Flexible corrugated steel culverts have been used in engineering for manyyears, with the first application in 1931. Since that time, the popularity of these structures has increased enormously. Metal soil-steel bridges are getting more and more popular in Europe in recent years. In 2008 two identical SuperCor large-span flexible structures were constructed on A4 motorway in the vicinity of Boleslawiec city in Poland near the Polish-Germanborder. The culverts are served as animal crossings. This paper describesfull-scale field tests of one of mentioned structures during backfilling operations. A 75 m long tested structure is a low-profile metal arch with a span of 19.5 m and a rise of 6.0 m. The animal crossing is a one of the biggest buried structure in Europe. The main goal of conducted full-scale filed tests was to evaluate the structure behavior during backfilling in configuration of twin arches. Horizontal deflections at spring line, vertical deflections at the crown and strains in metal plates were measured. Theinstrumentations included strain gauges installed on the metal plates anda laser device to monitor horizontal and vertical deflections of the structure. The experimental results obtained during measurements are shown in graphs. Alternative solutions of backfill were proposed. The research project is sponsored by The European Community under a Marie Curie European Reintegration Grant and ViaCon Company in Poland.
Abstract