An empirical relationship between thermal conductivity and elastic wave velocities in sandstone

Abstract

Measurements in three samples of very clean quartz sandstone in the porosity range 4–16 %, under dry and 100 % water‐saturated conditions, show that P‐ and S‐wave velocities are linearly correlated with thermal conductivity. The experimental results agree with the theoretical relation between seismic velocities (predicted by the Kuster and Toksöz model (1974)) and thermal conductivity (predicted by weighted geometric mean).