ELASTIC ANALYSIS OF BURIED STRUCTURES SUBJECT TO 3-DIMENSIONAL SURFACE LOADING

A method is presented which may be used to compute the displacements, strains and moments (both in-plane and transverse) in buried structure s such as pipelines and culverts subjected to longitudinal bending. Th is type of bending can occur if a surface loading such as a vehicular loading or an embankment loading is applied to the soil above the pipe or culvert. Fourier transforms are used to reduce the three-dimension al problem to one involving only two spatial directions, thereby reduc ing the data preparation and computation time. Conventional finite ele ment analysis is used to approximate the field quantities in the trans formed two-dimensional plane. Two Fourier integral element types have been developed which have many applications in geotechnical engineerin g.