The thermal response of the ground can be a major concern for many engineering and earth science problems. Some typical problems include the degradation of permafrost due to construction or climate change, artificial ground freezing during construction activities, and the effect of convective heat transfer on earth embankments or soil cover performance. Many of these problems involve interaction with the hydrogeological system and climate.
GeoStudio can consider heat transfer with phase change, due to conduction and convection. A wide range of problems may be analyzed given the wide range of boundary conditions available. For example, a ‘convective surface’ boundary condition can simulate an artificial ground freezing system with the cooling fluid flowing through a pipe. The land-climate interaction boundary condition can model the effect of net radiation, air temperature, wind speed, and snow depth on ground temperatures. Add-In constitutive models for SIGMA/W or SLOPE/W can use TEMP/W results to assess deformation or stability change given temperature-dependent ground strengths.
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Excessive frost heave or settlements are major design and operational issues for hydrocarbon pipelines in permafrost regions. For example, a chilled gas pipeline may lead to frost heave. TEMP/W can be used to model the influence of these pipelines on the temperatures within surrounding soil.
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Artificial ground freezing is used in many engineering projects to excavate and construct mine shafts, tunnels or other underground structures through water bearing, often unstable, ground formations. TEMP/W can evaluate the freeze wall growth for a mine shaft project.
The surface energy balance boundary condition in TEMP/W can be used to evaluate heat transfer near the ground surface given climatic conditions. Consequently, this type of analysis may be used to investigate the thermal response of soil covers overlying waste materials, including the influence of slope direction.
Thermosyphons are used to harness cold weather to maintain frozen conditions in the soil. The thermosyphon boundary condition in TEMP/W can be used to determine if a permafrost zone can be maintained beneath heated infrastructure, e.g. a building, for an average climate year.
SEEP/W + SEEP3D
Finite element analysis of groundwater flow in saturated / unsaturated porous media.
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SIGMA/W
Finite element stress and deformation analysis of earth and structural materials.
TEMP/W + TEMP3D
Finite element analysis of heat transfer and phase change in porous media.