Effect of wing plate structure on uplift resistance capacity of marine aquaculture anchor piles

AbstractAs the main component of the anchorage system in marine aquaculture facilities, the anchor pile is key to ensuring safety and stability. However, conventional monopiles have limited capacity to withstand uplift forces, thus rendering them susceptible to deviations and potentially causing damage to facility structures. Hence, a new winged monopile is proposed to improve and optimize the anchor pile. In this study, laboratory experiments are conducted to investigate the effect of load inclination angle (θ = 0°, 30°, 45°, and 60°), wing length (L = 30, 50, and 70 mm), and wing width (W = 10, and 20 mm) on the uplift resistance capacity of anchor piles in silty clay. The results show that: the winged monopile exhibits at least a 15% improvement in uplift performance compared with the conventional monopile (without wings) when the smallest wing plate parameters are selected (W = 10 mm, L = 30 mm). Additionally, the effect of the wing width on the uplift resistance under an oblique load is more evident than that of the wing plate length. As the area of the wing plate increases, the range of improved wing plate efficiency first increases, and then gradually decreases. This study can be used as a reference for the design optimization of uplift piles and the construction of marine aquaculture.Keywords: Winged monopilemarine aquacultureuplift resistance capacityoblique loadswing plate parametersmodel test AcknowledgmentsThis research was funded by the National Key Research and Development Project of China under grant number 2020YFE0200100, Key Research and Development Program of Zhejiang Province under grant number 2023C02029, National Natural Science Foundation of China (42076213), Science and Technology Innovation 2025 Major Project of Ningbo City under grant number 2020Z076, Zhoushan Science and Technology Projects under grant number 2022C01003.Disclosure statementThe authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.Authors' contributionsT.Y. Zhang: Conceptualization, Data curation, Methodology, Investigation, Writing – original draft. F.K. Gui: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Investigation. X.Y. Qu: Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Writing - review & editing. X. Yang: Methodology, Validation, Investigation, Writing – review & editing. F.X. Hu: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Writing – review & editing. D.J. Feng: Software, Supervision, Writing - review & editing.Data availability statementData is available on request from the authors.