PLAXIS 2D Tutorial 16: Thermal expansion of a navigable lock

A navigable lock is temporarily 'empty' due to maintenance. After some time there is significant increase of the air temperature, which causes thermal expansion of the inner side of the lock, while the soil-side of the concrete block remains relatively cold. This leads to backward bending of the wall and, consequently, to increased lateral stress in the soil behind the wall and increased bending moments in the wall itself.

Figure 1. Temperature distribution around the concrete lock (in magenta/red)

This example demonstrates the use of the Thermal module to analyse this kind of situations.

  This exercise requires the PlaxFlow module and Termal module in order to be able to perform transient groundwater flow calculations in combination with thermal calculations.