• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.5-21
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• 2015

An energy pile is a novel type of ground heat exchangers (GHEX's) which sets up heat exchange pipes inside a pile foundation, and allows to circulate a working fluid through the pipe for exchanging thermal energy with the surrounding ground stratum. Using existing foundation structure, the energy pile can function not only as a structural foundation but also as a GHEX. In this paper, six full-scale energy piles were constructed in a test bed with various configurations of the heat exchange pipe inside large-diameter cast-in-place piles, that is, three parallel U-type heat exchangers (5, 8 and 10 pairs), two coil type heat exchangers (with a 500 mm and 200 mm pitch), and one S-type heat exchanger. During constructing the energy piles, the constructability of each energy pile was evaluated with consideration of the installation time, the number of workers and any difficulty for installing. In order to evaluate the thermal performance of energy piles, the thermal performance tests were carried out by applying intermittent (8 hours operating-16 hours pause) artificial cooling operation to simulate a cooling load for commercial buildings. Through the thermal performance tests, the heat exchange rates of the six energy piles were evaluated in terms of the heat exchange amount normalized with the length of energy pile and/or the length of heat exchange pipe. Finally, the economic feasibility of energy pile was evaluated according to the various types of heat exchange pipe by calculating demanded expenses per 1 W/m based on the thermal performance test results along with the market value of heat exchange pipes and labor cost.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.48 no.3
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• pp.367-382
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• 2013

Different types of long slender pile shall buckle with weak soil and liquefied stratum surrounded. Different from considering single side earth pressure, it was suggested that the lateral earth pressure can be divided into two categories while buckling: the earth pressure that prevent and promotes the lateral movement. Active and passive earth pressure calculation model was proposed supposing earth pressure changed linearly with displacement considering overlying load, shaft resistance, earth pressure at both sides of the pile. Critical buckling load calculation method was proposed based on the principle of minimum potential energy quoting the earth pressure calculation model. The calculation result was contrasted with the field test result of small diameter TC pile (Plastic Tube Cast-in-place pile). The fix form could be fixed-hinged in the actual calculation assuring the accuracy and certain safety factor. The contributions of pile fix form depend on the pile length for the same geological conditions. There exists critical friction value in specific geological conditions that the side friction has larger impact on the critical buckling load while it is less than the value and has less impact with larger value. The buckling load was not simply changed linearly with friction. The buckling load decreases with increased limit active displacement and the load tend to be constant with larger active displacement value; the critical buckling load will be the same for different fix form for the small values.