Vertical Uplift Capacity of Circular Anchor Plates

Abstract

Experimental and numerical investigations have been carried out to determine the vertical uplift resistance of circular anchor plates embedded in cohesionless soil media. Experimental studies are performed on model circular anchor plates placed at different depths in loose to medium dry sand deposit for two different relative densities, namely, 25% and 65%, respectively. The numerical work has been done by using an axisymmetric lower bound limit analysis in conjunction with finite elements and linear programming to compute the uplift resistance offered by circular anchor plates embedded horizontally in sand. In the case of numerical studies, the internal frictional angle of sand was varied from 20^o to 45^o. Both experimental and numerical studies clearly reveal that the uplift resistance of the circular plate increases considerably with increases in embedment ratio (H/D), and soil frictional angle(ø). The deformation of the anchor plate, corresponding to the failure load, increases with an increase in the values of H/D and relative density of sand. The values of the failure loads obtained from the computational analysis match well with the present experimental results as well with the available data from literature.