The Forces on Rigid Culverts under High Fills

摘要

The forces acting on the barrel of a rigid culvert due to the dead load of a high fill depend upon the construction method, the presence of heterogeneous inclusions of organic material, the material of the earth's crust, the fill properties and fill and culvert geometries. These features are accounted for by the finite-element method for obtaining approximate solutions to linear elasticity problems. The analytical methods are applied to an actual embankment over a rigid culvert the barrel of which was instrumented with pressure meters. The analytical results for two conditions of the earth's crust, various fill properties and for a hay block deliberately placed above the crown of the culvert (as in the actual construction) are compared with the recorded pressures. It is concluded that given a proper description of the material properties, in particular the ratio of fill hay modulus, an accurate distribution of barrel pressure may be obtained. (Author)