Abstract
Accurate design of energy geostructures such as energy piles requires an exact prediction of soil thermal responses close to the embedded heat sources in the ground. In saturated soil, both heat conduction and heat convection facilitate heat transfer in the soil medium. Conventional analyses of heat transfer in saturated porous medium classified heat convection into two categories: (i) natural convection that could happen in the hydrostatic condition and (ii) forced convection that occurs due to the groundwater flow in the soil medium. This paper demonstrates that, in the presence of groundwater flow, the natural convection in the form of buoyancy-driven flow plays a prominent role in temperature distribution through saturated soil as well as the forced convection. A finite element analysis is performed to study the effects of groundwater velocity and soil permeability on the behavior of a fluid-saturated porous medium (soil). The results confirm that neglecting the natural convection can lead to inaccurate results. Furthermore, a novel expression is defined to estimate the importance of natural convection in heat transfer mechanisms in the soil medium.
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