The Role of Backfill Quality on Corrugated Steel Plate Culvert Behaviour

The subject of the article is a three-dimensional numerical analysis of the impact of backfill quality on the deformation of corrugated steel plate culvert. In the numerical analysis, the author took into consideration three different backfill types. The paper presents the calculations performed with the use of Abaqus program based on finite element method. A steel shell was modelled with the use of the theory of orthotropic plates, and backfill with the use of elastic perfectly plastic Drucker-Prager model. The author made the numerical calculations under static live loads for the corrugated steel plate culvert with a span of 12.315 m and height of shell of 3.555 m. Soil cover over the shell crown was equal to 1.0 m. The steel shell consisted of the sheets of the corrugation of 0.14×0.38 m and plate thickness of 0.0071 m. The main aim of this paper is to present the impact of backfill quality (internal friction angle, unit weight, Young’s modulus) on the effort of the steel shell. The paper also shows the numerical calculations for the actual culvert, which previously had been studied experimentally. The author compared the obtained numerical results to the results of experiments. Parametric analysis showed that the angle of internal friction was a major factor in corrugated steel plate culverts. Considering the entire width of the corrugated steel plate culvert, the calculation model II was most favourable. The proposed method of modelling of the corrugated steel plate culvert allowed obtaining reasonable values of displacements and stresses in comparison to experimental results.