Abstract
During the construction of a large chimney at the Porto Tolle power station, a settlement-monitoring program disclosed unusual yet periodic deflections in the performance of the pile-supported concrete foundation, in addition to the expected settlements due to soil consolidation. A special monitoring program using embedded thermocouples revealed that the deflections were seasonal and related to thermal gradients in the soil-foundation system. It is concluded that in some cases stresses caused by seasonal temperature oscillations should be considered in the design phase of foundations. A simple heat transfer analysis is applied which can be used to estimate the highest temperature gradient to be expected.
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