Anchorage to Concrete Design: The Transition from Tabular Load Capacity to Rational Design and Anchor Qualification Procedures to Manage Risk

Anchorage to concrete design has progressed to a sophisticated state over the past 10 years. There are provisions now that exist in the American Concrete Institute (ACI) 318 Code for designing cast-in and post-installed expansion anchors. No other United States (US) code has provisions that are as detailed as those in ACI. Other code bodies, such as the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) and the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) are currently lacking in specific code language for designing anchors that are to be embedded in concrete. This brief paper describes some of the history and important milestones that were developed in current provisions in ACI 318. It is not the intent of this paper to be a complete history of anchorage to concrete design. The paper is a review of the positive and negative aspects in the development of the current (2008) design provisions.