Stress in conic piles determined by a centrifuge experiment: breakdown of scaling hypothesis

It is found experimentally that vertical-stress field in a conic pile depends on gravity level, building process, and loading story. For instance, a conic pile with inclined strata does exhibit a minimum of stress in the center, whereas conic pile with horizontal strata does not; both piles exhibit an arching effect, which increases with gravity. This questions the assumptions of radius stress field scaling. Amplitude of the stress dip is found to be 10%, which is much smaller than what was found in previous experiments.