Finite-element modelling of thermo-mechanical soil-structure interaction in a thermo-active cement column buried in London Clay

Geothermal energy attracted considerable attention over the past years, as it has been considered as a green, renewable and sustainable energy source. Several attempts were made to use existing infrastructure to extract it with minimum amount of additional construction cost, such as foundation piles. This, however, raises issues regarding the thermal degradation of material properties and hence structural integrity. This paper presents a practical approach to modeling thermo-mechanical soil-structure interaction using loadtransfer analysis and then shown an application to a recent thermal response test of a cement column buried in London Clay. The proposed model was able to reproduce the observed field behavior including the formation of thermal tensile cracks and it is therefore considered appropriate for future modeling of such thermomechanical soil-structure interaction problems.