In this paper, it was described that the determination of soil thermal diffusivity could be obtained by using a simple apparatus.
The simple apparatus was consisted of a cylindrical container, a incandescent lamp and a measuring system. The test soil was packed into the container and the soil surface was heated by the incandescent lamp from above. The temperatures in the soil were measured by using the thermocouples. On the other hand, the theoretical solution of the problem in conduction of heat of this case was given using four parameters. One of these parameters was the thermal diff usivity of the soil.
The parameters could be estimated by the coincidence of the calculated soil temperatures from the theoretical solution with the measured ones. The method is based on the least-squares estimation of non-linear parameters.
For the purpose of the widest ultilization of this method, Fortran program was shown to obtain four parameters above described.