A modular drum centrifuge facility is being developed at HKUST, with support from the Hong Kong Research Grants Council's Collaborative Research Fund. The new multi-million-dollar facility, together with the existing beam centrifuge, will form a world-leading centrifuge cluster for advanced studies in hazard prevention, offshore resource engineering, and environmental protection. These will include research into mountain and estuary hazard mitigation and simulation of long-distance landslides, debris flows and wave-induced phenomena, among others.

While HKUST's original 400g-ton beam centrifuge is capable of simulating centralized problems, such as piles, the 870g-ton, 250g, 2.2m diameter drum centrifuge can simulate distributed problems occurring over distances of up to 1,726 meters.

The facility, jointly developed by researchers from HKUST and other Hong Kong universities, in collaboration with Cambridge University and South China University of Technology, will help to keep Hong Kong at the forefront of physical modeling of geotechnical processes. It will also be available for use by industry researchers.

Related link:

• Layman summary of project: A modular drum centrifuge facility for research into mountain and estuary hazard mitigation and environmental protection

This news was originally published in the SENG In Focus magazine (Spring 2019 edition, issue 30, P.8).