Abstract
A new temperature-controlled oedometer has been designed at Imperial College London and commissioned to investigate the thermo-hydro-mechanical behaviour of soils. Under oedometric conditions, temperature can be varied between 5°C and 70°C, by submerging the specimen in a temperature-controlled water bath. This temperature range is appropriate for the proposed applications of the research: design of ground-source heating/cooling systems, and design of geological disposal facilities for nuclear waste. In this paper, an overview of the new equipment is given: its design, development, and calibration. First, the literature on temperature-controlled oedometer schemes is reviewed. A description of the equipment follows, with further details on the innovations and limitations of this design. As the equipment has been modified and improved over the course of the research, so too has the calibration procedure. These developments are discussed, again with the focus on innovations and limitations. Finally, a test programme and preliminary results are presented, for saturated KSS, an artificial mixture of kaolin clay, silt, and sand. These include isobaric (constant-pressure) heating tests, for a variety of loading histories. Over-consolidation ratio is found to affect the thermally-induced volume change.
Highlights
A new, temperature-controlled oedometer has been developed at Imperial College London to provide highquality data relating to the thermo-hydro-mechanical behaviour of soils
Where ΔV is the thermally-induced volume change, and V0 is the volume at the start of the test
The normally-consolidated specimen contracts during heating and subsequent cooling, the gradient of the cooling path is smaller. The overconsolidated specimens both expand during heating, with the amount of expansion increasing for the higher over-consolidation ratios (OCRs) value
Summary
A new, temperature-controlled oedometer has been developed at Imperial College London to provide highquality data relating to the thermo-hydro-mechanical behaviour of soils.The paper is organised as follows: First, there is a review of other temperature-controlled oedometer schemes from the literature, focussing on key developments, and specific aspects of soil behaviour. A new, temperature-controlled oedometer has been developed at Imperial College London to provide highquality data relating to the thermo-hydro-mechanical behaviour of soils. The design and development of the new temperature-controlled oedometer at Imperial College London is outlined, followed by the calibration of the equipment. Ground source heating/cooling systems, which can be used to heat and cool buildings in a sustainable way, without burning fossil fuels. This temperature-controlled oedometer can be used for testing soils at above and below ambient temperature, and so is able to simulate both the heating and cooling modes of such systems. As part of a system of multiple, passive, natural and engineered barriers, lowpermeability swelling clay will be used as the buffer between the vitrified waste and the surrounding host
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