The Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering has two structural laboratories with a floor space exceeding 1250 m2 to meet the ever-growing needs for research and education in structural engineering. Approximately 50% of the space is covered with strong floor, providing high load testing capability. Both undergraduate and graduate students use the laboratory. 

 Equipment

The laboratories house a number of test equipment including a 6-meter high and 12-meter-long, L-shaped strong wall reaction,a 7.5-meter-long truss testing rack,an MTS880 and Tinius Olsen
loading machines a 1.2 m. x 2.1 m shake table,and a 1,800 kN universal testing machine, and several high-capacity servo-valve hydraulic actuators for static and earthquake testing along with state of the art data acquisition. The laboratories are equipped for a variety of small-scale and full-scale testing under static, fatigue and earthquake simulations.

 Click to see Images of Lab

Instrumentation
Following is a partial list of available research instrumentation in the structures laboratory:

• MTS 880 universal testing machine with capacities of 550 kN, and 150 mm stroke, tension or compression. It can accommodate a specimen length of 1.50 m.

• Baldwin/Forney universal testing machine with capacity of 2000 kN and stroke of 275 mm. This machine can accommodate test samples of 3.6 m in length.

• Tinius-Olsen L120000 universal testing machine with a capacity of 600 kN.

• Single-axis shaking table built and installed by MTS. It has a 150 mm stroke.

• Two-channel HP 35665 dynamic signal analyzer.

• Portable 32 channel data acquisition system with a capacity of 20 strain gage channels, 4 load cell channels, and 8 LVDT or extensometer channels.

• Camac crate with PC used exclusively with the MTS 880 testing machine with 64 channels for data collection.

• 30-ft. long test rig with 30 double acting air cylinders for full-scale load testing of cold-formed steel trusses.

• MTS 2500 kN compression testing machine.
  

Faculty
Abdeldjelil "DJ" Belarbi, PhD
Genda Chen, PhD, PE
Roger LaBoube, PhD
John Myers, PhD