Concrete culvert assembly and related methods

A concrete culvert assembly for installation in the ground, comprising a set of spaced apart elongated footers, a plurality of precast concrete culvert sections supported by said footers in side by side alignment, each of said concrete culvert sections having:

• an open bottom, a top wall and spaced apart side walls to define a passage thereunder, each of said side walls extending downward and outward from the top wall, each of said side walls having a substantially planar inner surface and a substantially planar outer surface, the top wall having an arch-shaped inner surface and an arch-shaped outer surface, first and second haunch sections, each haunch section joining one of the side walls to the top wall, each haunch section defining a corner thickness greater than the thickness of the top wall, each side wall being tapered from top to bottom such that a thickness of each side wall decreases when moving from the top of each side wall to the bottom of each side wall, a ratio of haunch thickness to top wall thickness at top dead center is no more than about 2.30, the inner surface of each side wall intersects with an inner surface of its adjacent haunch section at an interior haunch intersect line, each haunch section includes an exterior corner that is spaced laterally outward of the interior haunch intersect line, a horizontal distance between each interior haunch intersect line and the corresponding exterior corner is no more than about 91% of a horizontal width of the bottom surface of the side wall, the thickness at the bottom of each side wall is no more than 90% of the thickness of the top wall at top dead center of the top wall, and a ratio of a first vertical distance over a second vertical distance is at least about 55%, where the first vertical distance is the vertical distance between the height of the exterior corner of the haunch and the height of top dead center of the arch-shaped outer surface of the top wall, and the second vertical distance is the vertical distance between the height of a defined interior haunch intersect line and the height of top dead center of the arch-shaped inner surface of the top wall.

A concrete culvert section comprising:

• an open bottom, a top wall and spaced apart side walls to define a passage thereunder, each of said side walls extending downward and outward from the top wall, each of said side walls having a substantially planar inner surface and a substantially planar outer surface, the top wall having an arch-shaped inner surface and an arch-shaped outer surface and a substantially uniform thickness, first and second haunch sections, each haunch section joining one of the side walls to the top wall, each haunch section defining a corner thickness greater than the thickness of the top wall, for each side wall an interior side wall angle is defined by intersection of a first plane in which the inner surface of the side wall lies and a second plane that is perpendicular to a radius that defines at least part of the arch-shaped inner surface of the top wall at a first point along the arch-shaped inner surface of the top wall, an exterior side wall angle is defined by intersection of a third plane in which the outer surface of the side wall lies and a fourth plane that is perpendicular to a radius that defines at least part of the arch-shaped outer surface of the top wall at a point along the arch-shaped outer surface, the third plane being non-parallel to the first plane, the interior side wall angle being at least one-hundred and thirty degrees, the exterior side wall angle being at least one-hundred and thirty-five degrees, the exterior side wall angle being different than the interior side wall angle, and each side wall being tapered from top to bottom such that a thickness of each side wall decreases when moving from the top of each side wall to the bottom of each side wall.