St. John's Centifuge Modelling Facility

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The St. John's Centrifuge Modelling Facility is a specialized national facility for reduced-scale physical modelling of civil engineering problems involving gravity-dependant material behaviour, particularly of soil, ice, and ice-rich soil. The basis of the technique is that self-weight effects between model and full-scale are made similar by subjecting the model to enhanced acceleration levels. Specific example applications are http://geotech.cv.titech.ac.jp/~cen-98/Library/MAIN.HTM. This facility has been used to investigate a wide range of  geotechnical issues ranging from  rock to sea-ice, from pipelines to foundations and from flow liquefaction to  oil sand production. Since 1993, the $5.7m centrifuge centre has been operational with about 90% utilization and upgrading of the facility to enhance its capabilities is ongoing. Canadian academics have had support to use the facility through an existing NSERC Major Facility Access grant  This grant provides 30% of the total support required for 1) The 8 person technical and research support staff; 2) maintenance and operation; and 3) other direct costs such as materials, supplies and small equipment for 2).  In the 4 year period to August 2005, this grant contributed to 41% of the facility's resources being dedicated to academic research with no charges for machine time or normal personnel requirements. This MFA application is made to obtain continued support for the staff essential for support to ensure that 30% of available facility time is reserved for academic researchers. This contribution is valued over $500k/annum based on potential commercial income. Significant national use has been made by academic and industrial users. There are over 120 such facilities in the world. Four other Canadian facilities are much smaller than that available in St John's, which is about the 8th largest and is the only centrifuge modelling facility in North America designed to model cold regions phenomena. The centrifuge also incorporates an earthquake actuator to model seismic events.