Exact Solutions for Investigating Thermal Response of Saturated Soil Induced by Temperature Change

Abstract

The analysis of coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical behaviors of porous media is the research focus in diverse areas. In this study, fully coupled symmetric governing equations for thermo-hydro-mechanical process in saturated soil are presented with thermo-osmosis and thermo-filtration taken into account. The exact solutions for one-dimensional thermal consolidation of single-layer saturated soil with three types of arbitrary nonhomogeneous boundary conditions are presented in time domain. The method of separation of variables and the method of undetermined coefficients are taken advantage of, which therefore avoids numerical inverse Laplace transform. Finally, investigations based on the proposed exact solutions found that boundary conditions of pore pressure and temperature matter considerably for thermal response induced by thermal loading. The thermo-osmosis may have a greater effect on pore pressure than Darcian flow in low-permeable soil.