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Abstract

Thermal conductivity (l) is an essential physical property of minerals and rocks and fundamental in constraining the thermal field of the lithosphere. In case that adequate samples to measure l are not available, it could be indirectly inferred from calculation. One of the most widely applied indirect methods for rocks involve modal mineralogy and porosity as parameters that are incorporated into mathematical mean or mixing models. Robust inferences from these approaches for crystalline rocks were impeded by a small number of studied samples or restriction to certain rock types. We employ this method and examine its applicability to low-porosity plutonic rocks by calculating bulk thermal conductivity lb for 45 samples covering the entire range from gabbro/diorite to granite. We show that the use of the harmonic-mean (HM) model for both rock matrix and porosity provided a good match between λb.meas and λb.calc of < 10% deviation (2s), with relative and absolute errors amounting to 1.4 ± 9.7% and 4.4 ± 4.9% respectively. The results of our study constitute a big step forward to a robust conclusion on the overall applicability of the HM model for inferring lb of isotropic, low-porosity, mafic to silicic plutonic and metamorphic rocks with an acceptable magnitude of error. Drill cuttings and enclaves form particularly interesting objects for application of this method, as they are poorly suited for direct l measurement. Well-derived l values for those rocks would permit to calculate heat flow and to model more profoundly the thermal state of the deeper lithosphere.