Performance evaluation of reinforced concrete culvert under monotonic loading

Abstract

Reinforced concrete culverts frequently fail nowadays owing to the increase in demand for their use in traffic, rapid urban population growth, and economic activities that connect urban and rural life. Although culverts may appear to be simple structures, the applied load during their service life is often complex. Thus, an experimental investigation has been built to understand the failure of reinforced concrete culverts of different shapes under increasing monotonic loadings. The corrosion effect of reinforcement in concrete culverts was also considered using Sodium Chloride (NaCl) as a corrosion agent. A total of twelve (12) specimens were considered. Applicability of FEM using reinforced concrete Model of 3-dimension software was also adopted to understand the failure of the culverts. Compression and tension damage are common to all the shapes of culverts considered resulting in quasi-brittle failure. Moreover, the arch concrete culvert resisted more applied load due to the arch action developed with an enhanced capacity than the other shapes, with failure capacity of 28% and 87%, more than the rectangular and circular culvert, respectively. Inadequate shear link led to shear brittle failure at the corner of the rectangular culvert. Corrosion effect has also been observed to reduce the capacity of the culvert resulting in sudden damage under the applied load. Furthermore, there is a good concordance between the experiment and the FEM analysis under increasing loading. The conditions of the traffic of the areas to install culverts should be evaluated, while the vehicular speed of crossing the existing culvert in service should be checked to avoid variable-induced stresses which could reduce the service life of the culvert.