A simplified method for evaluating temperature effect on the behavior of layered soil with a time-varying cylindrical heat source

Abstract

The engineering application of cylindrical heat source usually influences the characteristics of the surrounding soil and induces significant coupling responses of temperature, seepage and stress fields. This paper presents a numerical investigation into the thermo-hydraulic-mechanical (THM) coupling behavior of layered soils surrounding a cylindrical heat source by combining the analytical layer element method (ALEM) and the finite element method (FEM). The FEM is utilized to analyze the soil-cylindrical heat source interaction and the ALEM is used to obtain the fundamental solution of the layered soil. Then the THM coupling solution between the heat source and the soil is obtained by the simplified FEM-ALEM coupling method. Detailed validation against experimental result, and verifications against semi-analytical solution and numerical results by Comsol Multiphysics are performed to confirm the robustness of the present method, followed by extensive parametric studies to examine the effects of decaying half-life and type of the time-varying heat source, and the soil layered characteristics on the behavior of soils. It’s evident that the present method is accessible and can be implemented via common programming language, e.g. Fortran.