ABSTRACT
Temperature effects in geotechnical engineering are complex as they involve interaction of the soil’s constituent phases, such as the soil skeleton and the pore fluid. Accounting for such interaction in the design of geo-thermal infrastructure requires numerical algorithms capable of reproducing thermo-hydro-mechanical (THM) coupling of soil behaviour. However, numerical modelling of transient coupled THM problems may produce erroneous solutions if either the adopted time-step size is too small or highly advective flows are involved. This paper summarises the time-step constraints in both 1D and 2D transient coupled finite element (FE) analysis which prevent the numerical ‘shock’ problem. Moreover, a coupled thermo-hydraulic boundary condition, as well as a new Petrov-Galerkin finite element method, which are necessary for simulating highly advective flows, are presented and their capabilities are demonstrated in a series of numerical examples.
