Advances in Earth Science ›› 2014, Vol. 29 ›› Issue (2): 227-237. doi: 1001-8166(2014)02-0227-11

• Orginal Article • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Application of Centrifuges in Experimental Studies of Contaminant Transport

Lishan YU 1, Guoliang CAO 1, Mo XU 2, Jie LIU 1, Chunmiao ZHENG 1, 3   

  1. 1. Center for Water Research,College of Engineering,Peking University,Beijing 100871, China
    2. State Key Laboratory of Geohazard Prevention and Geoenvironment Protection, Chengdu University of Technology, Chengdu 610059,China
    3. Department of Geological Sciences, University of Alabama,Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487,USA
  • Received:2013-09-17 Revised:2014-01-10 Online:2014-03-10 Published:2014-02-10

Lishan YU, Guoliang CAO, Mo XU, Jie LIU, Chunmiao ZHENG. Application of Centrifuges in Experimental Studies of Contaminant Transport[J]. Advances in Earth Science, 2014, 29(2): 227-237.

Because the level of stress identical to that for the prototype can be attained and the experimental duration can be shortened greatly, a centrifuge is advantageous for experimental studies of flow and transport processes in the laboratory setting. This paper provides an overview of the theory of scaling laws and basic principles of centrifuge experiment and modeling, as well as some common applications of centrifuges in the study of water and moisture flow in saturated and unsaturated soils, conservative tracer transport, NAPLs contamination, heavy metal migration, radioactive nuclide movement, and contaminated land remediation. This paper also points out certain cautions that should be exercised during preparation of soil samples and selection of centrifugal accelerations. For example, the compaction of soil samples should be carefully monitored so as not to affect the reproducibility of the experiment, and the centrifuge acceleration should be maintained below the threshold where Darcy#cod#x02019;s law becomes invalid. In addition, this paper briefly discusses the recent advances in measurement technologies relevant to centrifugebased experiments. Many successful applications have demonstrated that centrifuges are a useful tool for studying numerous flow and transport phenomena experimentally and that centrifuge modeling can rapidly and reliably provide laboratory data for developing flow and transport theories and numerical simulation methods. In the future, basic theories and monitoring methods of centrifuge experiments should be further developed and improved so that they can be applied to study more complex problems that are closer to actual situations.

No related articles found!
Viewed
Full text


Abstract