Burried services

[Q5CM]

On many Occasions I am Asked to make a calculation to certify if a load ( truck or crane ) is safe to pass over a burried cable or burried pipe, can any one help on the basic concepts used for such calculations?
is just the load divided by the area? what effect does the depth of the burried item have? what effect does the type of material have? don"t i need to know the strength of the burried pipe or cable?
it seems to be a rule of thumb on site to just put a steel plate and let the truck pass

 

[ishvaaag]

Without proper data any such certificate is but shedding out liability (or at least hoping someone, likely one performing your function) taking interest on the issue to avoid the worse feared potential results... lest it be just a way of engaging insurance against yours insurance policy. I see no way of certifying any such thing without proper data.

Once the data is at hand, you need to know the allowables of what built, to forfeit the loads causing any permanent damage; including of course steel plates or whathever other means to spread the effect of the wheel loads if such thing results the convenient option.

 

[Q5CM]

I hear what you are saying, it is true you need data, what I was looking for is if any one has a worked example, at least i could then follow the steps.
most of the time the scenario is that we have a 10 inch GRP pipe burried about 6 ft in sand, and a concrete transit mixer wants to cross over, so how would that be calculated?