Reliability-Based Geotechnical Design of Geothermal Foundations

In recent years, there are applications of geothermal foundation for near surface geothermal energy utilization in geotechnical engineering. However, significant uncertainties exist in design of such foundations and affect the thermal-mechanical behaviors. To consider these uncertainties explicitly, it is desirable to develop a reliability-based design methodology for geothermal foundations by quantifying the uncertainties in thermal-mechanical soil-structure interaction of the geothermal foundation design. In this paper, the deterministic analysis for geothermal foundation is performed using a numerical model. A series of advanced moment methods are used for assessing the probability of exceedance in terms of both factor of safety and displacement requirements of geothermal foundations by combining the reliability method with the deterministic numerical model. A case study for a geothermal foundation design is presented to demonstrate the significance of the proposed framework for reliability-based design of geothermal foundations.