agthompson
Mechanical
We are crossing a heavy load over an arched culvert with the footings 15' apart and the top of the footings 10' below the pavement surface. We are proposing spanning the culvert with a 40' span x 20' wide temporary "bridge" which would transfer our load of approximately 900,000 lbs to each side of the culvert. Am I correct assuming that if the bearing surface at each end of the temporary bridge is outside of the soil failure wedge angle from the culvert footings, that there are no imposed lateral loads on the sides of the culvert? The bearing at each end of the bridge will be wider than the 20' bridge width and approximately 6' in the travel direction. (The temporary bridge will also be spaced high enough to prevent the span deflection from loading the center of the culvert)
