Advanced Thermo-Hydro-Mechanical modelling features for practical applications in energy geotechnics (Sur la modélisation Thermo-Hydro-Mécanique avancée pour des applications en Géo-énergie)

Abstract

Thermal and Thermo-Hydro-Mechanical (THM) analysis is at the core of a broad range of geotechnical engineering applications. In this context, an implicit fully coupled formulation has been implemented in the Finite Element software PLAXIS to perform robustly THM analyses. Advanced constitutive models can be easily defined and implemented with the well-known User-Defined Soil Model (UDSM) module. Recently, another module of User-Defined Flow Model (UDFM) has been developed so that users can implement user-defined fluid and heat transfer models (permeability, thermal conductivity functions etc). These improvements allow to perform advanced research analyses in a practical and user-friendly way. In this paper, the aforementioned formulation and functionalities are briefly summarised. Different examples of benchmark numerical analyses of Engineered Barrier Systems (EBS) in radioactive waste disposals as well as geothermal foundation systems are then presented. The obtained numerical results are verified by comparisons with other simulators and/or experimental data.Accepted Author ManuscriptGeo-engineerin