The pullout capacity of OMNI-Max anchors in clay

Abstract

Being an impressive representative of gravity installed anchors (GIAs), the OMNI-Max anchor has many attractive attributes and becomes more and more a conspicuous role in recent deepwater applications. However, the pullout capacity property of OMNI-Max anchors has not been well understood due to their three-dimensional structure and the loading way in variational seabed conditions. Full knowledge of the pullout capacity property is beneficial to understand not only the working performance but also the comprehensive kinematic behaviors of OMNI-Max anchors in the seabed. The present work aims to investigate the complicated pullout capacity property of OMNI-Max anchors in clay under multiple factors, including the anchor embedment depth, the anchor orientation, the bearing area, the loading angle, and the soil strength. Large deformation finite element analyses are performed using the coupled Eulerian-Lagrangian (CEL) technique. Numerous cases of multiple factors are designed and analyzed to acquire the effects of different influential parameters. An explicit expression of the end-bearing capacity factor of OMNI-Max anchors is finally formulated in terms of multiple factors, whose effectiveness and applicability are validated by orthogonal tests and available published data. This expression can be simply utilized to evaluate the pullout capacity of OMNI-Max anchors under complicated conditions.