Seasonal Temperature Effects on a Foundation

Abstract

During the construction of a large chimney at the Porto Tolle power station, a settlement‐monitoring program disclosed unusual yet periodic deflections in the performance of the pile‐supported concrete foundation, in addition to the expected settlements due to soil consolidation. A special monitoring program using embedded thermocouples revealed that the deflections were seasonal and related to thermal gradients in the soil‐foundation system. It is concluded that in some cases stresses caused by seasonal temperature oscillations should be considered in the design phase of foundations. A simple transfer analysis is applied which can be used to estimate the highest temperature gradient to be expected.