The eleventh annual R.M. Hardy Keynote Address, 1997: Centrifugation in geoenvironmental practice and education

Abstract

Geotechnical practitioners and educators may correctly regard the major contributions of centrifuge modelling as relatively substantive and expensive research enterprises. There are, however, many everyday applications of centrifugation that could be made available to both practitioners and educators at a modest cost. Centrifuge modelling and testing at relatively low gravitational levels are particularly relevant to geoenvironmental practice and education; the following applications are typical: (1) centrifuge modelling to produce realistic data on the movement and fate of contaminants in ground water for the validation or further development of numerical simulations; (2) centrifuge testing for the determination of geoenvironmental properties such as hydraulic conductivities and diffusion coefficients in fine-grained soils; (3) centrifuge model design using dimensional similitude for continued education and a better understanding of geoenvironmental concepts. Large commercial modelling centrifuges are beyond the budget of most soils laboratories but smaller dedicated centrifuges, with limited modelling capabilities, can be economically constructed for educational purposes and to produce independent design information that is cost competitive with bench testing.Key words: centrifugal modelling, geoenvironmental practice, education, laboratory centrifuges.