How to Structurally Design a Concrete Slab Culvert? RC Slab Deck Design Using the FORTRAN-95 Program (PDF)

Master's Thesis from the year 2013 in the subject Engineering - Civil Engineering, grade: Very Good (A), Addis Ababa University (Addis Ababa University Institute of Technology), course: Structural Engineering, language: English, abstract: This thesis focuses on the development of a FORTRAN 95 program for the structural design of the superstructure part of a concrete slab culvert.

FORTRAN 95 is a programming language used in the fields of scientific, numerical, and engineering fields. In this thesis, this language has been used to develop the program for the structural design of reinforced concrete slab culvert deck. The input data for at grade and at fill slab culverts are saved on a note pad in the external file folder which constitute the material properties, geometric features and proposed diameter of reinforcement bars of the slab culvert and its deck in the folder which contains FORTRAN 95 program. The output data is written on the note pad in the external folder based on the format assigned for each output in the folder which contains the design results of slab deck thickness and area, spacing and length of main, distribution and temperature reinforcement bars. Besides Edge beam design parallel to the traffic is executed and shown in the output result by the developed program.

Concrete slab culvert is an important structure used to convey trucks and pedestrian along a road corridor or in one of a range of other situations. This structure is highly constructed in highway road projects in Ethiopia. In this study, a FORTRAN program is developed for the structural design of reinforced concrete slab culvert deck according to the provisions given in AASHTO LRFD Bridge 2005 Edition.The developed program is expected to assist the structural designers and users to design the superstructure part of a reinforced concrete slab culvert deck efficiently with great accuracy. Both at grade and at fill slab deck thicknesses are computed according to the specification specified in AASHTO LRFD Bridge 2005 Edition. The reinforcement bars are also designed based on the requirements specified in the code.

Within the context of this work the program is developed in four steps. The first step is to define and analyze the problem; the second step is to develop an optimal solution and designing the program, the third step is coding the program and the final step is testing and documenting the program.