Effects of soil remoulding on keying behaviours of strip plate anchors with padeye offset

This paper reports the effect of soil remoulding on embedment loss and pullout capacity of strip plate anchors with padeye offset in normally consolidated clay during keying through large deformation finite element (LDFE) analysis. The effects of strain rate and soil remoulding are considered during keying process of plate anchors. First, the LDFE results are compared with theoretical solutions, centrifuge test results, and LDFE data available in the literature, which shows a good agreement. Then, the influences of initial embedment depth, load eccentricity, padeye offset and soil sensitivity on the embedment loss and pullout capacity of strip plate anchors during keying are investigated. The LDFE results show that the padeye offset and the soil remoulding have significant effects on the ultimate embedment loss and pullout capacity. To assess the keying behaviour of plate anchors, an equivalent soil strength is introduced. A combined factor and an equivalent ultimate pullout capacity are adopted to estimate the embedment loss and ultimate pullout capacity of strip plate anchors in normally consolidated clay, respectively.