ABSTRACT
The thermo-mechanical (T-M) coupled problem has become an important scientific research focus in many engineering areas such as geothermal resources development, oil exploration, CO2 storage and nuclear waste storage. In energy piles and nuclear waste storage systems, the soils or the backfill materials must undergo perennial temperature changes, which may result in the unexpected thermal deformation, pore pressure accumulation and even thermal failure (Brandl 2006, Hueckel 1993, Passwell 1967). Therefore, the T-M coupled behavior is considered to be one of the key issues determining the feasibility and the safety of relevant engineering technologies. Laboratory studies showed that the thermal deformation of saturated clays is primarily dependent on the OCR value (Cekerevac & Laloui 2004, Passwell 1967, Tidfors & Sallfors 1989) and the shear strength of soils can be sensitive to the temperature variations (Moritz 1995).TheseT-M coupled processes for clays are complex and cannot be well predicted and explained by existing simple models.
