Floating Thermal Piles in Soft Sensitive Clays

Conference contribution, 2017

Thermal piles are building foundation piles which, in addition to transferring the load of the building to the ground, are also used as heat exchangers to provide thermal exchange with the ground. This article shortly presents field testing of thermal piles installed in soft sensitive clay in Gothenburg. The aim of the field tests is to study the thermo-mechanical response of the heating and cooling cycles on the pile/clay system, and to gather representative data for further analysis. The soil properties have been determined from traditional sampling, complemented with a new block sampling method. Instrumentation for measuring pore pressures, temperatures and settlements has been installed at different levels in the soil and at different distances from the test piles. A state-of-the-art thermal response test rig has been developed to perform response testing in both heating and cooling modes. The first heating cycle started in December 2016.