ABSTRACT
The idea of centrifuge testing seems to have been presented for the first time in 1869, by E. Phillips, to the French Academy of Sciences. Phillips suggested the ideas be applied to assess the feasibility of the construction, much debated at the time, of a metal bridge over the Channel between France and England. Despite such an early proposal, centrifuge testing was not practised in France for civil engineering applications before 1973. Centrifuge testing was part of this programme in conjunction with tests in the laboratory using heavy artificial soils (steel grains and rods) under 1g and tests using the hydraulic gradient method. The good agreement between theory and centrifuge testing with cavities of simple geometry gives confidence to such experimental studies. The use of centrifuges should, then, provide valuable information on the stability of cavities of complex shapes or on the interaction effects of nearby cavities.
