Limit loads for an anchor/trapdoor embedded in an associative coulomb soil

A methodology for determining the plane strain limit load acting on an anchor or trapdoor buried within a purely associative Coulomb soil is presented. True lower bounds derived from a family of limiting stress fields appropriate to shallow horizontal trapdoors and anchors are shown to correlate to within less than 1 percent of upper bounds available in the literature, permitting the true limit load to be almost exactly defined. The solution form alters for deeply buried anchors and trapdoors resulting in poorer correlations. Methods by which the work may be extended to cover the more practical instances of non-associative Coulomb soils are indicated but are beyond the scope of the current paper. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.