Buried bridge structures

Planning and placing buried bridge structures is challenging for engineers and builders.

Reinforced Earth is well known not only for specializing in soils-structure interaction modelling, but also for developing materials specifications and recommendations necessary to build these buried structures quickly, safely, and with predictable resilience, performance and durability.

Reinforced Earth offers tailored, pre-engineered, prefabricated material solutions for your project specifics. Working together, your team and our Reinforced Earth bridge specialists will determine the best choice between our TechSpan® precast arch selections (visit precastarches.com), our TechBox™ variations, and Reinforced Earth® walls to provide the most economical solution for your buried bridge structure.

Buried bridges normally come in the form of arches or boxes. These structures are designed to be flexible and to accommodate differential movement and built to support heavy dynamic loads induced by vehicle trafficking such as trucks, trains, and aircraft.

As a cost-effective alternative to cast-in-place, the applications can address the need for:

• Conventional earth-covered bridge construction or replacement
• Earthen viaducts with multiple thruways
• Pedestrian access pathways below roadways
• Covered passages at industrial sites and airports
• Wildlife and hydraulic crossings

TechSpan® precast concrete arches

TechSpan® is a proven solution that has been used for the construction of hundreds of buried bridges around the world. Our precast concrete arches come in a wide variety of design options due to the large catalogue of shapes available. We have designed for single spans as wide as 25m. In the event of the maximum offsite-produced span being restrictive for transport, it is also possible to manufacture onsite, or to build a multi-span arch bridge.

TechBox™ precast concrete boxes

TechBox™ precast concrete boxes are suitable for applications such as short-span bridges or stream culverts, able to withstand flows of water and heavy loads. A Reinforced Earth buried box structure can also be designed and manufactured using our TechWall™ solution combined with a segmental precast concrete over-bridging “lid” to form a composite buried box.

Reinforced Earth®

Reinforced Earth® can be used to build Mechanically Stabilized Earth (MSE) walls to form “box” bridge openings or built along the sides of the precast concrete arches or boxes as wing walls or spandrel walls. Reinforced Earth® can be designed using steel or geosynthetic soil reinforcement, therefore accommodating any backfill constraints.

Architectural treatments

Our operations teams have expertise at delivering aesthetic form liner finishes and customized artworks integrated within our structures. We also design and furnish precast copings, collar beams, barriers and various trim features which can be detailed into our design and supply package.