PARAMETRIC STUDY OF CULVERTS USING HIGH PERFORMANCE CONCRETE AND HIGH STRENGTH REINFORCEMENT

Abstract

The proposed development of infrastructural facilities in India requires a large road network and according to the ninth fifth year plan(1997-2002) the following targets are to be met: o Widening of two lane roads — 1032km o Four laning of two lane roads — 1531cm o Construction of By passes — 20nos o Construction of Major bridges — 36nos o Construction of Minor bridges — 198nos Hence though the cost of minor bridges individually may be very small, but they shall collectively play a very important role in the economics of the proposed project. Thus an attempt has been made in this dissertation to find out the most economical type of culverts under a given set of conditions. Three type of culverts has been selected for the study: 1) Slab culverts, 2) Pipe culverts, and 3) Box culverts By varying the parameters like discharge, span of culverts, grade of concrete and grade of steel used for construction, the effect on iii cost has been analyzed so that most economical culverts can be chosen. To carry out the parametric study a computer program in language has been developed which is interactive enough so that the user may exercise his own options regarding span, discharge, grade of concrete, grade of steel to obtain the design and quantity of structural concrete and steel required. The program also calculates the quantity of earthfill and cost of flexible pavement for the pipe culverts. Then using the above results, graphs are produced for different paranleters with cost / m of span=- for different type of culverts. For comparison the graphs has been superimposed and the comparative study has been done.