Experimental testing at New Jersey Institute of Technology will take place at the 3,200 square foot Weston Hall Materials and Structures Laboratory (MatSLab). The laboratory is equipped to handle experiments ranging from small- to large-scale materials and components. The MatSLab contains the following equipment and resources:
Experimental Facilities and Equipment
A 5 ton overhead crane for moving materials and fabricating specimens
Polishing and mounting equipment for preparing concrete samples to be examined under a scanning electron microscope
An MTS closed-loop servo-hydraulic actuator system including:
A 22 kip tension/compression frame with hydraulic grips for material characterization
A 110 kip structural actuator that can be positioned in various locations on a 2 foot thick reinforced concrete strong wall
A 220 kip servo-hydraulic actuator supported by a versatile load frame
High-speed data acquisition systems with inputs for strain gages, LVDTs, string potentiometers, and other high-level instrumentation
Numerous instruments for data collection including linear variable differential transforms, thermocouples, strain gages, string potentiometers and high-resolution cameras for digital image correlation
A 700 kip compressive strength testing machine
A 1000 kip load frame equipped with a 12,000 psi triaxial chamber and temperature control chamber
A moist curing chamber that meets the specifications of ASTM C192
A drying room that can maintain 50% relative humidity
A freeze-thaw cabinet that meets appropriate ASTM specifications
Several ovens, heaters, and balances of varying degrees of precision
A four cubic foot capacity concrete rotary drum mixer
An eight cubic foot high-shear planetary mixer
Computational Resources
The computational facility in the group consists of two 12 cpu windows cluster with 128gb of RAM, in addition to individual workstations.
Finite-element analysis software (e.g., DIANA FEA, Abaqus, Ansys, etc.) for simulation of infrastructure materials
Multi-physics modeling software (e.g., COMSOL) for simulation of deterioration of infrastructure materials
A high performance linux cluster with 500 cpus is available at the university