Abstract
Manhole cover, which is usually made of grey cast iron and consists of frame and cover, should have enough strength to support the heavy traffic load. The manhole cover made of cast iron has heavy weight to handle manually and is vulnerable to impact force with its brittle characteristics. Moreover, its production process of casting has been regulated in terms of environmental pollution. In this study, steel manhole cover is proposed to substitute the cast cover with a series of structural analyses to confirm its strength to support the test load for manhole cover. The cover of the proposed steel manhole cover is made of thin circular pate and stiffeners below the plate. Rectangular columns and hollow circular plate were selected for the shape of the stiffener. In order to give enough strength for the cover to behave within elastic range in the loading, strengthening structures of the cover were varied with increasing the number and the size of the stiffeners. The results of the analyses revealed that when both the hollow circular stiffener and cross stiffeners were additionally applied at the same time to the steel cover with longitudinal stiffeners, the maximum stress level in the cover could be reduced to that level presented in the cast cover.
