Research On The Role Of Reinforced Soil With Tires To Reduce The Vertical Earth Pressure Above The Roof-Culvert

With the development of the Western, a large number of the highways were built among the China’s western loess mountains. The paths in regional geomorphology are criss-cross, gully landforms are extremely common, and high-filled embankments are the most important forms, so a lot of culverts appeared. The safety of culvert which is part of highway projects in using process has become one of the most important factors. Culvert longitudinal cracking caused by engineering disease is particularly severe in the culvert engineering disaster and the frequency is higher. The differential settlement of the soil inside and outside the top of the culvert is the root cause for the widened earth pressure. This paper uses a new off-loading material which is formed with soil and tires backfilling the top of culvert and takes advantages of its high flexibility, low density, low-cost, high friction and others to researches of offloading the vertical soil stress.Research works include a field disease investigation, field test, numerical and laboratory simulation tests. Research results four parts as follow:1. According to Summarizing the basic features of the culvert disease, getting the correlation analysis between culvert disease and engineering condition; expounding mechanism of the cover culvert disease combined with theoretical analysis; make the conclusion that the laying of light weight, high deformation modulus material at culvert top can ease the concentration of soil stress.2. By field test, obtaining the vertical earth stress concentration distribution law before and after laying waste tire light soil at culvert top, finding the light soil with good offload effects, and analyzing the regional law of its load reduction role at the culvert top.3. According to the conclusion of field test, presenting more reduction plans; by using FLAC3D Software for numerical calculation, finding the numerical calculation results are basically consistent with the field test; concluding the different effects of light soil backfill height, backfill width, and backfilling shape compared different calculation program results; there is another conclusion that when the fill height increased, the same backfill offload better.4. Selecting indoor model test by sieving two ideal numerical calculation, getting the conclusions that model test results is basically the same with the numerical calculation, verifying the reliability of the numerical results.According to above different methods, author gets conclusions that the light soil can be used as offload materials at cover culvert. This method can not only ease the vertical earth stress concentration phenomenon at culvert top, but also opened up new avenues for waste tire, which making engineering and environmental win-win situation.