Software and model configuration for in situ measurement of thermophysical properties

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze and evaluate the effects of software and model configuration upon the determination of the thermophysical properties based on in situ measurement results. The scope of this study is the evaluation of effective thermophysical properties, namely, heat conductivity and thermal diffusivity of a subsurface rock formation. The in situ measurement data used for this study includes 135 thermophysical property measurements conducted at Yucca Mountain (YM), Nevada, between May 1998 and October 2000, with three in situ thermal probes; and six thermophysical property measurements taken with one thermal probe at the Waldo Mine, New Mexico, in 1988.; The method of this study is the comparison between evaluation results using a qualified evaluation software that allows for the implementation of various model configurations. In addition, the results of a previous, unqualified software version will be used for scoping comparisons. The qualification of the evaluation software, the research tool for the study, is part of the thesis. The conclusions of this study prove that variations in model configuration used for measurement evaluation may significantly affect the results. It is also shown that computational test cases can be used most efficiently to analyze the effect of model configuration upon the evaluation results. The most reliable results appear to be obtained from model configurations involving the evaluations of the largest amounts of data simultaneously, fitting model to measurements using least square-fit.