The Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) recently held an awards ceremony in London, where the research paper by Professor Liu Songyu's team from Southeast University was honored with the 2024 Telford Premium Prize. Established in 1818, the ICE confers this prestigious award to recognize outstanding contributions in the field of civil engineering and related disciplines. The Telford Premium Prize represents the highest accolade for significant research achievements and scholars within the civil engineering community, signifying a profound impact on the industry.
The award-winning paper, titled Shear creep behaviour of soil-structure interfaces under thermal cyclic loading (2023, 13, 22–28), was published in the internationally renowned journal Géotechnique Letters by Professor Liu Songyu's team. The authors of the paper include PhD candidate Guo Yimu, co-supervisor Professor Ali Golchin from Delft University of Technology, and Professor Liu Songyu from Southeast University, among others.
The paper is based on a project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41972269), led by Professor Liu Songyu. It presents the first experimental study on the coupled mechanical behavior of pile-soil interfaces under initial shear stress and thermal cyclic loading. The research team conducted a series of heating, cooling, and shear tests on pile-soil interfaces with initial shear stress using a high-precision temperature-controlled shear box. The study revealed the following key findings:
Under constant shear stress, the shear strain at the interface continued to increase with thermal cycles, confirming the coupling effect between shear load and thermal load.
Thermal cycles had almost no effect on the ultimate bearing capacity of the pile-soil interface.
After thermal cycles, the shear stiffness of the pile-soil interface increased, returning to its initial level.
This research sheds light on the loading conditions and thermo-mechanical response of energy piles under real service conditions, providing critical theoretical support for the structural and functional design of energy piles.
In recent years, Professor Liu Songyu's team has been dedicated to advancing low-carbon innovation in geotechnical engineering. They have made significant progress in in-situ testing and low-carbon reinforcement technologies, inventing a series of low-carbon reinforcement and carbon sequestration techniques that have been successfully applied in engineering projects. These contributions have strongly supported the low-carbon transformation of China's civil engineering and transportation sectors, aligning with the national dual-carbon strategic goals.
