01365762

Component

Three design cases are used to study the effects of corrosion, burial depth, and staged construction on the capacity of steel culverts. The finite element packages CANDE and ABAQUS are used to perform the numerical investigation. The results of these numerical models are compared to current and proposed design methods to determine which approach gives the most conservative estimation of thrust force for both new and corroded culverts. Simple ring compression theory (springline thrust equal to half the soil prism load) produced thrusts that were 42%, 16% and 7% lower than those based on “staged construction” finite element analysis for the 4m diameter example culvert buried 1.5m, 3m, and 10m respectively. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), Canadian, and proposed design equations all underestimated thrust compared to those finite element results (by 46%, 22% and 24% respectively for 4m diameter culvert at 1.5m burial depth, and with 12.5% wall thickness remaining). Thrust forces obtained using CANDE were slightly lower than those produced by ABAQUS, and it appears that CANDE can be used to estimate thrust forces after corrosion, even though the CANDE analysis featured uniform wall loss around the whole pipe circumference and ABAQUS was used to model wall loss across the invert only.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AFF70 Culverts and Hydraulic Structures

01362476

12-1385

English

18p

2012

Transportation Research Board 91st Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; References; Tables

Corrosion; Deterioration by environmental action; Mathematical models; Metal culverts; Software; Structural stability (Mathematics); Thrust

Bridges and other structures; Design; Highways; I25: Design of Tunnels

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2012 Paper #12-1385

TRIS, TRB

Feb 8 2012 5:01PM