• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.167-174
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• 2008

Line source model is commonly used in analyzing the data obtained from thermal response test to estimate the effective soil formation thermal conductivity. In the application of line source model some part of initial data must be ignored in order to achieve more accurate result. The period of time for this initial data is called initial ignoring time(IIT) in this paper. However there has been no definite rule in determining this initial ignoring time. Therefore line source model requires experienced analyzer to select the useful data, which is somewhat subjective. One method often suggested is the calculation of IIT with non dimensional time $\tau=5$. However, this is a very theoretical result derived from a system of perfect line source model, which is somewhat different from the real system. A new method to determine IIT is presented in this study. This method requires error estimation first and IIT can be decided from the results of error estimation. This method is applied in the analysis of field test data and shows better result than the one obtained from the method using non dimensional time mentioned above as shown in Table 2.