Thermoplastic Analysis of a Thermoactive Pile in a Normally Consolidated Clay
Publication: International Journal of Geomechanics
Volume 17, Issue 1
Abstract
The use of shallow geothermal systems for buildings and infrastructure conditioning has numerous recognized environmental and potential economic benefits and is expected to contribute to climate change mitigation. These systems are already used in many countries and are foreseen in many more. The study of their behavior is a subject of current research interest, including thermoactive or energy geostructures. In this work the mechanical effects of a thermal action, reflecting seasonal atmospheric conditions prevalent in Lisbon, Portugal, on a single 20-m-long thermoactive floating pile with different load levels, embedded in a normally consolidated saturated clay (speshwhite kaolin), are evaluated. For this purpose a critical state elastoplastic soil model with thermal hardening was formulated, implemented, and calibrated with experimental results for thermal expansion available in the literature. The numerical analyses performed revealed that the mechanical effects on the pile caused by thermal action can be significant.
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Published In
International Journal of Geomechanics
Volume 17 • Issue 1 • January 2017
Copyright
© 2016 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jun 29, 2015
Accepted: Feb 1, 2016
Published online: Mar 30, 2016
Discussion open until: Aug 30, 2016
Published in print: Jan 1, 2017
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