the probe in the natural environment of the Earth provide a demonstration of the behavior of the instrument in the presence of complex energy exchange processes before it is used on the comet.

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“…However, such distributed measurements of sediment temperatures are scarce. Temperature lances have been designed for measuring in-situ temperatures, and even sediment thermal properties (Lister, 1970;Hyndman et al, 1979;Sclater et al, 1969;Christoffel and Calheam, 1969), but their use in the Arctic, and especially under small lakes, requires portability and robust design. Due to lake/sea ice dynamics and ice movement during the melt period, monitoring with permanently installed devices is generally not feasible in the Arctic.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Due to lake/sea ice dynamics and ice movement during the melt period, monitoring with permanently installed devices is generally not feasible in the Arctic. Commonly used in offshore marine environments are heat flow probes of Bullard type (the sensor string is directly attached to the logger and pushed into the sediment, Christoffel and Calheam (1969); Lindqvist (1984)), Lister or violin-bow type (the sensor string is attached like a violin bow to a solid strength member that is lowered into the sediment, Lister (1970); Hyndman et al (1979)), or Ewing type (outrigger fins with sensors are attached to a piston or gravity corer, Riedel et al (2015)). These devices are heavy and require larger ships for deployment (Hornbach et al, 2021) and surveys are typically focused more on thermal properties and the geothermal heat flow than on the temperature field alone Dziadek et al (2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Brief communication: Testing a portable Bullard-type temperature lance confirms highly spatially heterogeneous sediment temperatures under shallow water bodies in the Arctic

Miesner,

Cable,

Overduin

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Abstract. The thermal regime in the sediment column below shallow water bodies in Arctic permafrost controls benthic habitats and permafrost stability. We present a robust, portable device that measures detailed temperature-depth-profiles of the near-surface sediments in less than 1 hour. Test campaigns in the Canadian Arctic and on Svalbard have demonstrated its utility in a range of environments during winter and summer. Measured temperatures were spatially heterogeneous, even within single water bodies. We observed the broadest temperature range in water less than 1 m deep, indicating that the bottom-fast ice zone is overlooked by single measurements in deeper water.

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A geothermal heat flow probe for in situ measurement of both temperature gradient and thermal conductivity

Cited by 12 publications

References 8 publications

Planetary heat flow measurements

Planetary heat flow measurements

Prelaunch performance evaluation of the cometary experiment MUPUS‐TP

Brief communication: Testing a portable Bullard-type temperature lance confirms highly spatially heterogeneous sediment temperatures under shallow water bodies in the Arctic

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