A rational design method for drainage pipes buried under high fills that considers the mechanical properties of fill material, backfill material, and pipe reasonably was proposed. The method was constructed by an FE elastic analysis that was validated by comparison with extensive series of centrifuge model tests. The method provided two types of design charts for practical applications to predict vertical deflections and maximum bending moments of pipes reasonably: one for any type of pipe that behaves as linear-elastic body, and the other for HDPE (high density polyethylene) pipes that behave as non-linear elastic bodies. The proposed method can be applied for almost all field conditions involving extremely high fills with heights up to 100m that current design standards do not specify.