Predicting the volumetric heat capacity of freezing soils using the soil freezing characteristic curve

The heat capacity during the freezing process is a vital hydrothermal parameter. It is difficult to experimentally measure the heat capacity of freezing soils. Therefore, in this study, we proposed a new method to estimate the volumetric heat capacity based on the combination of the weighted arithmetic mean model for volumetric heat capacity and soil freezing characteristic curve (SFCC) estimation model. Five specific heat capacity models for solid particle and six SFCC estimation models were introduced. It can be concluded that the six SFCC-based volumetric heat capacity models with specific heat capacity of solid particle = 0.725 MJMg-1K-1-1 K- 1 exhibited the best performance. Among the six SFCC-based volumetric heat capacity models, the Kong et al-based volumetric heat capacity model has the best performance in predicting the volumetric heat capacity. The predicted SFCC-based volumetric heat capacity model is easy to use and can be applied to mimic the variation of volumetric heat capacity with subzero temperature.