Abstract: As a new type of newly arisen nondestructive testing technology, the conduction of infrared imaging technique is based on changes of the objects’ temperature field, which is widely used in the detection of objects’ structure state, properties, internal defects, etc. at present. In order to explore nondestructive testing method for potassium silicate(PS) reinforced earthen ruins soil, adopting the disturbed soil collected from site of Jiaohe Ruins to make soil models, halves of which are reinforced by 10% PS; and the others are untreated. And to keep the PS reinforced soil models standing for 30 d under the condition of room temperature until being naturally air-dried. And then, a laboratory model test detecting the reinforcement effect of PS through infrared imaging is conducted. It is shown that the PS hinders the heat transfer process of soil; besides, there is difference in the infrared thermal images for the PS reinforced soil and the PS untreated soil, which provides a possible method to carry out the non-destructive inspection of the reinforcement effect for earthen ruins soil. Finally, field test that micro-penetrometer detected the PS reinforcement effect and the determination test of the thermal conductivity are conducted; and the test results show that the reason for the difference in the heat conduction performance of the reinforced soil and the untreated soil is that PS reinforcement decreases the thermal conductivity and enhances the mechanical strength of earthen ruins soil

Key words: infrared imaging technique, temperature field, potassium silicate (PS) materials, earthen ruins, thermal conductivity, micro-penetromete