Previous Experimental Investigations

A number of investigations are reported by several researches to evaluate the ultimate pullout
capacity of shallow laid vertical plate anchors.
Ovesen and Stromann (1964, 1972) used the failure mechanism proposed by Hansen (1953) to
estimate the earth pressures for the case of a continuous shallow plate anchor flushing with the
cohesion-less ground surface, termed as the basic case (H/h = 1), where h is the height of the plate
anchor with embedment depth, H (Fig. 3). The failure mechanism consists of Rankine (1857) and
logarithmic spiral zones (Prandtl-zone) as shown in Fig. 3. Based on the above failure mechanism,
the ultimate pullout capacity, Tu(B) per unit length of a strip anchor was estimated by Ovesen and
Stromann (1964, 1972) by the following expression using horizontal force equilibrium.