ABSTRACT
When Edouard Phillips proposed the use of a centrifuge for testing models of a bridge to span the Menai Straits between the island of Anglesey and the north Wales mainland, his ideas may have seemed fanciful. Claims can be made for centrifuge modelling having advanced understanding in many areas of geotechnical activity, but the offshore and coastal civil engineering industries have benefitted more than any others in the short term from the centrifuge — it is in these areas that current design methods have been most affected by developments arising out of recent model work. This chapter deals with a number of broad areas of interest in turn, assessing the work already reported and indicating likely areas of future work. The categories considered are: seabed mechanics — submarine consolidation, faulting and slope stability, seabed penetrators and use for waste disposal, deep water foundations, artificial islands, coastal defence structures, and pipelines, anchors and other structures.
