Abstract
In recent years, underpass tunnels are often constructed under shallow earth coverings by either the method of combination of temporary elements or the method of replace elements with the box culvert. For the latter method, the joints of temporary element pipes are often connected by bolts to construct underpass tunnels reasonably, so it is strongly needed to conduct torque management of bolts appropriately. In this study, 4 points bending test using full-size specimen of square steel pipes with single bolted joint is conducted to investigate bending behaviors of connected steel pipes. The results demonstrated that as fastening torques are increased by 3 times lager than initial values, the deflections of the specimen are decreased by 30%. In addition, simple algorism using FE analysis are developed to grasp the bending behaviors of element pipes with bolted joints.
