Thermophysical properties of diorites along with the prediction of thermal conductivity from porosity and density data

The main focus of this paper involves the use of models to predict the thermophysical properties of diorites. For the prediction of thermal conductivity, an existing mixing law and empirical models have been used. Due to the porosity dependence in all the existing models, ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials) standard methods have been applied to measure the density, porosity, and specific gravity of diorite rocks taken from the Shewa-Shahbaz Garhi volcanic complex near Mardan, Pakistan. The chemical composition of these samples has been analyzed using the X-ray florescence technique. The theoretically calculated values of specific gravity and the density of the specimen based on the chemical composition and porosity are in good agreement with those obtained from experimental measurements at ambient conditions. The thermal conductivity and thermal diffusivity of these rocks have been measured simultaneously using the transient plane source (TPS) technique at room temperature. The effective thermal conductivity calculated from various models is in agreement with the experimental data within 15%. Simple correlations between estimated density and porosity and between the effective thermal conductivity and porosity are also established.