Embankment Filling Loads on an Assembled Concrete Culvert beneath High Embankment

A culvert with prefabricated and assembled structural components is introduced to speed up the progress of highway construction in China. In order to clear the behavior of the prefabricated and assembled slab culvert, the center line section and the shoulder section of the embankment are selected for field tests. In the tests, the distribution and the growth of the earth pressures on the top slab and the lateral walls and the displacements and the deformations of the top slab and lateral walls are investigated, thereafter, the tested earth pressures are linearly fitted, and the formulas of fitting lines are obtained. The results show that the deflections of the lateral walls and of the cover slab are very small, and the variation of distribution and growth of the earth pressures presents significantly nonlinear characters, which is totally different from the linear earth pressure theory proposed by the current Chinese code. The vertical pressure is much smaller in the middle part of the top slab than that on both ends, and it is much larger than the linear theory results. The distribution curve of the lateral earth pressures on the lateral walls is approximately “3” in shape, and the maximum earth pressure locates at the junction of the cap and the lateral wall. The formula of the fitted line obtained from the primary stage pressure can be employed to estimate the earth pressure of embankment completion. The results of the field tests can provide references for the calculations of the components and the strength in the junctions of the assembled culverts.