TY - GEN
T1 - Innovations in the centrifuge modelling of energy pile behaviour in unsaturated soil
AU - Leung, A. K.
AU - Vitali, D.
AU - Ma, L.
AU - Zhao, Rui
N1 - The authors thank the research funding provided by Energy Technology Partnership (ETP), Scottish Road Research Board (SRRB) from Transport Scotland and the EPSRC Doctoral Training Award.
PY - 2019/10/14
Y1 - 2019/10/14
N2 - Installing a row of discretely-spaced energy piles at the mid-height of an unsaturated soil slope has been proposed as an innovative means to increase the slope stability and also to harvest solar and geothermal energy for road surface de-icing. Centrifuge modelling of the thermomechanical interaction between unsaturated soils and energy piles is challenging. This paper aims to share three new inventions to improve our capabilities of modelling unsaturated soil-energy structure interaction in a geotechnical centrifuge, namely (i) small-scale model reinforced concrete (RC), to capture the thermomechanical behaviour and nonlinear quasi-brittleness of RC energy piles in prototype; (ii) centrifuge-mounted heating system, to deliver/extract heat energy into/from a model structure during a centrifuge flight; and (iii) large-size direct-shear box apparatus, to test the shearing behaviour of unsaturated soils, with and without reinforcing elements, under realistic stress and suction regimes. The performance of these inventions on an unsaturated soil-energy pile system relevant to the engineering application above is discussed in this paper.
AB - Installing a row of discretely-spaced energy piles at the mid-height of an unsaturated soil slope has been proposed as an innovative means to increase the slope stability and also to harvest solar and geothermal energy for road surface de-icing. Centrifuge modelling of the thermomechanical interaction between unsaturated soils and energy piles is challenging. This paper aims to share three new inventions to improve our capabilities of modelling unsaturated soil-energy structure interaction in a geotechnical centrifuge, namely (i) small-scale model reinforced concrete (RC), to capture the thermomechanical behaviour and nonlinear quasi-brittleness of RC energy piles in prototype; (ii) centrifuge-mounted heating system, to deliver/extract heat energy into/from a model structure during a centrifuge flight; and (iii) large-size direct-shear box apparatus, to test the shearing behaviour of unsaturated soils, with and without reinforcing elements, under realistic stress and suction regimes. The performance of these inventions on an unsaturated soil-energy pile system relevant to the engineering application above is discussed in this paper.
KW - Energy pile
KW - unsaturated soil
KW - soil-pile thermomechanical interaction
KW - centrifuge modelling
UR - http://seags.ait.asia/16arc-proceedings/16arc-proceedings/
UR - https://www.scopus.com/record/display.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85083813453&origin=inward&txGid=bfc7bb4b060ebd01aca1c1dc5db688bc
M3 - Conference contribution
BT - Proceedings of the 16th Asian Regional Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering
PB - Southeast Asian Geotechnical Society
ER -