Pullout Capacity of Strip Anchors in Spatially Variable Soil. I: Clay
Publication: Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 150, Issue 11
Abstract
Natural soils often exhibit significant spatial variability due to their geological history of soil formation. As an attractive anchoring solution for floating offshore structures, this paper has investigated the pullout capacity of strip plate anchors in clay considering the inherent soil spatial variability. In this study, the soil properties were represented by random fields, and an analytical framework was developed to estimate the first two moments and the probability density function of the pullout capacity factor for shallowly and deeply embedded anchors. The analytical approach was validated by the random finite element method (RFEM) over a wide range of soil and anchor parameters. The results show that the coefficient of variation and correlation length of the soil significantly affect the prediction of anchor pullout capacity, providing evidence that sufficient site investigation is of great importance for cost-effective and reliable anchor design. Probabilistic charts were also developed to aid in the probabilistic analysis of anchor pullout capacity. Overall, the developed analytical framework can be used as a good approximation to the computationally intensive RFEM.
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Data Availability Statement
All data, models, or code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
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Published In
Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 150 • Issue 11 • November 2024
Copyright
© 2024 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Dec 14, 2023
Accepted: May 28, 2024
Published online: Aug 21, 2024
Published in print: Nov 1, 2024
Discussion open until: Jan 21, 2025
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