A FORMULATION OF FULLY COUPLED THERMAL-HYDRAULIC-MECHANICAL BEHAVIOUR OF SATURATED POROUS MEDIA—NUMERICAL APPROACH

The theoretical aspects of fully coupled thermohydromechanical behaviour of saturated porous media are presented. The non-linear behaviour of soil skeleton is assumed. A new concept called ‘thermal void ratio state surface’ is introduced to include thermal effects, and the stress state level influence on volume changes. The fluid phase flows according to Darcy's law and energy transport is assumed to follow Fourier's law classically. Variation of water permeability, water and solid unit weight due to thermal effects and pore pressure changes are included. A finite element package is developed based on final matrix form obtained from discretization of integral form of field equations by finite element method and integration in time. A very good agreement between the theoretical predictions and the experimental results was obtained for the several simple problems proposed by other authors. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.