Geotechnical centrifuge modeling: Difference between revisions

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If a 1 m deep model container is filled with soil, placed on the end of a centrifuge and subject to a centrifugal acceleration of 50 g, the pressures and stresses are increased by a factor of 50. So, the vertical stress at the base of the model container is equivalent to the vertical stress at a depth of 50 m below the ground surface on earth -- the 1 m deep model represents 50 m of prototype soil.
 
===geotechnical scaling laws===
 
Note the asterisk on a quantity denotes a scale factor for that quantity, i.e. the ratio of the quantity in the model to the quantity in the prototype. σ may represent any quantity with units of pressure (e.g. elastic modulus, shear strength, stress, pressure). If then the stress in the model (smodel) will be equal to the stress in the prototype (sprototype).
 
With a centrifuge model, we scale down the length (L) of the model and we scale up gravity (g) [or acceleration (a)]. We use the same soil at the same mass density (r) to ensure we get similar behavior. That is, for a given scaling factor N,