Sustainability Considerations for Underground Concrete Manholes

Abstract

Sewer systems enclose one of the harshest environments on concrete materials. These systems if made of concrete are usually accessed for maintenance and inspection by precast concrete manholes. The present design practices of these shafts components in Canada are generally conservative which results in heavily reinforced bases. If verified by full scale testing the code allows the use of alternative manhole design. To produce a more sustainable precast concrete manhole the steel reinforcement has to be minimized or even eliminated altogether if possible. In the course of introducing a more sustainable manhole a full scale load testing of non-reinforced base precast concrete manhole in a controlled laboratory environment was performed under critical configurations of the Ontario truck. This was followed by an extensive numerical investigation on the proposed manhole. The results showed that the proposed sustainable manhole can withstands applied loads without cracks in the shaft or its base. After verifying the structural validity of the proposed manhole design the sustainability of this design was evaluated. Also, a life cycle assessment scheme for precast concrete manholes was proposed. And the sustainability efforts in Precast Concrete manholes were summarizes