Material Lab

The material lab is a part of the Department of Built Environment. The lab provides infrastructure, equipment, and materials for enabling the groups to perform research on characteristics of innovative concretes. The research aims at more effective designs to develop high-performance concretes and investigate the aspects of the durability of concrete.

There is a casting area present with a large-scale rotating mixer, having a capacity of up to 40 liters. The availability of various sizes of sand and aggregates, different types of cement and supplementary cementitious materials, fillers, and steel fibers facilitate research on mix design as well as casting small structural elements(beams, cubes, etc) to test the mechanical properties of new concrete types.

Structural lab

The lab is integrated with the material lab and houses the equipment that enables structural tests primarily on concrete. Some of the structural testing machines are housed in the mechanical laboratory and some tests are also conducted in association with the chemistry lab.

The structural testing lab facilities mainly include:

– Controlled uniaxial compression test

– Flexural strength test using 2-point and 3-point loading

– Testing of structural specimens and materials such as beams, cubes, cylinders, and slabs

– Controlled environmental specimen conditioning