ELASTIC ANALYSIS OF BURIED STRUCTURES SUBJECT TO THREE‐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 structures such as pipelines and culverts subjected to longitudinal bending. This 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-dimensional problem to one involving only two spatial directions, thereby reducing the data preparation and computation time. Conventional finite element analysis is used to approximate the field quantities in the transformed two-dimensional plane. Two Fourier integral element types have been developed which have many applications in geotechnical engineering.