OasisLMS

Buildings can be heated and cooled efficiently using geothermal energy pile foundations, which provide structural support primarily but in addition, they have the potential to extract and store geothermal energy, which is clean, renewable, sustainable, and affordable. Energy piles are predominantly cast-in-place concrete piles, which require extensive and expensive drilling during construction. Driven energy piles made of precast concrete segments are a better alternative. After being cast at a concrete factory in segments at large quantities with high quality, the segments are transported and installed at a construction site using steel joints. In this paper, we describe a novel method for constructing driven energy piles using an innovative steel joint for connecting precast segments on-site. Apart from providing structural integrity, these steel joints can provide leak-proof couplings for heat carrier fluid pipes embedded in precast segments. The precast-driven pile foundations can be manufactured from high-strength concrete with max 12m long quadratic segments of 270 mm or 350 mm width, which are assembled using steel joints. There can be one U-loop in 270-mm piles, while two U-loops can be placed in 350-mm piles. A steel cover plate riveted to the steel joint protects the heat-exchanging pipes inside the sidewall channels of the steel joint. At a construction site, the joints are connected using steel pins, and the pipes can be connected quickly without any welding or electricity using normal couplings. The steel joints presented in this paper provides the opportunity to utilize segmental precast concrete pile foundations as energy piles.

Keywords: precast concrete driven piles, geothermal energy piles, thermal piles, segmental piles, steel joint

Habibollah Sadeghi, Norwegian University of Science and Technology; Rao Singh, Norwegian University of Science and Technology

International Conference Proceedings