Experimental Study And Finite Element Analysis Of A Tested Buried Corrugated Steel Arch Bridge

Buried corrugated steel culverts have been used for about 100 years in some foreign conruries. And this structure is becoming more and more popular. As a flexible stuucture, it is better than concrete in many aspects. But until now it can not be use well in china because of our research falls behind. So some systematic research is deadly needed now.According to a real buried corrugated steel arch bridge in inner mengolie, a test model of 12mx5.2m was built for our research. It's span is 3.7m. Stress, deflection and soil pressure of the test model were monitoring in the procedure of the experiment. After the construction was finished, two detecting experiments were also finished. In the analysis, two ANSYS models were established to simulate the concrete retaining wall at the end of the test model. Then the results of the test and the two analysis models were contrasted. The analysis shows that the biggest stress appeared at the time that backfill altitude got close to the height of the arch. When backfill altitude was below the height of the arch, stress got bigger with the procedure of the construction. But when backfill altitude got above the height of the arch, the stress had a suddenly big rebound, then staied steady and even got smaller at some places. The biggest deflection appeared at the height of the arch, when backfill altitude got close to the height of the arch. And in the whole procedure of the construction the arch height deflection was always above the begginning location. The soil pressure's test results are smaller than the calculate results in the shallow depth, but it's different in the deeper depth. The ratio of two directions' soil pressure is getting smaller as the procedure of the consttruction.