| Years of dependable service and a multitude of wide ranging installations have led to the corrugated steel pipe industry to play a major role in modern engineering technology. Flexible steel conduits play an important role in the form of culverts, storm sewers, subdrains, spillways, underpasses, conveyor conduits and service tunnels; for highways, railways, airports, municipalities, recreation areas, industrial parks, flood and conservation projects, water pollution abatement and many other programs.;In recent years developments have been made which allow engineers and contractors the use of conventional corrugated structural plates to design and build structures having larger spans and increased permissible live and dead loads.;These structures are generally used for conditions where the depth-of-cover is limited to about 5 to 10 m and the design is constrained by a relatively low, wide-opening.;However, in recent years many accidents and sudden failures have been reported on this type of structure. Such failures often originate from large soil settlements, poor soil compacting practices, and frost-thaw cycles. As a result, many different methods have been proposed to eliminate these problems. In this thesis the use of a Geogrid mesh to reinforce the soil surrounding the corrugated metal structure is proposed. It is the belief of the author that this material (Geogrid), which is widely used in the design and construction of retaining walls, will improve the strength and durability of soil-metal structures.;The study carried out involved building and testing pipe-arches under shallow depth-of cover. The results obtained from these tests served to compare and document the advantage of using reinforced soil structures in contrast to non-reinforced soil structures. |
