Overview
Both culverts and bridges are the primary structures that allow flowing bodies of water to pass beneath roads & railways. The selection of one or the other hinges on hydraulic & structural requirements, as well as financial constraints. The focus of this course will be on culverts, which are hydraulically short conduits that convey stream flow through a roadway embankment or past some other type of flow obstruction. Culvert selection factors include roadway profiles, channel characteristics, flood damage evaluations, construction and maintenance costs, and estimates of service life. Hydrologic and site conditions comprise the fundamental requirements for a culvert, and the designer must choose an optimal design based on available shapes, sizes, materials, and inlet configurations. Other considerations such as economics, durability, safety, and ecology will also influence design.
The target audience for this course is structural, transportation, and other civil engineers who oversee design, construction, or maintenance of culverts. The course material is based on the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) publication FHWA-NHI-01-020.
In order to earn PDH credit for this course, the reader will need to pass a multiple choice quiz of forty-five (45) questions.
Specific Knowledge or Skill Obtained
This course teaches the following specific knowledge and skills:
- Hydrologic & site data requirements for design
- Hydrologic analysis methods
- Comparison of shapes & materials with regard to performance & durability
- Inlet vs. outlet control, and their performance curves
- Influence of depressed & tapered inlets on performance
- Reading nomographs to determine headwater depth for various culvert sizes, discharges, & inlet edges
- Storage routing techniques to account for upstream ponding effects
- Hydraulic influence of bends & junctions
- Culvert features that facilitate fish passage
- Erosion, sedimentation, and debris control
- Skewed barrels & inlets
- Abrasion & corrosion: causes & prevention
- Structural considerations
- Safety & economics
Course
Click on the following link to the PDF document to review the course material before taking the quiz for credit.
Hydraulic Design of Highway Culverts
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