A reinforced concrete box, referred to as a box culvert in the UK and Hong Kong, is a square or rectangular "pipe" made of concrete with rebar or wire mesh fabric strewn throughout for the addition of extra strength. Multiple such boxes are arranged sideways to make a pipe or tunnel like structure.
It is often used for sanitary sewer trunks, storm drain spillways, pedestrian subways, utility tunnels, catch basins, and other similar underground passage ways. Due to the enormous strength of reinforced concrete, it is often used in sewers or tunnels that have little cover above them which means they will be subjected to the stress of the road atop them.
In India, pre-cast concrete boxes known as "Magic Boxes" are used for the construction of flyovers and underpasses.
Read more about this topic: Precast Concrete
Famous quotes containing the words concrete and/or box:
“freeways fifty lanes wide
on a concrete continent
spaced with bland billboards
illustrating imbecile illusions of happiness”
—Lawrence Ferlinghetti (b. 1919)
“However low and poor the taking Snuff argues a Man to be in his own Stock of Thought, or Means to employ his Brains and his Fingers, yet there is a poorer Creature in the World than He, and this is a Borrower of Snuff; a Fellow that keeps no Box of his own, but is always asking others for a Pinch.”
—Richard Steele (1672–1729)