Would this be considered a steel corrugated or a concrete culvert? It appears to be half and half... Any guidelines if other culverts like this are encountered in future?
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bfalco
May 30, 2018
Sorry for poor quality photo. There was rust in the culvert. There is a concrete floor that connects the walls on either side throughout the structure and the walls are perfectly vertical. Will make note moving forward. Thanks
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thomas.p.taggart
May 30, 2018
Brad,
Great question. We've got either an arch bridge here or a pipe arch (as far as i can tell from the pic), that is half-concrete and half metal (possibly aluminum? was there some red rust somewhere?).
In these cases, we ask that people pick the material that would transport most of the flow as the structure material, in this case concrete, and then in the comments note that the top half of the pipe arch was corrugated metal.
As for the structure type, these kinds of culverts are hard to specify the right type at times. If it was open bottomed (no concrete floor across the bottom of the culvert between the walls), it would definitely be an arch-bridge and you would collect A,B, and C measurements as indicated on the arch-bridge diagram (still noting the material differences as explained). If the concrete connects the two walls, making a floor of the culvert this slightly rounded (which is what appears to happen in this photo), then we could also call this a pipe arch culvert, collecting A and B measurements for sure according to the pipe arch diagram. Now for the tricky part, even though there is a concrete floor, making this not an arch-bridge according to the protocol, this isn't exactly a pipe arch either because those side walls look perfectly vertical (once again, as far as I can tell). If this was a site that we would want to model the hydraulic capacity for, it would be important to grab the C measurement from the arch-bridge diagram (the wall rise measurement) which allows us to model it both ways in the Streamworks-Trout Unlimited Hydraulic Capacity model, testing out which representation works best.
Sorry for poor quality photo. There was rust in the culvert. There is a concrete floor that connects the walls on either side throughout the structure and the walls are perfectly vertical. Will make note moving forward. Thanks
Brad,
Great question. We've got either an arch bridge here or a pipe arch (as far as i can tell from the pic), that is half-concrete and half metal (possibly aluminum? was there some red rust somewhere?).
In these cases, we ask that people pick the material that would transport most of the flow as the structure material, in this case concrete, and then in the comments note that the top half of the pipe arch was corrugated metal.
As for the structure type, these kinds of culverts are hard to specify the right type at times. If it was open bottomed (no concrete floor across the bottom of the culvert between the walls), it would definitely be an arch-bridge and you would collect A,B, and C measurements as indicated on the arch-bridge diagram (still noting the material differences as explained). If the concrete connects the two walls, making a floor of the culvert this slightly rounded (which is what appears to happen in this photo), then we could also call this a pipe arch culvert, collecting A and B measurements for sure according to the pipe arch diagram. Now for the tricky part, even though there is a concrete floor, making this not an arch-bridge according to the protocol, this isn't exactly a pipe arch either because those side walls look perfectly vertical (once again, as far as I can tell). If this was a site that we would want to model the hydraulic capacity for, it would be important to grab the C measurement from the arch-bridge diagram (the wall rise measurement) which allows us to model it both ways in the Streamworks-Trout Unlimited Hydraulic Capacity model, testing out which representation works best.
Let me know if you have any other questions.
Thanks,
Tom