A model for temperature variations in sedimentary basins due to random radiogenic heat sources |
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| Authors: | Kirti Srivastava & R N Singh |
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| Institution: | National Geophysical Research Institute, Uppal Road, Hyderabad 500 007, India. E-mail:;, CSIR Center for Mathematical Modeling and Computer Simulation (C-MMACS), Bangalore 560 037, India |
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| Abstract: | The thermal structure of a sedimentary basin is controlled by its thermal conductivity, its boundary conditions, water flow, rate of sedimentation and erosion and radiogenic heat sources. The radiogenic heat production in the sediments is known to vary over several orders of magnitude, with the lowest values in evaporites and carbonates and the highest values in black shales. Due to a paucity of information available on the existing heat sources, this parameter can be represented with a known mean value and a Gaussian correlation structure rather than a deterministic function. In this paper, the 1-D steady-state thermal structure in a sedimentary basin has been modelled in a stochastic framework with a random radiogenic heat source, and analytical expressions for the first two moments of the temperature field have been obtained. A synthetic example has been examined to quantify the error bounds on the temperature field due to uncertainties in the radiogenic heat sources. |
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| Keywords: | heat flow perturbation method sedimentary basin |
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