Transient Thermal Response of a Multilayered Geomaterial Subjected to a Heat Source

The analysis of layered geomaterials thermo-mechanical coupling response is important in design and analysis of a nuclear waste repository. Conventional analytical approaches usually have some intrinsic faults of ill-conditioned matrices for thick layers or accumulative numerical errors for a great quantity of layers for containing positive exponential functions. This paper presents a stable computational approach with no positive exponential functions to study the transient thermal responses of a layered geomaterial subjected to a heat source. Based on the governing equations of thermo-mechanical coupling problems, the analytical layer elements for a finite layer and a half-space are derived by utilizing Laplace and Hankel transforms. The analytical layer elements are then assembled into the total stiffness matrix and solved in the transformed domain. Finally, the Laplace-Hankel transform inversion is employed to obtain an actual solution in the physical domain. Numerical computations indicate that the difference of geomaterial mass properties between layers shows obvious effects on thermal response of the layered system, and these results can be served as a benchmark solution for future analyses of stratified material.