68th Canadian Geotechnical Conference and 7th Canadian Permafrost Conference

TIME EVOLUTION OF THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY AND INTRINSIC PERMEABILITY OF A SNOW COVER

Session: Laboratory and Insitu Testing in Cold Regions / Essais en laboratoires et essais in situ pour les régions nordiques

Olivier Lachance, Université Laval (Canada)
Jean Côté, Université Laval (Canada)

This paper presents the experimental results of a study on the time-evolution of the intrinsic permeability, thermal conductivity and porosity of a single snow layer. Undisturbed snow batches were collected at Laval University in the winter of 2014 at weekly intervals. They were later reworked to produce samples of different porosities. The experimental results obtained for the different samples ranged from 3.59 x 10-9 to 8.71 x 10-11 m2 for the permeability and from 0.089 to 0.372 W/mK for conductivity with porosity varying from 0.46 up to 0.80. A temporal evolution of the relation permeability-porosity has been observed and an effective radius corresponding to each snow batch and sample was obtained using an existing permeability model (Calonne et al. (2012)). That radius has allowed the quantification of the temporal evolution process. A structure effect resulting from compaction has also been noticed on the thermal conductivity measurements of fresh snow samples.