Pioneers of centrifuge modelling

Abstract

Although the concept of using a centrifuge to model engineering structures arose in the nineteenth century, the practice began only in the 1930s, in America and Russia. This paper provides details of the careers of four pioneers, primarily in the period prior to 1945 – Bucky, Davidenkov, Fedorov and Pokrovsky. There is some discussion on the effects of dissemination of Russian work on practice in the USA and elsewhere following the disclosure of Pokrovsky's work at the time of the 1973 International Conference on Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering (ICSMFE) in Moscow. Physical modelling using centrifuges continues to be considered as one of the most efficient experimental methods for research into the behaviour of soil constructions.

NHERI Centrifuge Facility: Large-Scale Centrifuge Modeling in Geotechnical Research

“…Geotechnical centrifuge modeling technology has evolved through several stages over the past century, as described for example in Craig et al (2015). The earliest reported experiments were in the US and USSR in the 1930s.…”

Editorial

“…To complement these three awarded papers, a fourth paper, by Craig et al (2015), has been added to this special issue. This paper pays tribute to the pioneers of centrifuge modelling, who established the foundation of the discipline in the early 1930s, in both the USA and the USSR.…”

Editorial

“…Whereas the first such issue (volume 15, issue 1) presented full-length versions of some of the award-winning papers from the conference (Garzón et al, 2015;Loli et al, 2015;Phillips and Chi, 2015) along with an article on pioneers of centrifuge modelling (Craig et al, 2015), this issue will present a number of shorter session reports summarising the contributions made at the conference to the state of the art of physical modelling in a number of key areas. These include areas of general interest & similitude, scaling and education (Lee, 2015) & physical modelling studies of soil properties and behaviour (Sasanakul and Abdoun, 2015) and also ones themed around geotechnical engineering applications & shallow and deep foundations (Reul, 2015) & dams, embankments and slope stability (Bezuijen, 2015) & ground improvements, reinforcements and geohazards (Kitazume, 2015) & geotechnical earthquake engineering (Madabhushi, 2015) & offshore geotechnics (O'Loughlin, 2015) The former, general interest papers provide a broad overview, discussing recent developments in the modelling of challenging geomechanical problems, such as those involving dynamic soil behaviour or unsaturated soil.…”