Lab, Hydrology, Bituminous, Environmental and Computer Facilities

Laboratories
The civil engineering department at the University of Calgary occupies the five-storey F Block forming the south end of the engineering complex on campus. In 4,000 square meters of usable floor space the department provides three floors of offices, lecture rooms and computer labs, the ground level structural testing hall and the basement level concrete mix and casting area for faculty, graduate student and undergraduate student use.

There are laboratories in place for bituminous research materials testing and chemical analysis, soils and geotechnical testing, hydraulics studies, a space being set up for the engineering for the environment group and a scanning electron microscope for particle analysis. 

Hydrated Fly AshThe concrete batching facility in the basement houses three concrete mixers, aggregate storage and batching, specimen casting area,
prestressing bed, asphaltic and sulphur concrete casting area. A two-tonne overhead crane serves specimen storage and a 10-tonne scissor lift carries specimens up to the ground floor structural testing hall.

The basement also houses an environmentally controlled specimen curing chamber - a fog room capable of 100 percent humidity and regulated to 23 C temperature, a materials testing lab with three stand-alone universal material test machines, a humidity controlled long-term test room, the high pressure hydraulic system pump room and ample specimen storage.

Michael A. Ward Laboratory

The two-storey structural testing hall occupies one half of the ground and first floors. This 11 meter wide by 54 meter long space houses the 10m by 22m load floor, a 2000 kN materials test machine and a beam-bed. The whole area is serviced by two 10-tonne overhead cranes. Ancillary service areas; form shop, machine and welding shop, bituminous material test lab, strain gauge lab, data acquisition room and durability lab, complete the ground floor. A mezzanine area on the first floor of the building houses the electronics shop, grad student and technician offices, a lunch room and an undergraduate student small-specimen materials test lab.

The 10m x 22m load floor is an independently supported two cell hollow box beam 4.6 meters deep with 0.75 meter top and bottom flanges and 0.6 meter webs. The top flange is perforated with 60mm holes on a 0.5m square grid to provide anchor points for movable structural test frames. The load floor is serviced by a closed loop high pressure hydraulic system using 1.5 inch, seamless stainless steel lines with hydraulic manifolds and electrical service every 6 meters down both sides. Numerous combinations of relocatable hydraulic axial actuators from 250 N up to 1500 kN capacity are available for control by six MTS Control Consoles. A number of manually controlled actuators of various capacities up to 9 MN are also available. Strain gauge and load cell data acquisition is typically performed by PC-attached Measurement Systems Datascan modules.

The materials and structures test area has been used to exercise and characterize materials and structures as diverse as reinforced high performance concrete, iron, steel, masonry walls, soil columns, knee joints and cartilage.

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Hydrology
The department hosts a hydrology lab featuring a 17 meter long tilting flume. A 40 litre per second water flow rate is supplied by a roof-top head tank with a 30 meter head.

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Bituminous
The Bituminous Materials Research Chair Laboratories rank among the leading laboratories in North America. A short description of their research and testing capabilities follows:

Binder Laboratory

Here research is conducted using a variety of equipment such as high-pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC), vacuum distillation, oxidation, various mixing devices, emulsion mills, conventional asphalt testing equipment, complete SUPERPAVE testing equipment, various viscometers, and a multitude of other instruments.

Materials Laboratory

This laboratory is equipped with top-of-the-line rheometers such as Rheomtric ARES, Bohlin VOR, Bohlin CS, True Shear Rheometer, tensile testing machines, apparatus for the evaluation of the dielectric properties of bituminous materials, and others. The laboratory is capable of characterizing bituminous and other materials in a wide variety of technological and service conditions.

Paving Mix Laboratory

The Paving Mix Laboratory is capable of testing aggregates and designing paving mixes according to Marshall and SUPERPAVE methods. The laboratory is equipped with different compacting machines: namely, Marshall, kneading and gyratory. The paving mixes can be evaluated for their rutting properties, resistance to low temperature cracking, fatigue and water sensitivity by a battery of advanced testing methods.

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Environmental
The Environmental Engineering laboratory facilities are located in the E Block of the engineering complex. Two laboratories are available for graduate research and one laboratory is dedicated to undergraduate instruction.

Instrumental analysis capabilities include gas chromatography, atomic absorption spectrometry, UV-VIS spectrometry, and microtoxicity. Types of analyses performed consist of hydrocarbon analysis, landfill gas analysis, water quality, microtoxicology and wastewater analysis.

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Computer Facilities
In addition to University Computer Services AIX accounts available to all University members, computing facilities are constantly being upgraded within the department. Undergraduate and graduate students have access to a microcomputer lab with PCs using Windows NT 4.0, Microsoft Office 97 and internet access. There are also a host of other programs they can use, including AutoCAD, and various Civil Engineering software packages. A scanning work station is provided for all students. Laser printing is available and dot matrix printing is free.

Graduate students can also have access to networked SGI O2 (Unix) workstations that are connected to a SGI Origin 2000 server for numerical analysis. The department maintains finite element analytical modeling packages such as Abaqus and Patran.