FINITE ELEMENT SIMULATIONS FOR SAND AND LIMESTONE POWDER OF DIFFERENT THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY

Hakeem, Beshoy Maher; Hassona, Fayek Abdel Kader

doi:10.21608/jaet.2021.70622.1107

FINITE ELEMENT SIMULATIONS FOR SAND AND LIMESTONE POWDER OF DIFFERENT THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

¹ Lecturer, Civil Engineering Department, Higher Institute of Engineering and Technology, El-Minia, Egypt

² Professor, Civil Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering - Minya University, Egypt.

10.21608/jaet.2021.70622.1107

Abstract

Thermal physical phenomenon of soils and rocks constitutes an important property for the planning of heat foundations and borehole heat exchange systems. To determine soil thermal properties considerable effort has gone into developing techniques in recent years. This paper attempts to simulate the effectiveness of using a soil with higher thermal conductivity compared to normal sand using GeoStudio 2018 Finite Element 2D program. GeoStudio was used to verify a physical laboratory model which was built to investigate the variation in soil temperature related to the proposed ambient temperature conditions [1]. In this research, two different backfilling soils were adopted to carry out this work. The results show excellent agreements between the laboratory model and numerical results. Ground temperature of sand backfill is affected by ambient temperature and reaches a constant value at depths below 1.0 m from ground surface. Limestone powder of higher thermal conductivity reaches a constant value at depths below 0.75 m from ground surface. The results show that using GeoStudio 2018 program to simulate the variation in soil temperature with depth for different types of soil is feasible.

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