Cyclic capacity of plate anchors in loose sand

This paper describes a centrifuge investigation on drained monotonic and cyclic capacity of a plate anchor in dry loose sand. The model rectangular plate anchor was pre-embedded vertically at an embedment depth of 5 times the plate width, and was loaded horizontally at the mudline with monotonic or irregular cyclic loading to failure. The anchor was also instrumented with an accelerometer to investigate the plate rotation or ‘keying’ behaviour. The monotonically and cyclically loaded anchors are found to share similar plate rotation behaviour. Depending on the applied cyclic load magnitude, the anchor produces post-cyclic ultimate capacity that is up to 7% higher than the reference ultimate monotonic capacity. When compared to existing studies using similar plate anchor in dense sand, the plate anchor in loose sand exhibits a lower gain in post-cyclic ultimate capacity relative to the ultimate monotonic capacity, a softer load-displacement response and a higher plate anchor rotation at ultimate capacity