Structural Mechanics Performance Of Buried Corrugated Steel Pipe Culverts Considering Rigidity And Flexibility

The corrugated steel bridge is a structure with good mechanics performance, which has been applied widely abroad in Roads and water conservancy project. In recent years, this structure develops rapidly in the application of highway projects, but the research on this structure is not depth enough. As the design mainly refers to the foreign specifications, the mechanical properties research on this structure has significant theoretical and practical value.A corrugated steel culvert with soil cover of 3m is the research subject in this paper. Considering nonlinear characteristics of soil, introducing contact element for simulate soil-structure interaction, rigidty and flexibility of structure and its mechanics performance was systematically studied through ANSYS Program. The influences of elastic moduli, Poisson ratio, internal friction angle of soil, inertia moment of corrugated steel plate and diameter of culvert to structural deformation characteristics were analyzed, and a formula to distinguish rigidity or flexibility of structure. Based on different paths, the influences of different factors to vertical soil pressure of buried corrugated steel culvert were also analyzed and a modified formula was proposed to calculate vertical soil pressue of flexible culvert. Based on a deeply buried actual project, the finite element model was set up and analyzed effect of reducing pressure before and after backfilling soft material above the culvert. The results show that vertical soil pressure above the culvert decreases by 40%, some measures are suggested for reducing pressue of buried corrugated steel culvert. Finally, the internal force calculation formula, which considers deflections consistency of corrugated steel culvert and soil, is verified by finite element simulation. And the internal force of structures with different rigidity is analyzed and contrasted by theory calculation and finite element simulation. Reasonable suggestions are put forward in the engineering design of corrugated steel culvert.