Neues Paper: "Thermo-elasto-plasticity and thermo-mechanical creep for energy pile systems" in "Géotechnique Letters"

22.04.2026

Thermo-mechanical processes play a key role in the behaviour of energy geostructures, particularly under cyclic thermal loading. This paper presents an extension of the AVISA-T framework to incorporate thermally accelerated creep, enabling a consistent description of coupled thermo–elasto–plastic and time-dependent soil behaviour. The model is validated against non-isothermal laboratory tests and applied to the simulation of a well-instrumented energy pile in multilayered soft soils. The results show that thermo-mechanical creep leads to significant irreversible settlements due to cumulative volumetric contraction during thermal cycles. By distinguishing between thermo-elastic, thermo-plastic, and creep-driven mechanisms, the study highlights the importance of advanced constitutive modelling for reliable long-term predictions of energy geostructures.

 M. Rafai, Merita Tafili, Y. Dong, P. J. Vardon: Thermo-elasto-plasticity and thermo-mechanical creep for energy pile systems. Geotechnique Letters, 2026. DOI: 10.1680/jgele.25.00111