Corrugated steel culvert construction: tremendously strong and incredibly durable

Initially, the plan was to extend this culvert with a concrete culvert in connection with the doubling of the roadway system (project VDR). However, a permanent, corrugated steel culvert construction by Bergschenhoek Civil Engineering turned out to be a much more interesting alternative. In more ways than one.

"We were initially invited by Heijmans in the design phase to submit a proposal for a temporary, steel culvert structure," says Dick van der Linde, Head of Sales at Bergschenhoek Civil Engineering. "The idea was to extend the existing concrete culvert with a temporary structure in steel. Then to await settlement, excavate the steel culvert and install a permanent concrete culvert. Because of the "flexible" properties of corrugated steel, we provided an alternative that allowed us to create a permanent solution immediately. Nevertheless, this was also a unique project for us. Usually we are used to load classes for national roads, a 158-meter long culvert intended for the heaviest aircraft (35 tons of wheel load) is of a different category."

Strong, Light and Flexible 

"The big advantage of a corrugated steel culvert structure is that it is lightweight and can accommodate uneven settlements," Van der Linde explains. "For an unsupported concrete culvert, this could lead to problems at the connection, such as angular settlements with all the consequences that would entail. Based on the assumptions, including a 100-year design life and expected residual settlements, we selected and calculated a culvert structure 3.70 meters wide, 2.44 meters high and 158 meters long. We get the strength of the culvert from the 200 x 55 millimeter corrugated profile combined with the on-site backfill material (sand). We make clever use of the strength of the sand that will be applied anyway to generally arrive at the most economical solution. Because of the requested service life of 100 years, we included part of the steel thickness in the design life calculations. Also, the structure was provided with corrosion protection consisting of a zinc layer and coating."

Bergschenhoek Civil Engineering installed the culvert construction in a time frame of just two weeks. "The installation is lightning fast and the moment the construction is completed, you can already open the waterway. Moreover, the beauty of this system is that in the future you can very easily extend or remove it and reuse it elsewhere." Optimal circular construction with corrugated steel!