Abstract: Analytical layer-element method is presented to study the thermo-mechanical coupling behavior of rock and soil medium with a buried point heat source in geotechnical engineering. Starting from the governing equations of three dimensional thermo-elasticity, analytical layer-elements of a single layer and the underlying half-space are derived in the transformed domain by Laplace-Fourier transform. A global stiffness matrix of layered media is assembled, which is further solved by considering the boundary conditions. The numerical inversion of Laplace-Fourier transform is adopted to obtain the actual solution. Numerical examples reveal that the calculated results acquired by the corresponding procedure show a good agreement with the results in existing literature, and the presented approach shows good applicability and high precision in studying the thermo-mechanical coupling response of layered half-space; in multilayered rock and soil system, the thermal diffusivity have a remarkable effects on the variation of temperature increment and the surface heave, while it shows negligible effects on the initial and steady state values of the temperature and surface heave; the influence of the stratification on the process of heat conduction and displacement variation is significant.

Key words: analytical layer-element, buried point heat source, layered half-space, thermo-mechanical coupling, Laplace-Fourier transform