Thermo-hydro-mechanical response of a large piled raft equipped with energy piles: a parametric study

This paper presents the results of a parametric study in which a series of fully coupled, 3-dimensional thermo-hydro-mechanical Finite Element (FE) analyses has been conducted to investigate the effects of the thermal changes imposed by the regular performance of a GSHP system driven by energy piles on a very large piled raft. The FE simulation program has been focused mainly on the evaluation of the following crucial aspects of the energy system design: the assessment of the soil–pile–raft interaction effects during thermal loading conditions; the quantification of the influence of the thermal properties of the soil and of the geometrical layout of the energy piles on the soil–foundation system response, and the evaluation of the influence of the active pile spacing on the thermal performance of the GSHP–energy pile system. The results of the numerical simulations show that the soil–pile–raft interaction effects can be very important. In particular, the presence of a relatively rigid raft in direct contact with the soil is responsible for axial load variations in inactive piles of the same order of those experienced by the thermo-active piles, even when the latter are relatively far and temperature changes in inactive piles are small. As far as the effect of pile spacing is concerned, the numerical simulations show that placing a high number of energy piles in a large piled raft with relatively small pile spacings can lead to a significant reduction of the overall heat exchange from the piles to the soil, thus reducing the thermal efficiency of the system.