ABSTRACT
The behavior of corrugated steel culverts at shallow cover depths has not been fully explained, since recent experiments showed disagreement with the current North American design codes. This paper describes field testing of a 3.1-m span corrugated steel arch culvert with a cover depth of 0.45 m. The culvert was loaded by a truck at different locations. Fiber optic strain sensors were firstly used to measure distributed strains for a culvert in the field. The peak stress was 16.1% of the nominal yield strength. The peak calculated thrust was not always at the springlines, which is contrary to the assumptions in the codes. The ratio of flexural stress to hoop stress was higher than 3 when the truck wheel pair was located directly above. The use of an interaction equation for thrusts and moments is recommended for evaluations of reserve capacity, as analysis focused on thrusts alone could be unconservative.
