Facilities and testing
The School has extensive testing facilities, supported by experienced academic and technical staff, to test any structural system or component.
The use of standard testing facilities, coupled with the flexibility of fabricating ad-hoc test rigs under various loading conditions has allowed a number of companies to successfully develop new products/systems.
Our current testing facilities comprise:
- Specialist heavy laboratories with purpose built test rigs with a range of dynamic and static actuators.
- Standard testing machines providing a tensile fatigue capacity up to 500 kN with static bending up to 2500 kN and compression to 3000 kN.
- Wind tunnels providing a range of capacities from 4.5m by 1.5m environmental tunnel, used mainly for terrain and building models, to smaller super and hyper sonic research tunnels.
- Largest tilting flume in the world having a width of 5m and capable of flows of 1 m³/sec at 300 mm depth. The flume can be tilted to 10 deg and will be used for shallow hydraulic flows such as found in coastal regions and also for atmospheric flow simulation.
- For geotechnical work we have a deep centrifuge which is capable of producing forces up to 100G, simulating many years effect of forces on sediments.
- Three furnaces, 1.5m x 1.5m x1.5m internal space, 3m x 1.5m x1.5m internal space and 3.5m x 3.5m x2.0m internal space, which can follow a programmed time-temperature response, including the standard fire curve.
- Drop Hammers: wide range up to 16kJ, 10m/s;
- Horizontal launcher and standard CAI tests;
- ESH servo-hydraulic high spend loading machine (speed up to 10m/s)
- Gas Gun (a wide range of velocities and projectile sizes- 100kJ, 10-500m/s)
- Two Stage Gas Gun (1000-1500m/s).
- Instrumentations: Hopkinson bars for high strain rate materials characterisation; high speed photography; transient recorders; load, strain and displacement transducers.
- Containment vessel: 1.5m diameter for up to 1kg equivalent TNT explosive.
