An assessment of a model of heat and moisture transfer in unsaturated soil

An assessment of the validity of a theoretical formulation of coupled heat and moisture in non-deforming unsaturated soil is presented, This was achieved by comparison of results from the theoretical formulation with those obtained from controlled laboratory heating experiments, The work centred on one material, a highly compacted medium sand, for which the thermophysical parameters had been established independently of the heating experiments, A solution of the theoretical formulation was achieved by means of a numerical analysis, using the finite difference method, Very good correlations were achieved between experimental and numerical results, Confidence in the ability of the theoretical formulation to describe fully the physical processes involved is thus enhanced, Application of these conclusions to problems of heat and moisture transfer in non-deforming, cohesionless soils in general is now considered possible, The numerical results were achieved using parallel computing techniques, This methodology was shown to perform very efficiently, yielding a simulation of the full range of the transient behaviour for all the experiments considered, The potential of parallel computing systems for the solution of a computationally demanding problem of this type is thus revealed.