Evaluation of the uplift behavior of plate anchor in structured marine clay |
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Authors: | Ning Zhang Takenori Hino Zhen-Yu Yin |
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Affiliation: | 1. State Key Laboratory of Ocean Engineering, Department of Civil Engineering, Collaborative Innovation Center for Advanced Ship and Deep-Sea Exploration (CISSE), Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China;2. Department of Civil Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China;3. Institute of Lowland and Marine Research, Saga University, Saga, Japan;4. EcoleCentrale Nantes, GeM UMR CNRS, LUNAM University, Nantes, France |
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Abstract: | The uplift behavior of a plate anchor in a structured clay (soft Ariake clay) is investigated through a series of laboratory tests and method of finite element analysis. The tests are adopted to identify the factors influencing the behavior of the anchor, including the thixotropic nature of Ariake clay, consolidation time, and embedment ratio of the anchor. A finite element method (FEM) is used to analyze and predict the uplift behavior of the anchor plate well in the elastic region and the yield load. The results from both the laboratory tests and the FEM analysis suggest that the embedment ratio for a deep anchor in Ariake clay is close to 4. Further increase in embedment ratio improves the capacity to a lesser extent. FEM overestimates the failure load of the uplift anchor in soft Ariake clay by about 20%. This may be ascribed to the hypothesis in the FEM analysis that there is continuous contact between the clay and the anchor until failure. Vesic’s theory for deep anchors, which may be used to predict the ultimate pullout resistance of the plate anchor in reconstituted Ariake clay, is verified to be applicable. In this paper, the plastic flow zone around the anchor is discussed using FEM which makes the behavior of anchor more understandable during the design stage. |
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Keywords: | FEM laboratory test plate anchor soft ariake clay uplift behavior |
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