Civil Engineering Materials Laboratory

Students design, build and test innovative structures using real-world construction materials. The lab supports competition teams and applied research.

The Civil Engineering Materials Lab is equipped with numerous test apparatuses and machines to characterize infrastructure materials, including aggregates, Portland cement, Portland cement concrete, asphalt concrete, soils, timber and metals.

In recent years, this space has been home to students developing unconventional creations such as concrete airplanes, canoes and bikes, as well as the more traditional steel bridge, and has provided them the tools and resources to enable students to meet the challenge of designing and building complex and intriguing structures.

The laboratory also supports research in the area of infrastructure materials, including a recent research project funded by the Florida Department of Transportation, and is used as a space for outreach activities to youth in the local community.

Equipment

• 2 400,000-pound-capacity compression test machines
• 250,000-pound-capacity compression test machine
• 4.5-cubic-foot concrete mixer
• Press-R-Meter and a compressometer/extensometer for determining modulus and Poisson’s ratio
• Workability measuring equipment, such as an L-Box, slump flow tables and curing tanks for soil characterization
• Equipment for sieve test, Proctor test, Atterberg limits, permeability test, speedy moisture test, sand balloon and consolidation
• 3 Total stations and other survey equipment