A Study on the Bearing Capacity of Square Skirted Anchors with Different Mooring Points

Skirted anchors are often used as temporary or permanent anchoring foundations for underwater pipelines and floating platforms. A series of model tests and finite element simulations were conducted to study the bearing capacity of square skirted anchors with different mooring points. Based on the test results, two failure modes of square skirted anchors with different mooring points were analyzed. It was found that, when the mooring point was located at the top of the side skirt, the square skirted anchor was more prone to rotation and had a lower bearing capacity. The numerical method was validated by the model tests. In total, 140 numerical calculation results show that, when the mooring point position (normalized depth of mooring point) h/H = 0.5 similar to 0.75 and the load inclination angle theta = 0 degrees similar to 30 degrees, the bearing performance of the square skirted anchor is optimal. As the aspect ratio of the square skirted anchor (H/B) increases from 0.25 to 2.0, the optimal mooring point position h/H moves downward from 0.5 to 0.75. The failure envelopes in the V-H loading space of the square skirted anchor were drawn, and the corresponding fitting equation was obtained.