Uplift capacity of horizontal anchor plate in geocell reinforced sand

The paper investigates the uplift performance of horizontal anchor plate in geocell reinforced sand through a series of model tests. It is noted that the unreinforced anchor plate undergoes a clear failure at a displacement of about 3% of its width, whereas with the provision of geocell and a layer of geotextile right below the geocell mattress significantly increases the uplift capacity by about 4.5 times higher than that of unreinforced sand and could sustain anchor displacement of more than 60%. Results indicates that the geocell mattress by virtue of its rigidity distributes the uplift load in the lateral directions to a larger area, thereby reducing the stress in the overlying soil mass and hence increases the performance of anchor plate system. The provision of the additional geotextile layer right below the geocell mattress is found to be very effective in increasing the stiffness as well as load carrying capacity of anchor plate system. The optimum size (i.e., width and length) of geocell mattress giving adequate load carrying capacity of anchor plate is found to be 5.4 times of anchor width (5.4B). The comparison of model tests results with 3D numerical analysis shows good agreement, indicating that the proposed model is able to capture the uplift load-displacement behaviour of geocell reinforced anchor plate system.