Investigations of contact interactions in buried corrugated metal structure by means of strain gauges

This paper analyzes the distributions of contact soil-steel interactions in the form of normal and shear components. Unit strain measured by electrical resistance strain gauges are used in the cal-culations. An algorithm for transforming strain functions into contact forces distributed along the circumferential section of the steel shell is presented. When the measuring points are regularly spaced, it is advantageous to adopt the differential approach to the solution. The effectiveness of the algorithm has been demonstrated through a test conducted in laboratory conditions, using a static force system as the rolling stock load. The intensity of loading from the standard value to the predicted limit value was adopted as the variable parameter in the analysis. The results of the calculations are presented in the form of functions of the forces distributed along the shell’s cir-cumferential section. An analysis of three exemplary cases, carried out in this paper, has shown that even when the load distribution on the soil surcharge is almost uniform, the contact forces form composite functions. Moreover, the latter considerably diverge from load proportionality.