Our 9-m radius centrifuge has the largest radius of any centrifuge with a shake table worldwide. Its large size, along with its many advanced technologies, provides the unique ability to: (1) construct soil and soil-structure models with holistic system levels of complexity and (2) obtain measurements of complex local mechanisms through inverse analyses of data from dense instrumentation arrays, neither of which are possible on the smaller centrifuges more commonly available around the world. The combined power of these capabilities has enabled major scientific and engineering advances for a number of soil and soil-structure systems in the past decade.
The systems-level complexity of the physical models possible on the large centrifuge are illustrated below; e.g., nonlinear multi-story structure-soil-structure interaction models (top left insert) and multiple configurations of rocking foundation systems (lower left insert).
