Centrifuge modeling of moisture and contaminant migration in unsaturated soils

In the past decade, geotechnical centrifuge has been used as a powerful experimental tool for investigating the transport of contaminants in soils. However, the feasibility of centrifuge modeling to investigate moisture movement is still controversial, and also very few investigations on adsorptive pollutant transport through soils have been reported. For this reason, centrifuge tests for investigating one dimensional moisture and pollutant migration in unsaturated soils were designed using cadmium and conducted at two centrifugal accelerations. The results show that the one dimensional moisture movement is reproducible and the cadmium concentration profiles are found to be identical for the centrifuge tests performed at 15g and 20g.The scaling law of centrifuge modeling for adsorptive pollutants is valid under the conditions of the tests.