The World’s Most Advanced Hypergravity Facility Is Now Open For Business

China has opened the Centrifugal Hypergravity and Interdisciplinary Experiment Facility (CHIEF), the world’s largest and most powerful centrifuge capable of creating artificial gravity. Located in Hangzhou, CHIEF is a groundbreaking project designed to facilitate diverse scientific and engineering experiments. With a massive investment of 2 billion yuan (US$276.5 million), construction began in 2020 following its approval in 2018.

CHIEF’s centerpiece is a giant spinning arm that generates hypergravity, or gravity much stronger than Earth’s normal 1G. This is achieved through rapid circular motion, creating a centrifugal force that pushes outward, simulating extreme gravitational conditions. Such capabilities have transformative implications for research, enabling accelerated simulations of natural and engineered phenomena.

By compressing time and space, CHIEF allows scientists to study processes that would typically take decades or millennia in nature. For example, Chen Yunmin, a professor at Zhejiang University and project lead, highlighted its use in observing pollutant transport over tens of thousands of years or modeling decades of dam stress within hours. These insights can enhance the safety and efficiency of infrastructure like dams and bridges while offering solutions to environmental challenges.

The facility boasts unparalleled specifications: 1,900 g-t capacity (gravity acceleration multiplied by payload weight) and the ability to handle payloads of up to 32 tons. This surpasses the 1,200 g-t capacity of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ centrifuge. CHIEF supports six hypergravity experiment chambers focusing on fields such as seismic geotechnics, slope and dam engineering, deep-sea exploration, and materials processing.

While its first centrifuge is operational, the remaining two and additional units are under construction. With commissioning set to begin this year, CHIEF stands as a technological marvel, advancing our understanding of complex physical phenomena and offering a new frontier for scientific exploration.