Abstract

This paper presents an evaluation of the behavior of a single-helix anchor in very dense sand subjected to cyclic loading via centrifuge tests. To achieve the centrifuge results comparable to the full-scale tests, a verification of scale effects on the uplift capacity of screw anchor models was carried out before the cyclic tests. For this evaluation, anchor models with different dimensions were tested to simulate the same prototype with a helix embedment depth of 6 times the helix diameter (6D). The results indicate no scale effect for the range of models investigated. In case of the cyclic tests, two anchor models (one instrumented) installed at 7.4D helix embedment depth were tested up to 3000 cycles of loading. The pre-stressing load (minimum cyclic load) showed to have some influence on the cyclic displacement accumulation. Depending on the load amplitude, no trend of stabilization was observed in further cycles. In addition, the post-cyclic monotonic capacity was apparently not influenced by the loading cycles.