Granular flows, such as rock avalanches, debris flows, and flow-like landslides, often exhibit high mobility and strong impact capacity, posing severe threats to mountain infrastructure and downstream settlements. Physical modeling provides an effective approach for investigating their initiation, run-out, deposition, and interaction with protective structures. However, conventional reduced-scale flume tests are usually conducted under normal gravity, which may not reproduce the stress state of full-scale granular materials and may therefore lead to scale-dependent interpretations of flow mobility and impact behavior. Geotechnical centrifuge modeling offers a promising solution by subjecting a reduced-scale model to an enhanced acceleration field, allowing the prototype stress condition to be better represented while maintaining experimental repeatability. This presentation summarizes the key principles, technical challenges, and recent advances in the physical modeling of granular flow using geotechnical centrifuges. Particular attention is paid to scaling laws, flow similarity, instrumentation, and the interpretation of high-speed flow behavior under rotating conditions. Recent studies have shown that the Coriolis effect may significantly regulate granular run-out, flow structure, dead-zone evolution, and impact force transmission, depending on the relative direction between flow motion and centrifuge rotation. Therefore, the selection of testing configuration and the evaluation of Coriolis-induced bias are critical for reliable centrifuge modeling. By integrating centrifuge experiments with particle-scale numerical analysis, the physical mechanisms controlling granular flow mobility and flow-structure interaction can be better clarified. These insights provide a useful basis for improving laboratory modeling strategies and for developing more rational assessment methods for granular-flow hazards and mitigation structures.

Granular flow,Centrifuge modeling,Coriolis effect