Analytical Method for Pullout of Anchor from Anchor–Mortar–Concrete Anchorage System due to Shear Failure of Mortar

Abstract

Depending on the relevant material properties, failure of grouted anchors can take forms of pullout of concrete cones, debonding at either anchor–grout or grout–concrete interface, fracture of anchor and combination of some of these failure modes. Further, if the thickness of the grout layer is thin enough, the shear strength of the grout is relatively low or the anchor is in the form of a steel bar with ribs or spirals, the grout would be sheared off so that the anchor is pulled out. The present study presents an analytical method for the last scenario, i.e., anchor pullout from an anchor–mortar–concrete anchorage due to shear failure of mortar. Two different boundary conditions are considered: fixed bottom surface of concrete as Boundary 1, and top surface of concrete with uniform distributed force as Boundary 2. A shear-lag model was introduced to analyze the behaviors of the mortar and the interfacial properties of both the anchor–mortar and the mortar–concrete interfaces were also considered. Based on the deformation compatibilities of the interfaces and the mortar layer, the distributions of the tensile stresses in the anchor and shear stresses in the mortar along the embedment length were obtained analytically during different loading stages for both Boundaries 1 and 2. Moreover, the probabilities and sequences of shear cracks induced by the mortar failure were determined according to the boundary conditions and the comparison between the shear stresses at the loading and nonloading ends. Double shear crack propagation from both ends with different crack lengths was then investigated. Besides, the pullout load was expressed as a function of the shear crack lengths. Then the maximum load and the corresponding critical crack lengths were obtained by using the theories of extremum. Finally, a series of material, structural, and interfacial parameters were adopted to study their influences on the calculated results using the proposed method, including the critical crack lengths, initial cracking load and maximum pullout load. It was found that the initial cracking and maximum loads in Boundary 1 are larger than those in Boundary 2. However, as the longitudinal rigidity of the concrete increases, the values of the maximum pullout loads in both of the boundary conditions approach each other. It was also found that there exists an effective bonding length, beyond which the critical crack length and maximum pullout load are no longer increased.