The Civil Engineering Materials Laboratory has a covered surface area of 2,050 ft2 and 1,670 ft2 of open area, which provide convenient and comfortable space for civil engineering materials testing. The facilities are mostly used to serve the laboratory portion of INCI 4035 – Construction Materials. A space of 875 ft2 has been dedicated for two workstations that serve as working area for four laboratory groups per session, each group composed of up to four students. Each workstation is equipped with necessary instruments and accessories suitable to perform the basic laboratory tests of the materials discussed in the course. The student working area also has additional tables with mortar mixers and additional surface space that can be used as necessary.
A space of 1,300 ft2 has been dedicated to aggregate and cement testing with three coarse and two fine aggregate sieving machines, one aggregate crusher, several ovens of different capacities, various floor and table top weighting scales, a small hot water bath, and a Los Angeles Abrasion Machine. A concrete curing area of 770 ft2 is separated with water tanks and a 40 ft2 fog room. The uncovered space is used for aggregate storage and concrete mixing area for laboratory courses. The rest of the covered laboratory space is dedicated to a combination of research, student competitions, and course work. This laboratory is extensively used by the student chapters of the many professional civil engineering associations to prepare for the projects that compete in the large number of competitions in which they are involved (For example, the ASCE Concrete Canoe, ASCE Steel Bridge, and ACI).
In addition to the above mentioned, the laboratory also includes an area equipped with three universal testing machines of various capacities: a Forney LT-1000-3 with 300,000 kg (600 kip) capacity, a Tinius Olsen of 300 kip. capacity, and a Riehle machine of 5 kip capacity. We also have a Charpy impactor machine capable of applying up to 450 J, and a torsion machine. These cover all necessary ranges for testing and are complemented with several load cells and displacement measuring devices. A National Instrument SCXI data acquisition chassis with two SCXI-1520 strain gauge cards of 8 channels each and a SCXI-1112 4 channel thermocouple reader including digital data acquisition, load cells, and LVDT are being used in various types of tests. For calibration purposes, proving rings of 2,000, 10,000, 100,000 and 300,000 lbs. capacity are available.
The laboratory is equipped with non-destructive testing equipment such as: two ultrasonic pulse velocity meters, two rebound hammers, two rebar locators, one Windsor Probe Apparatus and a core drilling machine. A concrete air content (pressure) meter, two concrete mixers (one electric and one gasoline), a table top circular saw, and a bench driller are also available.
Laboratory equipment is in good condition and properly maintained, and is capable of performing the great majority of physical tests on common civil engineering materials. There has been a continuous effort to include digital data acquisition into several experiments. The National Instrument data acquisition earlier mentioned was procured from external research funds. Also several of the tests are now performed using the MTS 810 servo hydraulic machine located in the Structures Laboratory. However, there is still need to continue acquiring sensors to perform the various data recordings. A digital extensometer to read rebar deformations was acquired and installed in the rebar testing laboratory. Also, a 3,000 lb. load cell and a deformation meter as well as a strain gauge are used for the aluminum flexural test. The load cell and the deformation meter were acquired also from external research funds.