06/10/2026
People are surprised when they hear that a buried steel arch is often only 3 to 7mm thick.
So how does something that thin carry modern traffic?
1. Soil does the heavy lifting 🌍
Good backfill pushes back against movement and shares the load.
2. Corrugations = strength 💪
The corrugated shape makes the plate far stiffer than it looks.
3. Arch action distributes forces 🟰
Loads spread into the ground instead of bending the plate.
4. Less steel means lower carbon. 💚
Efficient design without huge material use.
Buried steel arches aren’t “thin plates under a road”. They are a soil-structure system designed to work with the ground.
asset MultiPlate overview: https://www.assetint.co.uk/asset-multiplate