• energy
• energy piles
• geotechnical
• performance
• sensitiviy analysis

Energy piles are heat capacity systems increasingly exploited for providing both energy supply and structural support to building and infrastructures. The energy and geotechnical performance of such foundations, which is governed by their thermo-mechanical behaviour, is currently not fully understood especially considering different technological solutions for the heat exchange operation.
This thesis summarises a series of numerical analyses performed with respect to a real-scale energy foundation located under the Swiss Tech Convention Centre of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), aimed to investigate the thermo-mechanical transient response of energy piles for example for different pipes layouts, aspect ratio of the foundation, magnitude of the fluid flow rate circulating in the pipes and fluid mixture composition. The study outlines the impact that the different technological solutions have on the energy and geotechnical performance of energy piles.