• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.433-445
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• 2021

Artificial ground freezing (AGF) is a commonly used geotechnical support technique that can be applied in any soil type and has low environmental impact. Experimental and numerical investigations have been conducted to optimize AGF for application in diverse scenarios. Precise simulation of groundwater flow is crucial to improving the reliability these investigations' results. Previous experimental research has mostly considered horizontal seepage flow, which does not allow accurate calculation of the groundwater flow velocity due to spatial variation of the piezometric head. This study adopted vertical seepage flow-which can maintain a constant cross-sectional area-to eliminate the limitations of using horizontal seepage flow. The closure time is a measure of the time taken for an impermeable layer to begin to form, this being the time for a frozen soil-ice wall to start forming adjacent to the freeze pipes; this is of great importance to applied AGF. This study reports verification of the reliability of our experimental apparatus and measurement system using only water, because temperature data could be measured while freezing was observed visually. Subsequent experimental AFG tests with saturated sandy soil were also performed. From the experimental results, a method of estimating closure time is proposed using the inflection point in the thermal conductivity difference between pore water and pore ice. It is expected that this estimation method will be highly applicable in the field. A further parametric study assessed factors influencing the closure time using a two-dimensional coupled thermo-hydraulic numerical analysis model that can simulate the AGF of saturated sandy soil considering groundwater flow. It shows that the closure time is affected by factors such as hydraulic gradient, unfrozen permeability, particle thermal conductivity, and freezing temperature. Among these factors, changes in the unfrozen permeability and particle thermal conductivity have less effect on the formation of frozen soil-ice walls when the freezing temperature is sufficiently low.

• Land and Housing Review
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.83-88
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• 2012

In this study, physical characteristics of cement and/or concrete materials that are typically used for energy-foundation (EF) structures have been studied. The thermal conductivity and structural integrity of the cement-based materials were examined, which are commonly encountered in backfilling a vertical ground heat exchangers, cast-in-place concrete piles and concrete lining in tunnel. For this purpose the thermal conductivity and unconfined compression strength of cement-based materials with various curing conditions were experimentally estimated and compared. Hydration heat generated from massive concrete in the cast-in-place concrete energy pile was observed for 4 weeks to estimate its dissipation time in the underground. The hydration heat may mask the in-situ thermal response test (TRT) result performed in the cast-in-place concrete energy pile. It is concluded that at least two weeks are needed to dissipate the hydration heat in this case. In addition, a series of numerical analysis was performed to compare the effect of thermal property of the concrete material on the cast-in-place pile.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.49 no.6
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• pp.459-467
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• 2016

Due to the limited areal space for installation, borehole heat exchangers (BHEs) at depths deeper than 300 m are considered for geothermal heating and cooling in the urban area. The deep vertical closed-loop BHEs are unconventional due to the depth and the range of the typical installation depth is between 100 and 200 m in Korea. The BHE in the study consists of 50A (outer diameter 50 mm, SDR 11) PE U-tube pipe in a 150 mm diameter borehole with the depth of 300 m. In order to compensate the buoyancy caused by the low density of PE pipe ($0.94{\sim}0.96g/cm^3$) in the borehole filled with ground water, 10 weight band sets (4.6 kg/set) were attached to the bottom of U-tube. A thermal response test (TRT) and fundamental basic surveys on the thermophysical characteristics of the ground were conducted. Ground temperature measures around $15^{\circ}C$ from the surface to 100 m, and the geothermal gradient represents $1.9^{\circ}C/100m$ below 100 m. The TRT was conducted for 48 hours with 17.5 kW heat injection, 28.65 l/min at a circulation fluid flow rate indicates an average temperature difference $8.9^{\circ}C$ between inlet and outlet circulation fluid. The estimated thermophysical parameters are 3.0 W/mk of ground thermal conductivity and 0.104 mk/W of borehole thermal resistance. In the stepwise evaluation of TRT, the ground thermal conductivity was calculated at the standard deviation of 0.16 after the initial 13 hours. The sensitivity analysis on the borehole thermal resistance was also conducted with respect to the PE pipe diameter and the thermal conductivity of backfill material. The borehole thermal resistivity slightly decreased with the increase of the two parameters.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2010.03a
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• pp.615-624
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• 2010

In this paper, the applicability of cement grout has been studied as an alternative to bentontite grout to backfill ground heat exchangers. To provide an optimal mixture design, the groutabilty and thermal conductivity of cement grouts with various mixture ratios were experimentally evaluated and compared. The unconfined compression strength of cement grout specimen was measured, which are exposed to cyclic temperature variation ranging from $50^{\circ}C$ to $-5^{\circ}C$. In addition, the integrity of the interface between circulating HDPE pipes and cement grout by performing equivalent hydraulic conductivity tests, in which a pipe locates at the center of the specimen.

• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.71-78
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• 2010

Investigation of the effective soil thermal conductivity(k) is the first step in designing the ground loop heat exchanger(borehole) of a geothermal heat pump system. The line source method is required by New and Renewable Energy Center of Korea Energy Management Corporation in analyzing data obtained from thermal response tests. Another important factor in designing the ground loop heat exchanger is the borehole thermal resistance($R_b$). There are two methods to evaluate $R_b$ : one is to use a line source method, and the other is to use a shape factor of the borehole. In this study, we demonstrated that the line source method produces better results than the shape factor method in evaluating $R_b$. This is because the borehole thermal resistance evaluated with the line source method characteristically reduces the temperature differences between an actual and a theoretical thermal behaviors of the borehole. Evaluation of $R_b$ requires soil volumetric heat capacity. However, the effect of the soil volumetric heat capacity on the borehole thermal resistance is very small. Therefore, it is possible to use a generally accepted average value of soil volumetric heat capacity($=2MJ/m^3{\cdot}K$) in the analysis. In this work, it is also shown that an acceptable range of the initial ignoring time should be in the range of 8~16hrs. Thus, a mean value of 12 hrs is recommended.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Geothermal and Hydrothermal Energy
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.10-16
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• 2011

Performance of ground-source heat pumps (GSHPs) is mainly affected by ground heat exchangers which makes up more than 40% of construction cost. Exact construction and grout as backfill are important, because it is difficult to repair after being installed. As grout materials, bentonite grout material and cement material are used In this paper, thermal conductivity according to mix proportion of cement grout has been experimentally studied. Some variables were set to evaluate thermal conductivities according to change in cement content, unit water ratio, mass per volume of fresh mortar, and aggregate types. From the experimental analysis, high performance cement grout has been proposed.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.28-35
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• 2016

The in-situ thermal response test for the design of a ground heat exchanger of geothermal heat pumps have difficulty in predicting the outlet temperature according to the variation of conditions due to the expense and time. This paper suggests a 3-D CFD analysis method to predict the heat transfer performance of vertical type ground heat exchanger, which is mostly used in national, and the outlet temperature and the slope of two in-situ thermal response tests were compared to test the proposed CFD reliability. The results of CFD analysis showed that the outlet temperature was predicted to within $0.5^{\circ}C$ of the actual value and the slope was predicted to within 1.6%. The reliability of the CFD analysis method was confirmed using this process, and the outlet temperature prediction of the two in-situ thermal response tests was obtained by changing ${\pm}20%$ of the flow rate and the effective thermal conductivity conditions, respectively. The results of CFD analysis showed that the outlet temperature of Case 1 was 28.0 (-20%) and $29.6^{\circ}C$ (+20%) for the flow rate variation and $29.6^{\circ}C$ (-20%) and $28.0^{\circ}C$ (+20%) for the effective thermal conductivity variation, and the outlet temperature of Case 2 was 28.4 (-20%) and $29.8^{\circ}C$ (+20%) for the flow rate variation and $29.7^{\circ}C$(-20%) and $28.4^{\circ}C$(+20%) for the effective thermal conductivity variation.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.16 no.12
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• pp.1175-1182
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• 2004

Installations of vertical boreholes for the ground source heat pump system are expensive to install. One way to reduce the initial cost is to increase the specific heat extraction rate of borehole system. However, as the specific heat extraction rate increases the temperature of borehole fluid decreases with the resultant lower Coefficient Of Performance in Heating(COPH) of heat pump system. The purpose of this study is to provide the basic informations about the performance of heat pump system with the specific heat extraction rate and soil thermal properties such as thermal conductivity and temperature. It is shown that the specific heat extraction rate is the most important parameter for the ground source heat pump system. To obtain the reasonable COPH value (COPH > 3) the heat extraction rate should be about 25 W/m or less. Accurate measurements of soil thermal properties are also very important to design the system properly. The effects of borehole thermal resistances are also examined in this study.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Geothermal and Hydrothermal Energy
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.14-20
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• 2017

Groundwater heat pump (GWHP) system can achieve higher performance of the system by utilizing heat source of the annual constant groundwater temperature. The performance of GWHP system depends on the ground thermal environment such as groundwater temperature, groundwater flow rate and hydraulic conductivity. In this study, the geothermal environment was analyzed by using numerical simulation for develop the two-well geothermal system. As the result, this paper shows the change of the groundwater level and underground temperature around wells according to the conditions of flow rate and hydraulic conductivity.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.29 no.8
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• pp.65-73
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• 2013

Ground-coupled heat pump system has attracted attention as a promising renewable energy technology due to its improving energy efficiency and eco-friendly mechanism for space cooling and heating. Pipes buried in the ground play a role of direct thermal interaction between circulating fluid inside the pipe and surrounding soils in the geothermal exchange system. However, both complexities of turbulent flow coupling thermal-hydraulic phenomena and very long aspect ratio of the pipe make it difficult to model the heat exchange system directly. Energy balance for fluid flow inside the pipe was derived to model thermal-hydraulic phenomena, and one-dimensional pipe element was proposed through Galerkin formation and time integration of the equation. Developed element is combined to pre-developed FEM code for THM phenomena in porous media. Numerical results of Thermal Response Test showed that line-source model overestimates equivalent thermal conductivity of surrounding soils due to thermal interaction between adjacent pipes and finite length of the pipe. Thus, inverse analysis for the TRT simulation was conducted to present optimal transformation matrix with utmost convergence.