Abstract
The temperature of subsea pipeline, approximately as high as $100^{\circ}C$, is significantly higher than the temperature of surrounding sea water and sediment. In this reason, heat can be lost from the subsea pipeline to cause serious operation problem. Therefore it is important that the subsea pipeline must be designed to ensure that heat loss is small enough. Heat loss of unburied pipeline is higher than buried pipeline. For that purpose, trenching and backfilling system is a commonly used method for maintaining flow assurance in subsea pipeline installation. For this commonly used method, knowing thermal conductivity of backfill is essential to protect a heat loss of pipeline. This paper presents thermal conductivity of backfill soil using laboratory model test and numerical analysis for various backfill. In conclusion, it can be seen that higher the sand content of the man-made backfill sample, the higher the thermal conductivity. On the other hand, as the water content increases, the thermal conductivity becomes smaller.
