China Activates Advanced Hypergravity Facility

China has fully activated a hypergravity machine, hoping to increase scientific understanding.

CHIEF’s Centrifuge

Located at the Centrifugal Hypergravity and Interdisciplinary Experiment Facility (CHIEF) in Hangzhou, the world’s largest hypergravity centrifuge will soon be fully operational. Once in operation, the centrifuge will have the capability of producing gravitational forces thousands times stronger than Earth’s.

The centrifuge will be used across multiple platforms to address a multitude of engineering challenges. The Hangzhou government has indicated that the experimentation facility provides engineers with an indispensable experimentation device.

Furthering Gravitational Research

As the fabrication of two centrifuges and 10 onboard units has begun, one centrifuge for the main engine has already been installed. With the appearance of two massive arms holding on to a basket, the machine will be able to create conditions that are not typically encountered in average environments.

The CHIEF facility will be using this centrifuge in particular for hypergravity, being any force greater than Earth’s standard gravity, or 1g. One example being astronauts returning to Earth, re-entering the atmosphere. The astronauts through this experience would undergo 4g hypergravity, giving the equivalent feel of four times their body weight.

Including six hypergravity chambers, CHIEF has opened up testing possibilities from seismic geotechnics to materials processing.

Image Source: Shutterstock / Andrei Armiagov