In soil distributed temperature measurements for small scale physical models

A distributed temperature optical fibre sensors system with a sub-centimetre spatial resolution has been incorporated in a sand-box model. The aim is to monitor the temperature field induced in the sand by a horizontal water flow with inflowing water maintained at a constant temperature higher than the room temperature. It is shown that by distributed fibre optic sensors accurate temperature mapping in a soil sample can be obtained. The measurements has such a richness of detail which is not comparable with that achievable with any other system of point-wise sensors.