Innovative Solution for Retaining Walls Anchorage

High soil retaining walls as well as deep water berths of solid construction need to be anchored in order to provide structures’ stability and required bearing capacity. Traditional anchor systems for such facilities in many cases are resource demanding and costly. An innovative (patented) design of the anchor system is worked out. Anchor bearers are made of “comb” type as several small anchor plates fixed along the rigid core. Anchor force is taken by all plates of the comb simultaneously. Distance between anchor plates on the rigid core may be regulated to achieve the maximal positive effect from the point of view of anchor system bearing resistance. Other adjustable parameters are angle between the plate and the core axis and plate sequence (if plates are of different height). Study of the innovative anchor system included both physical (in laboratory conditions by use of soil box in scale of 1:20) and numerical modelling. Based on the executed study, the basic factors that determine the bearing capacity of both the anchor device and the whole structure (the depth of the anchor bearers, the angle of anchor plates’ inclination, the number of plates, the height of the various plates in the “comb” and the order of their location in the device) are analysed. As it was demonstrated by our research, proposed design approach provides increasing bearing capacity both of the anchorage and of the soil retaining structure in whole (keeping the same material consumption for the anchorage as at the traditional solutions with one large anchor plate or with anchor sheet pile wall). On the other hand, proposed structure may provide decreasing of the material consumption (keeping the same structure’s bearing capacity as at the known facilities).