Design, Installation, and Evaluation of Geostructural Plant Root Inspired Ground Anchors
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Huntoon, John A.
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Abstract
The Root-Inspired Ground Anchor (RIGA) is a novel ground anchoring technology which leverages the pullout anchoring efficiency of fibrous plant roots into a ground anchor for infrastructure applications. Potential reductions in material consumption, ground anchor installation time, and spatial footprint are hypothesized and examined in this thesis. Existing understanding of the relevant anchoring mechanisms of plant roots proposes that such an anchor may have the hypothesized benefits but does not provide means for practicing engineers to construct or design geostructural systems using a RIGA. The present thesis describes a proposed mechanism and technique by which RIGAs may be installed and an engineering design procedure for selecting anchors to meet capacity performance and reliability criteria. Laboratory and half-scale field trials provide insights into mechanism design and relevant installation effects. Drawing on these insights, novel analytical installation and pullout performance models form the basis of an engineering design procedure. Design value recommendations for deterministic and probabilistic engineering analysis are provided with consideration toward the information available to practitioners designing geostructural anchoring systems. Additional discussion of the technology’s long-term corrosion resilience, its life-cycle sustainability metrics relative to existing approaches, and its potential economic impacts is also provided.
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Date
2024-08-28
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Text
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Dissertation