Reliability-based load and resistance factor design model for energy piles

Biao Hu; Quanmei Gong; Yueqiang Zhang; Yihe Yin; Wenjun Chen

doi:10.1038/s41598-022-19142-3

Reliability-based load and resistance factor design model for energy piles

Sci Rep. 2022 Aug 29;12(1):14704. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-19142-3.

Authors

Biao Hu¹, Quanmei Gong^{2

3}, Yueqiang Zhang⁴, Yihe Yin¹, Wenjun Chen¹

Affiliations

¹ College of Physics and Optoelectronic Engineering, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, 518060, China.
² Shanghai Key Laboratory of Rail Infrastructure Durability and System Safety, Tongji University, Shanghai, 201804, China.
³ The Key Laboratory of Road and Traffic Engineering, Ministry of Education, Tongji University, Shanghai, 201804, China.
⁴ College of Physics and Optoelectronic Engineering, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, 518060, China. yueqiang.zhang@szu.edu.cn.

Abstract

Energy piles have been popular globally with functions of both pile foundation and ground source heat pumps. Although several researches have been devoted to the probabilistic design and assessment of energy piles, the corresponding procedures are too complicated for engineers. As a simple variant of the reliability-based design method, the load and resistance factor design (LRFD) approach for the geotechnical design of energy piles is presented in this study. Firstly, the load-transfer model for energy piles is developed to investigate the effect of cyclic thermal loading on the pile settlement. Then, the LRFD procedures based on first-order reliability method and target reliability method are implemented into two different constrained nonlinear optimization problems, respectively. The proposed LRFD model for energy piles is demonstrated through an example pile and a series of parametric analyses.

Abstract

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