Professor Andrew Schofield

Professor Andrew Schofield was the founder of The Schofield Centrifuge Centre, located on the High Cross Site of the University. The SCC has been operational for nearly 25 years, and has been highly influential - principally through its founder, in the burgeoning of international interest in this technology.

A pioneer in the field of soil mechanics, Schofield developed drum centrifuges in Cambridge to reduce the cost of centrifuge tests, to improve the accuracy, and reduce the labour and the time needed for any one test series. A centrifuge manufacturer in the UK, Thomas Broadbent & Sons Ltd. was granted an exclusive licence to incorporate the new intellectual property US Patent 5,634,876 in their "Geotech" centrifuges. One of these came into in operation in Australia, Stewart, Boyle, and Randolph (1998); the next three in Japan; and a fifth is to operate in Switzerland. It is safe to stand by these machines. There is no need to build a reinforced concrete chamber. The centrifuge channel that applies the acceleration to the model layer also contains the soil safely.