Abstract
Reinforced concrete (RC) box culverts for Road under Bridge design (RUB) have been widely used in the construction of railways. RUB box culverts are typically exposed to dead loads, live load intensities from dynamic effects, and lateral earth pressure. The amount of reinforced concrete in the box culvert depends on the expected lateral earth pressure and superimposed dead loads from the top filling material. The magnitude of increased vertical load from the top filling material generates stresses and deformations on all the faces of the box culvert. To counteract the high pressure, either more reinforced concrete in the box culvert or lightweight material as backfill is used. Expanded polystyrene (EPS) geofoam as a lightweight geosynthetic is commonly used in transportation infrastructure to minimize horizontal and vertical stresses on culverts. This research investigates the effect of top filling properties on the bending moment characteristics of two cell reinforced concrete skew box culverts for the RUB design. The STAAD Pro software was used to model and analyze the cast-in-situ RUB box structure with profiles of 10.5 × 5.6. For this study, the fill height above the top slab of the culvert has been varied from 0.5 m to 10 m with increments of 0.5 m. The structure was analyzed for two different top filling materials; initial (with normal soil) and then with EPS geofoam materials. The results of the study indicate that using geofoam as a top-filling material reduces the bending moment on the center of the top slab of the box structure, midspan of the bottom slab of the second cell, and bottom edge of the outer wall of the second cell by 76 %, 70 %, and 73.3% respectively compared to the use of conventional soil fill. Also, the results from the analyses revealed that box structures with geofoam as filling materials reduced the earth pressure. The geofoam as fill material does not influence the bending moment values of the box sections beyond a fill height of 8 m.
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