Tailored thermo-active geostructures for energy performance optimisation

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Project problem:In urban settings ground source energy systems are commonly deployed by embedding heat exchanger pipes into geotechnical structures, such as piled foundations. Despite obvious advantages, their deployment rate in the UK is considerably lower than in Europe. This has been attributed to greater concerns of the impact of temperature variations on structural safety and the long-term inter-related thermal and mechanical performance of those structures.Project summary:The project will seek to explore tailored improvements in the soil and soil-pile system for optimised thermal and mechanical performance and will address the long-term mechanical response of thermal piles. The project will involve a combination of experimental and computational work. This will include cyclic thermal testing of different soil type, different improved soils, enhanced soil-pile interface, and different soil-pile configurations, and the finite element modelling of the soil-pile system to optimise the design and performance of thermo-active geostructures. This project will capitalise on and be aligned to the £1.6M EPSRC SaFEGround project: Sustainable, flexible and efficient ground-source heating and cooling systems, in collaboration with Imperial College London.