Effect of soil properties on stability of soil–steel culverts

Soil–steel structures have been used as an alternative to short span concrete and steel bridges for years because they have some advantages regarding their construction methods, maintenance costs, and construction time. Several researchers have performed experimental and numerical studies about the behavior of these structures under dead loads and crossing live loads. In this study, to investigate the variations of soil properties on the stability of a culvert, we tried to simulate a soil–steel culvert in the PLAXIS program, which is a 2D finite element code for soil and rock analyses. The Mohr–Coulomb constitutive model was used in this simulation, and as the crossing traffic load, the stage construction method was established. Parametric analyses showed that as cohesion (c), Young’s modulus (E), and the internal friction angle (ϕ) increase, the stability of the soil–steel culvert increases. Furthermore, analyses showed that an increase in other properties, such as Poisson’s ratio (υ) and the dilation angle (ψ) , has a negligible effect on the stability of the soil–steel culvert.