The objective of this study is to develop the innovative application methodology of Geofoam for sustainable design of eco-bridges under deep soil cover. Traditionally, the soft maerial zone has been located on the top or above the buried conduit to reduce the earth pressures, which is called imperfect trench installation (ITI). There, however have been no previous studies for the application of ITI on buried arch structures. This study investigated the structural effects of Geofoam surrouding buried arch bridges, which was named as embedded trench installation (ETI). Various shapes and locations of Geofoam have been investigated for both ETI and ITI. The findings from this study showed that ETI could effectively increase the stability and sustainability of deeply buried eco-bridges.

In order to solve the limitation of the long span arch structures, a numerical analysis was carried out to investigate the effects of embedded trench installation technique to the earth pressure of an underground arch-rib shaped structure. For the arch-rib shape, the parabolic curve and the circular shape were analyzed according to the span-rise ratio varying from 0.1 to 0.5. The finite element analysis program, ABAQUS (2016), was used to consider the soil - structure interaction. The results from the analysis was verified through comparison with the existing Geofoam application technique.

Over the years, several studies have been made for the improvement of the design criteria of stepped beams. However, studies on lateral-torsional buckling of stepped beams located at the midspan have been very limited. Hence, this study aims to evaluate the elastic lateral-torsional buckling strength of doubly symmetric singly stepped I-beam at midspan subjected to pure bending along the entire span. The I-beam measurements and specifications are in accordance with the AISC standards. For the analysis of stepped beams, the parameters α, β and γ are used. In this paper, singly stepped beams are defined as beams having an increased cross section at midspan. The unbraced length used for the simply supported stepped I-beams are 13.59m, 18.12m, and 22.65m while the parameters α, β and γ for the cross section varies from 0.167~0.333, 1.0~1.4, and 1.0~1.8, respectively. To model and perform the analysis for the I-beams, a universal finite element analysis program, ABAQUS, will be used. S4R elements will be used to model the simply supported beams and to check the accuracy of the models guide design specifications are used. The results from the finite element analysis will be shown in tables and plotted into graphs. Based from the obtained results, conclusions and new design guidelines are proposed.