Assessment of the tensile behaviour of post-installed screw anchors in early age concrete

Abstract

This study investigates the tensile behaviour of post-installed screw anchors in early-age concrete. The investigation included an experimental study including testing of 38 screw anchors at 6 different hydration ages. The experimental program aimed to investigate: (i) the effect of early-age installation on the 28 day behaviour; (ii) and performance when screw anchors are installed and tested in early-age concrete. The experimental results demonstrated the capability of the concrete capacity method model in capturing the behaviour of screw anchors in early-age concrete with reasonable accuracy. Further, early-age installation of screw anchors did not impact the performance of the anchors when tested in tension at 28 days. This study also included a detailed finite element analysis of screw anchors in early-age concrete to further understand the behaviour of this type of anchors and the failure mechanism governing the capacity under pure tension loading.