H-20 Loading, Pressure - Foundation engineering (2024)

See "Highway Live Loads on Concrete Pipe", a free 12 page .pdf from the American Concrete Pipe Association. You did not say what type pipe that you are considering, but if it is a different rigid wall material (steel, ductile iron, etc.) the principle is the same.
Here is the link
http://www.concrete-pipe.org/pdfs1/DD_1.pdf

www.SlideRuleEra.net

Thanks for the information SlideRuleEra...the article was extremely helpful!

sjheotech - Glad the info was helpful.

BigH - I'll tell you my secrets. I don't have the links at my fingertips, it's the other way around. Have a hard drive full of cataloged downloads on subjects that I know something about. When a good question comes along, I see what I have on that subject. With the title and source (from the American Concrete Pipe Association, in this case) it is relatively easy to Google and find the link.

Alternate methods include making analogies to similar problems in other fields, and just plain old looking for the answer - I always try to do that, offering an "opinion" only as a last resort.

www.SlideRuleEra.net

SlideRuleEra

Do you know a reference for steel pipe and H-20 Loading?

Abutler - Well, here's what I came up with...

National Corrugated Steel Pipe Association, see this document http://www.ncspa.org/images/DDS18.pdf
Also may be additional info in some of their other pubs.

Also see the table on page 253 of the (Canadian) Corrugated Steel Pipe Institute's "Handbook of Steel Drainage & Highway Construction Products"
http://www.cspi.ca/english/technical_publications.html

If cast iron is close enough to steel, see
Cast Iron Soil Pipe Institute "Pipe & Fittings Handbook", Chapter VII
http://www.cispi.org/handbook.htm

or perhaps the Ductile Iron Pipe Research Association "Truck Loads On Pipes Buried At Shallow Depths"
http://www.dipra.org/pdf/truckLoads.pdf

www.SlideRuleEra.net

I would reference the Handbook of Steel Drainage & Highway Construction Products book put out by the American Iron & Steel Institute... the "green" book.

This will tell you minimum/maximum cover for H20 & H25 loading for common diameters of corrugated steel pipes. It will also go through the structural design of these buried structures.

For instance... a 16 gage, 60" diameter, 5x1 culvert pipe can carry an H20 or H25 load if properly backfilled with a minimum of 12" cover from top of pipe to bottom of flexible pavement or top of pipe to top of rigid pavement. The maximum cover is 50 feet!

Hope this helps

I hope you guys use lots of the "wrinkled tin" pipe. Because in 15-25 years, my kid will be able to bill someone to replace it.

Richard A. Cornelius, P.E.
WWW.amlinereast.com