Abstract
Oil and gas exploration has advanced to deep waters, which requires extensive use of floating production platform. Mooring of floating systems can be challenging because of significant vertical load transferred to the foundation systems. Suction Embedded Plate Anchor (SEPLA) is increasingly adopted as an economical and efficient mooring system. Centrifuge model tests are conducted in the present study to investigate the pullout behavior of square, rectangular and strip plate anchors in normally consolidated soft clay. Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) technique is also employed to observe the soil displacement mechanisms during uplifting. Load-displacement curves and vertical pullout capacity factors for different anchor embedment depths obtained from a series of wished-in-place model plate anchor tests are reported in this paper. When the anchor embedment depth exceeds two times anchor width, it is found that a localized failure mechanism with full soil back-flow occurs and a limiting value of anchor capacity factor is reached.