AN EVALUATION OF HEAT FLOW TRANSDUCERS AS A MEANS OF DETERMINING SOIL HEAT FLOW

摘要

From data the author obtained on the Dallas Tower Program, an Investigation Is made of the responses of several newly-designed heat flow transducers In the soli under varying meteorological con¬ditions. The Fourier heat conduction equation is used as a standard In evaluating the transducers' ability to represent surface soil heat flow. The results show that acceptable performance of the plates in the measurement of heat flow is possible although in general should not be expected without thorough testing, and even then there are restrictive considerations, primarily in depth of place¬ment. This holds for averaging periods as short as 15 min, although better results are obtained with longer time Intervals. The results also show that the new transducers are much more accurate than the older standard types, and that consistent variations in response are not introduced by variations In soil moisture.