Location

St. Louis, Missouri

Date

03 Jun 1993, 10:30 am - 12:30 pm

Abstract

This paper describes field measurements and analysis carried out on the Elkhart Creek soil arch culvert structure in British Columbia, Canada. The structure has a span of 13.4 m, a rise of 7.3 m, and a soil cover of 9.6 m. The original structure collapsed during backfilling in October 1987. A new structure of the same design was built in the Fall of 1989, and because of controversy regarding the design thrust value, it was instrumented to measure thrust, moment, and displacements in the arch. Displacements and stresses in the soil were also measured. The measured thrust values were much lower than expected and indicated that significant positive soil-arching occurred. A nonlinear finite element analysis of the soil-structure system was carried out simulating the construction procedures used, and the computed response compared with the measurements. The computed and observed responses were in reasonable agreement in terms of thrust, moment, displacements and soil stresses provided an allowance was made for slip at the bolted connections.

Department(s)

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering

Meeting Name

3rd Conference of the International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering

Publisher

University of Missouri--Rolla

Document Version

Final Version

Rights

© 1993 University of Missouri--Rolla, All rights reserved.

Creative Commons Licensing

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Document Type

Article - Conference proceedings

File Type

text

Language

English

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Jun 1st, 12:00 AM

Measurements and Predictions on the Elkhart Greek Culvert

St. Louis, Missouri

This paper describes field measurements and analysis carried out on the Elkhart Creek soil arch culvert structure in British Columbia, Canada. The structure has a span of 13.4 m, a rise of 7.3 m, and a soil cover of 9.6 m. The original structure collapsed during backfilling in October 1987. A new structure of the same design was built in the Fall of 1989, and because of controversy regarding the design thrust value, it was instrumented to measure thrust, moment, and displacements in the arch. Displacements and stresses in the soil were also measured. The measured thrust values were much lower than expected and indicated that significant positive soil-arching occurred. A nonlinear finite element analysis of the soil-structure system was carried out simulating the construction procedures used, and the computed response compared with the measurements. The computed and observed responses were in reasonable agreement in terms of thrust, moment, displacements and soil stresses provided an allowance was made for slip at the bolted connections.