Mechanics Behavior About Buried Corrugated Steel Culverts Considering Soil-Structure Interaction

Corrugated steel culverts widely built as highway structures, which are so-called soil-steel culverts, derive their strength from the interaction between soil and corrugated steel components of the system. However, this kind of culvert design method mainly depends on foreign codes in our country. Therefore, it is of great importance that the mechanics behavior about the buried corrugated structure should be studied based on the principle of structure-soil interaction.It is clear that structure-soil interaction is one central issue of the study in buried corrugated steel culverts these days in China. Aiming at this problem, the system between soil and corrugated steel plate culvert is studied with the finite-element analysis. Structure-soil interaction was considered during the process of finite element modeling, and the contact element is introduced to take full account of the nonlinear characteristics of soil, especially the interface between soil and the structure. Based on the above non-linear finite element analysis model, the effects of various factors on soil-structure interaction are studied, such as Poisson's ratio, elastic modulus, internal friction angle and compaction degree of the soil, cross-section parameter of the corrugated steel culvert, and diameter of the culvert.First, based on the principle of structure-soil interaction, revision coefficient of earth pressure calculation formula is proposed and validated when relevant studies were carried out separately from the soil arching effect, soil nonlinearity and the calculation of earth pressure. Then, various factors that influence the interaction of soil and corrugated steel culvert were taken into account in finite element analysis and the quantitative distinctive criterion of the performance of rigid and flexible for corrugated steel culverts is presented and proved to be reasonable. Finally, referring to the method of internal force calculation with consideration of displacement compatibility between culvert and the soil around it, the internal force calculation formula of the structure was deduced. Further modification is proposed based on the analysis of various factors that have effect on performance of structure-soil interaction. And the proposed method is verified to be valid by comparing results with the finite element analysis.