2017 Volume 73 Issue 4 Pages 429-441
At the 2011 off the Pacific coast of Tohoku earthquake, hinge-type arch culverts experienced the large damage which led to loose the transport availability for the first time. The resultant disaster seems to be closely related to the inertial force in the culvert longitudinal direction. These damaged culverts had one point in common, namely, the small soil cover of the culverts or the embankment slope began very near the mouth wall. Therefore, the aim of this study is to clarify the influence of the embankment shape on the seismic behavior of precast arch culverts in the culvert longitudinal direction. We performed dynamic centrifuge tests on an embankment model including precast arch culverts with the change of embankment shape patterns. As a result we found that in the case of the culverts with small soil cover, the seismic behaviour of the culverts near the mouth with the smallest constraining effect of embankment get to be amplified largely and exceeds that of the surrounding embankment, and that in the case of the culverts with large soil cover, the seismic behaviour of the surrounding embankment strongly binds that of the culverts near the mouth, which leads to the united response between the culverts near the mouth and the surrounding embankment.
