Analysis of Temperature Anomalies during Thermal Monitoring of Frozen Wall Formation

Abstract

The paper describes a distributed temperature sensing system that was used to monitor the artificial freezing of soils during the construction of a potash mine shaft. The technique of reconstructing the temperature field by solving the inverse problem in the entire volume of frozen soils using the measured temperatures in four thermal monitoring (TM) wells is described. Two local anomalies in temperature distributions in TM wells are described and analyzed theoretically using thermo-hydraulic modeling. The first anomaly concerns the asymmetric temperature distribution in one of the soil layers and is associated with the influence of natural groundwater flow in the horizontal direction. The second anomaly consists of a sharp decrease in water temperature in the section of the TM well located inside the freezing contour. Calculations showed that it is most likely associated with the entry of cold groundwater from the overlying layers of soils through a well filter at a depth of 160 m and the subsequent movement of the water up the well.

Keywords

• artificial ground freezing
• thermal monitoring
• frozen wall
• groundwater flow
• thermo-hydraulic modeling