Closure to 'Numerical Investigation of Uplift Behavior of Circular Plate Anchors in Uniform Sand' by Nabil Al Hakeem and Charles Aubeny

摘要

The writers appreciate the opportunity to clarify the issues raised by the discussers of this paper. The anchor plate undergoes relatively large deformations in the soil surrounding the plate especially around the comers of the plate where shear strain localization zones exist, necessitating a need for applying the arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) technique in certain instances. For anchors at shallow and intermediate embedment depths, small displacement is required to approach collapse load; therefore, the ALE techniques was not utilized in these cases. For deeply embedded anchors, large deformations must occur for resistance to approach its ultimate value; therefore, the ALE technique was needed to avoid numerical divergence issues related to mesh distortion. Thus, the analyses for deeply embedded plates set the ALE adaptive mesh domain within a region having dimensions equal to one radius plate radius (R) and a distance 2R from the plate centerline. Within this region the point raised by the discussers is, in fact, valid; i.e., the contours include both material displacement and displacement due to mesh motion and is consistent with what is stated in the Abaqus User's Manual (ABAQUS 2014). However, the contour plots in Figs. 4 and 5 of the original paper were intended primarily to provide insights into the transition from global (extending to ground surface) to local failure mechanisms that occur with increasing anchor embedment depth, and displacement contours in the vicinity of the plate should be considered to have only first-order accuracy.