300 ton track crane on top of 48" Corrugated HDPE pipe

[StormwaterEngineer]

thread378-349138

Good afternoon,

I am working on a project that requires 48" diameter corrugated HDPE pipe for stormwater storage. I only have 4-5' of cover to work with and a contractor needs to operate a 300 ton track crane on top of the pipe. What minimum cover would you recommend on top of the 48" pipe to safely operate a 300 ton crane on top of it?

Thank you in advance.

 

[racookpe1978]

Designed reinforced concrete culvert.

 

[bimr]

Contact the railroad where the project is located. The railroads have specific requirements and a HDPE would generally not be accepted.

There is no point in designing something without knowing the specific requirements that are required.

 

[BigInch]

put it inside a box culvert designed for the crane load.

I hate Windowz 8!!!!

 

[cvg]

you really need to run the numbers based on the actual loading. cribbing or steel plates might be needed over the pipe

 

[MikeHalloran]

I watched USACE install a floodwall in harvey, LA, on/in Mississippi Delta soil, which is more like jelly than dirt, using some big crawler cranes on top of timber mats comprising >12"x>12"x<crawler width over tracks plus a bunch> square timbers, bolted into pairs and leapfrogged around the big cranes by smaller cranes. The big cranes never rode on the actual soil. That project is mostly over. There must be a huge inventory of those timber mats available for rent.



Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[LittleInch]

If you look through the other thread you get some idea, but also see

https://plasticpipe.org/publications/pe_handbook.html

and download section 6 - It has all the required calcs.

Although 300 tons is a lot, you need to find out the actual surface pressure loading based on track size. Also spreading the load works very well...

You need to try and do the calc to be safe, but 5 feet should be enough if you spread the load enough

My motto: Learn something new every day

Also: There's usually a good reason why everyone does it that way