Cyclic accumulation and optimisation tool tutorial- help!

I'm trying to undertake cyclic loading on a torpedo anchor in PLAXIS. In order to understand how to model cyclic loading on PLAXIS I tried the "PLAXIS 2D Tutorial 08: Cyclic vertical capacity and stiffness of circular underwater footing" (via the link below).

https://communities.bentley.com/products/geotechnical1/w/wiki/45555/plaxis-2d-tutorial-08-cyclic-vertical-capacity-and-stiffness-of-circular-underwater-footing

I'm pretty sure I followed the tutorial to the letter, but I keep getting big mistakes:

  • Most importantly all the stresses calculated are in the footing. I don't get any deviatoric stress in the soil and I get minimal effective mean stress apart from in the cyclic phase (phase 3).
  • Also the  soil failure according to the tutorial is at qy=719.1kN/m^2, however the cyclic phase will not take higher than 450kN/m^2 before failing calculation. 

I have a feeling the issue could be to do with the interface conditions, or the calculation type (which is set as plastic even though consolidation and pore pressure would be very useful in this case). I've attached some images below to give an idea of my problem.

Has anyone else completed this tutorial or attempted it and had issues? If not, does anyone have any advice on what might be wrong or how I could find the issue? Or if not, any advice on modelling cyclic behaviour without using the optimisation tool?

Thanks in advance to anyone who replies,

Sian.