Refraction of heat flow on subsurface contrast structures – the influence both on geothermal measurements and interpretation approaches

Abstract

The paper deals with some problems of the heat flow refractions on the subsurface
structures with contrasting thermal conductivities. The qualitative and quantitative
analyses of these effects were made on the selected structure configurations. Analysed
structures are important particularly for the study of temperature as well as heat flow
density distributions influencing the Earth’s heat flow measurements, the construction of
terrestrial heat flow distribution maps and also for the interpretation of the heat flow
density data. The related 2D and 3D mathematical problems were solved by means of
the finite difference methods. The presented results have a great importance both for the
solution of some problems of the applied geothermics (e.g. determination of the heat flow
density values from measured data, their accuracy, eventual data corrections and relation
of measured data to the surface heat flow density distributions) and also for the modelling
of the thermal state of the lithosphere (e.g. determination of the boundary conditions
and of the model check parameters, robustness of the modelling approaches, etc.).