The integrity of cast-in-place foundation piles is a major concern in geotechnical engineering. In this study, distributed fibre optic sensing (DFOS) cables, embedded in a pile during concreting, are used to measure the changes in concrete curing temperature profile to infer concrete cover thickness through modelling of heat transfer processes within the concrete and adjacent ground. A field trial was conducted at a high-rise building construction site in London during the construction of a 51 m long test pile. DFOS cables were attached to the reinforcement cage of the pile at four different axial directions to obtain distributed temperature change data along the pile. The monitoring data shows a clear development of concrete hydration temperature with time and the pattern of the change varies due to small changes in concrete cover. A one-dimensional axisymmetric heat transfer finite element (FE) model is used to estimate the pile geometry with depth by back analysing the DFOS data. The results show that the estimated pile diameter varies with depth in the range between 1.40 and 1.56 m for this instrumented pile. This average pile diameter profile compares well to that obtained with the standard Thermal Integrity Profiling (TIP) method. A parametric study is conducted to examine the sensitivity of concrete and soil thermal properties on estimating the pile geometry.

Thermo-active diaphragm walls that combine load bearing ability with a ground source heat pump (GSHP) are considered to be one of the new technologies in geotechnical engineering. Despite the vast range of potential applications, current thermo-active diaphragm wall designs have very limited use from a geotechnical aspect. This paper investigates the wall–soil interaction behaviour of a thermo-active diaphragm wall by conducting a thermo-hydro-mechanical finite element analysis. The GSHP operates by circulating cold coolant into the thermo-active diaphragm wall during winter. Soil contraction and small changes in the earth pressures acting on the wall are observed. The strain reversal effect makes the soil stiffness increase when the wall moves in the unexcavated side direction, and hence gives different trends for long-term wall movements compared to the linear elastic model. The GSHP operation makes the wall move in a cyclic manner, and the seasonal variation is approximately 0.5–1 mm, caused by two factors: the thermal effects on the deformation of the diaphragm wall itself and the thermally induced volume change of the soil and pore water. In addition, it is found that the change in bending moment of the wall due to the seasonal GSHP cycle is caused mainly by the thermal differential across the wall during the winter, because the seasonal changes in earth pressures acting on the diaphragm wall are very limited.

The thermo-hydro-mechanical (THM) response of a 23 m long thermal pile previously tested at Lambeth College in London, UK was investigated by conducting a THM finite-element analysis using an advanced thermoelastoplastic constitutive model. It was found that the thermal conductivity of the soil and the reloading/swelling stiffness parameter of the model largely govern the behaviour of the thermal pile when the simulated results were compared to the measured data for pile head displacement, distributed strain inside the pile and ground temperatures during the cooling and heating cycles. The pile head movement is mainly affected by the thermal expansion coefficient of the pile concrete as well as the location of the neutral point, where the shaft resistance direction changes from the mechanical loading only condition. Additionally, the results show that the thermally generated axial stresses in the pile are governed by the magnitude of soil stiffness along the pile depth as well as by the relative values of thermally induced expansion/contraction of three materials (concrete, soil skeleton and pore water). The effect of the thermally induced plastic behaviour of the soil was limited in the Lambeth College case due to the heavily overconsolidated nature of London Clay.

Thermo-active piles that couple load bearing with ground source heat pump systems are one of the new technologies in geotechnical engineering. This paper investigates the pile–soil interaction behaviour of a thermo-active pile in overconsolidated London clay by conducting a thermo-hydro-mechanical finite element analysis using an advanced soil constitutive model. Negative and positive excess pore pressures are computed around the pile during cooling and heating, respectively. However, the difference in the radial effective stress acting on the pile–soil interface between the cooling and heating stages is small, and the pile–soil interaction is governed by the shear mobilization associated with thermally induced cyclic movements of pile expansion and contraction. During the first cooling stage, the shear stress at a small portion in the upper part of the pile reaches close to the yield values, which leads to an additional settlement about 3 mm from the original mechanical load–induced settlement of 2 mm. The shear stresses in subsequent heating and cooling cycles are much smaller than the ultimate shear stress values, because of the heavily overconsolidated nature of the London clay.

Integrity testing of deep cast in situ concrete foundations is challenging due to the intrinsic nature of how these foundations are formed. Several integrity test methods have been developed and are well established, but each of these have strengths and weaknesses. A relatively recent integrity testing method is thermal integrity testing. The fundamental feature is the early age concrete release of heat during curing; anomalies such as voids, necking, bulging and/or soil intrusion inside the concrete body result in local temperature variations. Temperature sensors installed on the reinforcement cage collect detailed temperature data along the entire pile during concrete curing to allow empirical identification of these temperature variations. This article investigates a new approach to the interpretation of the temperature variations from thermal integrity testing of cast in situ concrete piles and presents a field case study of this approach. The approach uses the heat of hydration and heat transfer theory and employs numerical modelling using the finite element method. The finite element model can be customised for different concrete mixes and pile geometries. The predicted temperature profile from the numerical model is then compared, in a systematic manner, to the field test temperature data. Any temperature discrepancies indicate potential anomalies of the pile structure. The proposed new interpretation approach could potentially reduce construction costs and increase the anomaly detection accuracy compared to traditional interpretation methods.