This year I have been honoured to be asked to give the Geotechnical Engineering Lecture on the basis of the my paper Thermal Response Testing through the Chalk Aquifer, which was published in Proc ICE Geotechnical Engineering in 2013. Thermal response tests are an in situ technique to measure the thermal conductivity of the ground, i.e how well it will conduct heat to or from a ground heat exchanger. In the paper, myself and my co-autors talk about how in complex ground conditions, notably layered soils and where groundwater is flowing, there may not be a simple single value of soil thermal conductivity and to interpret thermal response tests in this way can be misleading. Since this paper was published I have also done a lot of work on looking at how we can use thermal response tests with energy piles, my main area of work. Therefore I am also going to include in the lecture some information about when thermal response tests can be used with energy piles and when they probably shouldn’t be.

The lecture will be on the 12th November at the Institution of Civil Engineers. It is free to attend, but you have to register first. There is more information about the lecture on the British Geotechnical Association webpage here and you can register online on the ICE site here.

You can also read the original paper here: 2013 TRT Chalk Aquifer.