August 2015 Atacama campaign

These experimental data were obtained in August 2015, in the Atacama desert, Chile. They have been carried out in a similar way than those described in the paper March et al., 2012

The soil was just prepared by removing rocks and gravels, giving an approximately flat zone. The hearths have been managed simply by firing wood pieces directly on the soil. Temperatures were measured with a datalogger (Omega Multi-Input Thermometer RDXL8, accepting 8 simultaneous entries) with thermocouples (type K, gained with inconel 600, 3 mm diameter) distributed on the surface and inside the soil under the hearths. The location of these thermocouples is not known a priori, because they were inserted in the soil, at some regular distance between them. Combustion was maintained between 3 and 7 hours by adding wood regularly. Twenty-four hours later, each hearth was excavated following the same protocol. A laser theodolite was used to measure at discrete points the contour of the hearth (after removing ashes and spreading some water on the soil, the heating zone appears more clearly) and the spatial location of each thermocouple. As thermocouples are flexible rods, it is possible that their head move a bit during the excavation: for this reason, we roughly estimate that the accuracy of their position is about 2 mm.

There was financial support from an ECOS-Sud project (France-Chile, 2012-2016, managed by Ramiro March and Calogero Santoro).

The different contributions to the data are as follows:

Ramiro March performed the experiment on the site (he gathered the wood, prepared the hearth with the thermocouples, and lit the fire, recorded the measurements). He was assisted by Wilfredo Faundes, Cecilia Loredo and Felipe March.

Calogero Santoro choose the site in the Atacama desert, organized the voyage that lasted four days (lodging and transport of people and equipment).

Renaud Delannay provided most of equipment, and got from funding from the University of Rennes 1 (France).

The Excel documents contain the record of temperature at thermal sensors, stored in the first sheet named 'Temperature'; the location of the thermal sensors (thermocouples) and the outerlimit of the heating at the soil surface can be found in the second sheet named 'Other data'.

Experiment 1 (2015-08-13): temperature + other data

Experiment 2 (2015-08-15): temperature + other data

Experiment 3 (2015-08-17): temperature + other data

These raw data have been processed by inverse method by Édouard Canot; the main results are described in the following paper: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02078646v1

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