Efficiency of energy piles is strongly affected by soil saturation conditions: low water contents considerably decrease their performance thus limiting the possibility to extend their application to arid environments. This paper investigates the microbially induced calcite precipitation (MICP) technique as a potential means of enhancing the soil–pile heat exchange rates by improving the thermal properties of soil. The study puts the focus on measuring the thermal conductivity of untreated and treaded sand at various degrees of saturation. Experimental results clearly show a significant improvement of the thermal conductivity of soil especially for low degrees of saturation. This enhancement is attributed to the mineralised calcite crystals acting as ‘thermal bridges’ between the soil grains, offering a larger surface area for heat exchange compared with the untreated material in which exchanges occur through smaller contact points.

We present the results of laboratory investigations of continuously-fed density currents which propagate first over a smooth horizontal bed and then over a porous substrate of limited length. Inflow discharge, initial excess density, and substrate porosities are varied. Density measurements, acquired through an image analysis technique, are collected above the porous layer simultaneously with quasi-instantaneous vertical velocity profiles. After a first phase in which the current sinks into the substrate, freshwater entrainment from the bed begins and, gradually, a mixing layer forms at the interface between the surface flow and the porous bed. Kelvin-Helmholtz and Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities rule the dynamics of this mixing layer. The porous boundary effects are observed in the vertical distributions of both density and velocity, especially in the near-bed region. Here, larger flow velocities are recorded over porous substrates. We argue that these are due to the presence of a longitudinal pressure gradient which in turn is consequence of the current mass loss. Its presence, over the porous substrate, is proved by the current interface longitudinal slope. However, other effects of the presence of the porous substrate, such as the relaxation of the no-slip boundary condition and the bed-normal momentum exchange, also affect the velocity field. The turbulent structure changes significantly over the porous substrate: while stream-wise turbulence decreases, shear and bed-normal Reynolds stresses increase in large part of the current depth. Buoyancy instabilities further enhance the bednormal momentum flux and, in the near-bed region, contribute to turbulent kinetic energy generation, together with shear.

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Gravity currents are often modelled by means of shallow water equations (SWEs). In these models, simplifications such as the consideration of a constant layer-averaged density are common. This note presents the complete and general derivation of a 2D depth-averaged momentum equation for gravity currents with density and velocity varying in the bed-normal direction. Special attention is given to the pressure term which is evaluated for constant, linear and exponential density profile. The shape of the density profile has implications for the momentum balance: the assumption of constant density leads to an overestimation of the driving force due to pressure gradient by a factor of 33% for linear density profile and up to 50% for an exponential profile. It also leads to an overestimation of celerity in numerical models based on traditional SWEs by factor of 22% and around 40% for linear end exponential density profiles respectively.