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Centrifuge and numerical investigations of rotated box

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 Physical Modelling in Geotechnics – McNamara et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-34419-8

Centrifuge and numerical investigations of rotated box structures

T.A. Newson & O.S. Abuhajar

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Western University, Canada

K.J.L. Stone
School of Environment and Technology, University of Brighton, UK

ABSTRACT: Soil arching can occur due to the existence of buried structures inside a soil body. This arching
can lead to an increase or decrease in soil pressures attracted to the buried structures, which cannot be accurately
estimated by simply considering the self-weight forces generated by the prism of soil supported by the structure.
The relative stiffness between the structure and the surrounding soil is the main factor that controls these soil
pressures. This paper presents centrifuge and numerical results of two rotated box structures used to investigate
the effect of different wall thicknesses on the contribution to the overall loads attracted to the structure. Results of
comparative numerical analyses using PLAXIS are presented to aid the interpretation of the tests. Load reductions
were found to occur for the most flexible portions of the structures (up to 20%) and both the individual flexibility
of the members and the overall structure were found to be important.

1 INTRODUCTION AASHTO (2002) standard specifications for highway

The loads attracted to buried structures, from both
overburden and surcharge loads, are governed by the
characteristics of the soil and geometry and stiffness
of the structural components. In many instances, the
redistribution of the free-field stresses as the result
of the presence of a buried structure will lead to a
decrease in loading over the deflecting or yielding
areas of the structure and an increase over adjoining
rigid or stationary parts. This transfer of load due to
soil-structure interaction is known as ‘arching’.
Whilst there have been numerous experimental and
field studies to investigate stress distribution and arch-
ing (e.g. Lefebvre et al., 1976), the exact conditions
required for this phenomenon to occur are still unclear
and arching is often ignored in engineering design
due to a lack of experience, and inclusion in codes
of practice is rare. A range of problems such as under-
ground conduits, tunnels, trapdoors, retaining walls
and braced cuts can all experience significant arching
action and theoretical analyses have been published
on these subjects. These approaches have considered
soil arching from both elastic and plastic soil states.
In recent years, research has concentrated on scaled
physical modelling of the behaviour of buried cir-
cular and square structures (e.g. Iglesia et al. 1999;
Stone & Newson 2002; McGuigan 2010; Abuhajar
et al. 2015a/b).
Buried box section culverts and conduits are com-
monly used around transportation infrastructure, e.g.
to span highways. These are used to control water
flow, storm runoff, divert municipal services, allow
vehicular access and for other related activities.
bridges takes some account of arching by changing
vertical stresses over box culverts based on Marston-
Spangler theory. However, this approach is quite
conservative compared to more sophisticated numer-
ical techniques, such as finite element analysis. For
the case of relatively flexible buried structures, the
soil-structure interaction is even more complicated,
and the problem is difficult to solve theoretically or
analytically.
Previous work by Abuhajar et al. (2009) investi-
gated the differences between the loads attracted to
buried flexible box structures orientated in different
directions (i.e. with the sides parallel or at 45 degrees
to the free surface). This study found that for the same
structure the induced bending moments were higher,
deflections smaller and attracted loads smaller for the
rotated case. The principal aim of the current paper is
to further investigate this problem using scaled mod-
elling in the centrifuge and numerical analysis for
two 45◦ rotated square box structures. These struc-
tures have different combinations of wall and slab
thicknesses. The results are presented in the form of
bending moments, deflections and vertical soil pres-
sures, to enable a comparison of the contribution made
by the structural elements to the loads attracted to the
structure, related to the theoretical overburden loads.
2 EXPERIMENTAL TESTING
2.1 Model preparation
In general, underground box structures are constructed
from short sections of reinforced concrete, which are

221
Figure 1. Model prior to embedment in sand.

joined together to form the desired cross-sections. Due

to the problems of manufacturing concrete with micro-
aggregates for scaled physical tests, model structures
(shown in Figure 1) were made from an aluminum
box section 400 mm long with an external dimension
of 101.6 mm and wall thicknesses of 2.0 and 6.35 mm.
However, correct modeling of the structural deflec- Figure 2. Diagram showing the orientation of the two
tion can be achieved in reduced scale models by structures and the properties used for analysis.
ensuring the following relationship is maintained:

where, E =Young’s modulus of the material, I = sec-

ond moment of area per unit length of the material and
N = scaling factor. The subscripts ‘m’ and ‘p’ refer to
model and prototype respectively.
To enhance the response of the model, the walls of
the aluminum section were machined to a thickness
of only 2 mm. Miniature strain gauges were bonded
at various locations on the structure to measure the
internal and external strains. The outputs were used to
determine the bending and axial strains at the location
of each gauge pair.

Figure 3. Comparison of bending moment diagrams at 80 g

2.2 Centrifuge tests
The centrifuge test procedure was as follows: firstly,
a bed of sand was placed by air pluviation into a
rectangular strongbox of dimensions 500 mm wide ×
800 mm long × 600 mm high. The structure was
placed by hand into the sand to the required depth
and then the pluviation was completed. The strong-
box was then mounted on the centrifuge platform and
the structure placed on this layer. The strain gauges
were connected to the data acquisition system, and
after checking their initial gauge output, the data logger
was zeroed. The centrifuge was then accelerated and
held at the following acceleration levels, 5 g, 10 g, 20 g,
40 g, 60 g and 80 g. Data from the strain gauges was
recorded continuously during the test. Congleton Sand
was used for all of the tests. This is a uniform sand with
a d10 = 100 µm and maximum and minimum densities
of 1.78 and 1.51 g/cm3 respectively. Air pluviation cre-
ated soil beds with a relative density (Dr ) of 35%. The
(prototype scale).
angle of internal friction of the sand at critical state
is φ  = 31◦ . In this paper, tests with two different box
structures are presented: one with a uniform thickness
of 2 mm (Test A) and the other with pairs of opposite
sides with different thicknesses – top/bottom = 2 mm
[thin] and sides = 6.35 mm [thick] (Test B). The boxes
were orientated with their vertices rotated 45◦ into the
vertical plane (as shown in Figure 2 below). The soil
bed under the structure is 220 mm and the soil above is
157 mm, hence the normalised embedment (H/B) was
equal to 1.14 for the modelled cases.
Figure 3 shows a comparison between the bending
moment distributions for tests A and B for members
‘1-2’and ‘2-3’(shown as triangular and circular points)
at 80 g. For member 2-3, the bending moment values
are very close because of the similar wall thicknesses.

222
In contrast, for member ‘1-2’, there is a clear differ-
ence in the values of the bending moments due the
different thicknesses of the two structures. It is also
seen from Figure 3 that the bending moment values at
the upper vertex (point 2) are less than those at the mid-
side vertices (points 1 and 3). For both members, the
values of the bending moments are highest at the ver-
tices and vary non-linearly along the members. Whilst
these variations are approximately parabolic, they are
asymmetric with the minima not coinciding with the
centerline of the members.
3 NUMERICAL MODELLING
The numerical analysis results presented herein are
for the 80 g test only. These tests were designed to
investigate the interaction between the buried model
and the surrounding soil related to the stiffness
of the soil and deformation of the model. Two-
dimensional plane strain finite element analysis was
conducted using the package PLAXIS® to aid inter-
pretation of the physical model. Drained soil condi-
tions were assumed, and the modeling was carried
out using Mohr-Coulomb elastic-perfectly plastic soil.
The assumed material parameters were Young’s mod-
ulus, E = 80 MPa, Poisson’s ratio, ν  = 0.32, effec-
tive unit weight, γ  = 16 kN/m3 (note the sand was
dry), angle of internal friction, φ  = 31◦ , cohesion
angle, c = 1.0 kPa and angle of dilation, ψ  = 0◦ . The
structure material (assumed to be linear elastic) was
assigned E = 70 GPa for aluminum and ν = 0.20 and
the test was modelled as a prototype at 80 g.
Due to the asymmetry of Test B, the whole soil-
structure system was modeled. The domain was dis-
cretized using 15-noded triangular soil elements (with
fourth order interpolation for displacements) and 5-
noded beam culvert elements. Each node has three
degrees of freedom per node: two translational and
one rotational. Interface elements were used to pro-
vide for possible slippage and separation between the
culvert and the surrounding soil. The ‘roughness’ of
the interaction is defined by a strength reduction fac-
tor, R, which relates the interface strength to the soil
strength parameters. A 33% reduction in soil strength
was assumed (R = 0.67) at the interface between the
culvert and the surrounding soil.
The modelled geometry and a typical finite element
mesh used for the structures is shown in Figure 4. The
boundary conditions used were to fix the domain sides
in the horizontal direction (i.e. free ‘y’ movement),
fix the bottom of the domain in both directions (x, y)
and the upper surface was free to move in both direc-
tions. Figure 4 shows a deformed mesh (with the vertex
numbering system used) and deflection of the model.
The numerical predictions of the bending moments
for tests A and B are also shown in Figure 3. These gen-
erally show a very good match between the centrifuge
model and numerical bending moments.
The corresponding deflections for the Test A struc-
ture are shown in Figure 5(a). The loaded structure
223
Figure 4. Geometry and finite element mesh for the model.
adopts the shape of a compressed hypo-trochoidal
square, with the upper and lower vertices (points 1
and 4) moving inwards and the side vertices (points
2/3) moving outwards. The relative stiffness of the
structure in the horizontal and vertical directions is
approximately the same. This is similar to the behav-
ior of circular culverts (e.g. Taleb & Moore 1999)
with the crown settling and the shoulders moving out-
wards. The displacements vary non-linearly along the
members of the structure and in common with the
bending moments, the maxima do not coincide with
the centerline of the members.
In contrast, the deflections of the members in Test
B [Figure 5(b)] are relatively asymmetrical. The gen-
eral pattern of behavior is the same with the upper and
lower vertices moving inwards and the side vertices
moving outwards. Again, the displacements vary non-
linearly along the members of the structure. For the
thin (2 mm) members the maxima do not coincide with
the centerline of the members. For the thick (6.35 mm)
members, the peak displacement occurs at the vertices.
Interestingly the displacements at the four vertices
suggest that the structure is rotating marginally in the
anti-clockwise direction.
Figure 6 presents a comparison between the vertical
soil pressures on members ‘1-2’ and ‘2-3’ of the two
models at 80 g. In common with the bending moment
diagrams in Figure 3, the results show very similar
vertical soil pressures on the thin members (2-3) and
greater variations for the thick/thin members (1-2).The
highest pressures are seen at the vertices of the struc-
ture and the lowest minima for the zones with the peak
deflections for the thinnest members (with about 20%
of the pressure). For all of the members, the variation
in vertical pressures along the structure is non-linear.
For the thick member (1-2) in Test B, the minima of
the pressure is approximately 55% of the peak pres-
sure. If the overall load attracted to the upper surface of
the two models is assessed, the Test A structure carries
80% and Test B structure carries 96% of the weight of
the overlying soil prism (from point 1 to 3). For Test
B, 2/3 of this load is carried by the stiffer (thicker)
member [1-2]. Whilst the asymmetric structure (Test
B), conveys no advantage, the symmetrical flexible
structure (Test A) sheds 20% of the load to the stiffer
surrounding soil mass.
 Figure 6. Comparison of vertical soil pressure diagrams for
both structures at 80 g.

Figure 5. Member deflections for (a) Test A and (b) Test B

structure at 80 g (prototype scale).

The incremental shear-strain contours for the two

models are shown in Figure 7. Test A is shown in
Figure 7(a) and indicates very little strain localisa-
tion along the middle 2/3 of the top of the structure.
However, two shear strain localisations occur close to
the side vertices (with peak magnitudes of 0.04%).
Interestingly these originate from the points of con-
traflexure (BM = 0), approximately 4/5 of the way
along the member and propagate towards the surface
of the soil mass. On the underside of the structure the
localisations are curved and span between the vertices
on these members. For Test B [Figure 7(b)], only one
localised shear strain zone was observed on the thin-
ner side of the structure with a slightly higher peak
strain of 0.12%. This has the same form as those shown
in Figure 7(a) and again originates from the point of Figure 7. Incremental shear strain for (a) Test A and
contraflexure on that member (2-3). (b) Test B.

224
 Although not shown in this paper, the horizontal
effective stresses were also found using Plaxis. These
indicate that significant portions of the box sides are
subjected to low horizontal pressures (less than the
active case in certain areas). The one exception is the
side vertex of the boxes, which have pressures that
begin to approach the passive pressure.
For the symmetrical rotated box (Test A), the two
upper members behave like active trapdoors and the
lower members like propped walls. The structure tends
to reduce the total loads attracted to the top slabs,
whilst concentrating the loads at the vertices (corners).
This behaviour is further enhanced by the additional
compression of the upper members acting together (in
a similar manner to a loaded ‘A-frame’ structure). The
shear strain diagram [Figure 7(a)] suggests that the
material contained within the two localisations moves
downwards with the structure and a discontinuity is
beginning to form with stationary soil outside of the
developing soil mechanism; this supports the observa-
tions made regarding the loads attracted to the model
upper surfaces.
For the asymmetrical case (Test B), the more flexi-
ble portions of the structure are behaving in the same
manner as Test A, but the localisations appear to be
more intense and the developing soil mechanism much
narrower, which affects the arching behavior and loads
attracted to the structure.
4 CONCLUSIONS
This paper has described centrifuge and numerical
modeling used to investigate soil-structure interaction
of a buried rotated square box.The analyses have inves-
tigated the contributions of the form and location of
the structural. The matches between the centrifuge and
numerical predictions were found to be reasonable and
this enabled further interpretation of the results to be
conducted. The effect of member thicknesses showed
their important contributions to the overall structural
stiffness and the soil pressures attracted to the boxes.
The shape of the soil pressure distributions was not
uniform and were found to be approximately parabolic
with high values at the edges and lower values at
the center. Shear localisations were found to originate
225
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from the points of contraflexure on the more flexible
portions of the upper surface of the structures, sug-
gesting the initial formation of soil mechanisms. This
lead to some arching and load transfer to the rigid por-
tions of the soil mass and reductions in the overall
loads on the structure. The more rigid portions of the
structure also experienced much higher stresses and
bending moments. For the asymmetric case (Test B),
higher bending moments were found for the stiffer por-
tions of the structure and quite significant increases in
load were observed. Whilst it is unlikely this type of
structure will be used in geotechnical practice, due to
limitations of construction and usage, this study does
provide information on fundamental aspects of arching
phenomena around buried structures.
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