Soil anchors are widely used to stabilise soils and provide additional support to earth retaining structures. They are found in critical civil infrastructure such as transportation networks like highways and railways. Understanding their behaviour is important for the safety of these structures and the public. Therefore, careful design with appropriate soil parameters is required to ensure their efficiency.Finite element (FE) analysis is a powerful engineering tool that is able to predict the response of soil anchors. Various types of FE models are used, such as 2D axisymmetric or full 3D solid continuum and the more practical load-transfer FE analysis. Usually relevant field or laboratory tests are required in order to define the model parameters. Field pull-out tests are one of the most common and reliable type of such tests.This study presents field data from such field tests that were carried out on in-situ ground anchor systems, using strain gauges to evaluate the changes in the variations of axial load and skin friction along the nail during the tests. The results of these field tests provide details about the development of skin friction with induced displacements, thus offering the opportunity to perform load-transfer finite element analyses of the soil anchor.A FE model based on the load-transfer approach is developed to analyse this soil-structure interaction problem. A number of FE analyses using parameters derived from the field tests are run to validate the finite element load-transfer models which are compared with the field test results and exhibit an excellent agreement
