Research ETH Zurich inaugurates Europe's most powerful centrifuge
The most powerful centrifuge in Europe was inaugurated at ETH Zurich on Friday.
Image: Keystone
The centrifuge is used to study the effects of natural hazards such as earthquakes on buildings.
Image: Keystone
Rotation is used to generate an increased force of gravity.
Image: Keystone
This makes it possible to examine models of buildings under conditions that correspond to those in the real world.
Image: Keystone
The most powerful centrifuge in Europe was inaugurated at ETH Zurich on Friday.
Image: Keystone
The centrifuge is used to study the effects of natural hazards such as earthquakes on buildings.
Image: Keystone
Rotation is used to generate an increased force of gravity.
Image: Keystone
This makes it possible to examine models of buildings under conditions that correspond to those in the real world.
Image: Keystone
The most powerful centrifuge in Europe, according to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, was inaugurated on Friday. Researchers use the centrifuge to simulate the effects of natural hazards such as earthquakes on buildings.
17.01.2025, 11:19
SDA
Centrifuges use rotation to generate an increased force of gravity. According to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich), objects in the Zurich centrifuge are accelerated up to 100 G, i.e. up to one hundred times the Earth's gravity.
This means that an object that weighs 10 kilograms when stationary behaves in the centrifuge as if it weighed a ton. This increased gravity allows researchers to test models of buildings and other structures under conditions similar to those in the real world.
One example of the use of these centrifuges is bridges. Over 90 percent of bridges in Switzerland were built before the 1990s and without any or only a simple earthquake-proof design, ETH Zurich wrote in an article. While retrofitting bridge piers is relatively simple, reinforcing foundations can be difficult, costly and time-consuming.
Offshore wind farms are another example. Far out at sea, these wind turbines are exposed to various forces of nature. Storms and earthquakes can cause the structure to tilt, the report continued. Even small inclinations of 0.5 degrees can damage mechanical systems and shorten the service life of the turbine.
