Scaling Laws and Experimental Modelling of Contaminant Transport Mechanism through Soils in a Geotechnical Centrifuge

This paper presents the results of a research program conducted on the geotechnical centrifuge to investigate contaminant transport mechanism through the soil mass. The mechanism that governs contaminant transport through soil mass is discussed, the principles of geotechnical centrifuge modelling are outlined, and relevant scaling laws that govern the relationship between a centrifuge model and the prototype, with respect to the problem of contaminant transport, are presented. Modelling of models has been established to validate the experimental results. It has been concluded that the geotechnical centrifuge can be used as an experimental tool to simulate field scale problems.