Research Projects

The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy in India has highlighted the need for deep and near-surface geothermal energy, which can be harnessed through pile foundations. Geothermal piles, which are piles that act as geothermal heat exchangers, are a promising alternative to solar and wind energy. However, this innovative technology is yet to be widely used in India. The project aims to assess the thermo-hydro-mechanical behavior of saturated clays under non-isothermal conditions and its implications on the behavior of a group of geothermal piles in clay. The research hypotheses are that changes in thermo-hydro flow characteristics during heat injection and cooling-off cycles may affect the heat exchange efficiency of geothermal piles, and temperature-induced changes in void ratio during non-isothermal loading-unloading cycles may affect serviceability conditions for a pile group containing geothermal piles. The project will test these hypotheses through laboratory experiments, including large-scale non-isothermal consolidation tests, hydraulic conductivity measurements, and instrumented thermo-mechanical load tests on model geothermal piles. The results will help interpret temperature, pore pressure, displacement, and strain data recorded during these tests. The project's outcome will help in determining the need for enforcing specifications to meet thermal and mechanical serviceability conditions for long-term use, and the knowledge gained from successful laboratory-scale model tests will facilitate field implementation of pile-anchored geothermal energy harvesting technology in India.