Development and Application of Anchor-Soil Interface Models

Abstract

Understanding the anchor-soil interface behavior is essential to the determination of the anchor pullout capacity and prediction of the deformation of the anchor-reinforced system under working load conditions. Numerous anchor pullout tests under both lab and field conditions have generally yielded extremely high apparent interface strength, which cannot be explained by the conventional interface friction theory between the anchor material and the soil. In this paper, the mechanism and the phenomena of the anchor-soil interaction were studied, and the soil dilatancy due to shearing was regarded as the main factor contributing to the increase of the anchor-soil interface friction. Considering this effect, along with the adoption of a cylindrical shear deformation pattern of the soil, anchor-soil interface models have been developed for hardening and softening behavior, respectively. Using the developed interface model, the forward and backward calculation algorithms have been formulated and applied to predict the anchor performance for the given interface parameters and to determine the interface parameters from the given anchor pullout test, respectively. Furthermore, the prediction of the anchor pullout performance was compared favorably with two hypothetical cases, two laboratory test results, and one field case.