Energy foundation technology is expected to make a significant contribution to the use of renewable energy. In this context, this paper presents the use of Finite Element simulation using PLAXIS software for modelling different benchmark applications in Geothermal Foundations. An implicit fully-coupled numerical scheme with global adaptive time stepping are implemented to ensure computational efficiency and stability. Firstly, a transient simulation of thermal response tests often used to estimate the thermal conductivity of ground and thermal resistance of pile, is presented. In the second part, a Thermo-Hydro-Mechanical analysis is performed to simulate the behavior of a single heat pile subject to a thermal load cycle. Several ingredients (constitutive behavior, interface finite elements etc.) are employed to simulate soil-structure interactions. The obtained solutions are validated against available simulation and experimental data to demonstrate the applicability of the simulator to energy foundation analysis and design.
This article was published at the 2nd International Conference on Energy Geotechnics (ICEGT 2020) and available here: https://doi.org/10.1051/e3sconf/202020506004
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.