A Capillary Bundle Model for the Electrical Conductivity of Saturated Frozen Porous Media
Haoliang Luo, Damien Jougnot, Anne Jost, Jidong Teng, Lương Duy Thành
Abstract
Abstract Liquid water in frozen porous media provides the path for moisture and solute migration, which is one of the essential problems to study thaw‐weakening and frost‐heave in freezing region engineering. Determining and monitoring liquid water saturation and permeability in saturated frozen porous media are therefore critical issues in cold regions. To this end, geophysical methods are tools of choice given their non‐invasive nature. Electrical conductivity as a physical property is related to both the bulk characteristics of saturated porous medium submitted to frozen temperatures, like porosity as well as liquid water content, and surface properties, such as the solid surface‐liquid water and bulk ice‐liquid water interfaces. In this study, we upscale a microstructural procedure of liquid water‐saturated frozen soils to predict the electrical conductivity with different pore size distributions (PSDs). Then, we analyze the model sensitivity to the model parameters and compare the lognormal and fractal PSD models. Furthermore, the proposed model successfully predicts the experimental data of electrical conductivity for different samples from experiments that are part of this work and published data. The proposed model for characterizing electrical conductivity opens up new possibilities to describe the distribution and dynamics of liquid water with geoelectrical and electromagnetic techniques in frozen environments.