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Facilities

Research at the University of Kansas is quite robust. Faculty and students in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering have several laboratories and research facilities that enhance their ability to complete world-class research. Listed below are some of the labs and equipment available for use.

Research at both the undergraduate and graduate levels is conducted in the following facilities:

For more information about the laboratories and equipment, you may contact the professor(s) listed with each lab or Matt Maksimowicz at (785) 864-3159 .

The Architectural Engineering Senior Design Laboratory is the modern version of ARCE's "senior studio." This computer laboratory, located at 1137 Learned Hall, is for priority use by architectural engineering seniors enrolled in ARCE 680 and ARCE 681, the capstone ARCE senior design courses. The lab is also for use, at a lower priority, by other senior and graduate architectural engineering students in 600+ level ARCE courses. The lab, for 24/7 use, has reference materials, many PC workstations, color and black/white laser printers, a high speed wide-format color plotter for drawings, and a dedicated, student-built ventilation system. For more information, please contact Dr. Brian Rock at (785) 864-3603 or docrock@ku.edu.

The Building Mechanical and Energy Systems (BMES) Laboratory is located at 120 Marvin Studios, the building constructed during World War II by CEAE faculty and students and formerly known as "Broadcasting Hall," the "Mud Hut," and the "Engineering Experimentation Station." The BMES teaching and research lab has a 2000 CFM air handling unit with variable speed fan drive, an in-operation active solar-thermal heating system, a fan-duct test apparatus, various other HVAC/solar equipment, and flexible space for constructing senior design projects. Elective engineering design courses are taught in the lab. For more information, please contact Dr. Brian Rock at (785) 864-3603 or docrock@ku.edu.

The Building Power Systems Laboratory is located at 1144 Learned Hall.

For more information, please contact Dr. Thomas Glavinich at (785) 864-3435 or tglavinich@ku.edu.

The Building Thermal and Materials Sciences Laboratory

For more information, please contact Dr. Mario Medina at (785) 864-3604 or mmedina@ku.edu.

The Computer Graphics Applications Laboratory is equipped for CAD Applications.

For more information, please contact Dr. C. Bryan Young at (785) 864-2999 or cbyoung@ku.edu.

Concrete Lab

The Concrete Laboratory is equipped to run standard tests on cement, aggregates, and concrete. The laboratory is operated as both a teaching and research facility. Equipment is available to test concrete aggregate for deleterious behavior, including alkali silica reactivity, and to measure aggregate properties as they affect mixture proportioning. Freeze-thaw equipment is available for running tests under both Procedures A and B of ASTM C666. A walk-in freezer is used for scaling tests. Concrete is cured under controlled temperature and humidity in the lab's curing room. Two hydraulic testing machines, with load capacities of 180 tons (400,000 lb), are used for concrete strength determination. For more information, please contact the following professors:

The Construction Engineering and Management Laboratory (CEML), located in Learned Hall, is the center for both undergraduate students and graduate students to conduct construction related research projects. The CEML is equipped with state-of-the-art hardware and software such as Timberline, Primavera, GIS, TransCAD, simulation software, smart sensors, and the wireless real-time productivity measurement system. Construction faculty members have successfully competed for research funding from the KU Transportation Research Institute, industries, State Departments of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, and National Science Foundation. Research topics include, but are not limited to, rapid bridge replacement, highway work zone safety, on-site construction productivity improvement, international construction management, sustainability, lean construction, life cycle analysis, and social-human dimensions. (Geared towards Architectural Engineering program.) For more information, please contact any of the following professors:

The Corrosion Testing Laboratory is equipped with an electrochemical impedance system, potentiostats, voltmeters, reference electrodes (Calomel and copper-copper sulfate), ion-specific electrodes, and heating cabinets for the Southern Exposure and cracked beam specimens. A pore press provides the capability of extracting pore solution from hydrated cement paste, mortar, and concrete. For more information, please contact the following professors:

The Environmentally Controlled Concrete Laboratory

For more information, please contact the following professors:

The Fluid Mechanics Laboratory has equipment to test the principles of fluid flow.

For more information, please contact any of the following professors:

The Geomechanics Laboratory

For more information, please contact Dr. Anil Misra at (785) 864-1750 or amisra@ku.edu.

Jie Han

The Geotechnical Engineering Laboratory has oedometers, Atterberg limit apparatus, specific gravity apparatus, sieves, shakers, and a vibrating stable, maximum and minimum density molds, Proctor compaction molds and hammers, large and standard direct shear devices, a triaxial shear device, large-scale and small geotechnical boxes, a geosynthetic creep testing device, a field pile loading system, earth pressure cells, piezometers, and static and dynamic data acquisition systems, etc. For more information, please contact any of the following professors:

The Infrastructure Research Institute

For more information, please contact Dr. David Darwin at (785) 864-3827 or daved@ku.edu.

The Lighting Research Laboratoryuses two spaces. Besides the existing Bob Foley Illumination Laboratory located in room 232 of the Art & Design Building, a new research laboratory (a dark room) was recently opened in room 1152 of Learned Hall. The lighting research laboratory carries out research in lighting and daylighting, solar energy, human factors, high dynamic range photography and photogrammetry, building environmental quality assessment, legible architecture, and user interface, etc

For more information, please visit Dr. Hongyi Cai's website: http://people.ku.edu/~h717c996/ or contact any of the following professors:

The Structural Materials Testing Laboratory has hydraulic and mechanical testing machines with static capacities up to 55 tons. Sixteen-ton and 50-ton closed loop servo-hydraulic universal testing systems (MTS and Instron) are used with digital controllers to control tests. The laboratory is a 170 square meters (1800 square feet) facility with independent temperature, humidity, and dust control systems that provide a stable environment for material tests. For more information, please contact any of the following professors:

The Structural Testing Laboratory has equipment for the testing of steel, concrete, and composites. It has static and servo-hydraulic test equipment. A structural testing bay has 370 square meters (4000 square feet) of open laboratory area with a clear height of nine meters (30 ft) for large-scale structural testing. Loads up to 45 tons (100,000 lb) can be applied on 0.9-meter (3-ft) centers over a 15 x 24 meter (50 x 80 ft) area by Amsler and Satec static jack systems. The laboratory houses a 270-ton (600,000-lb) universal testing machine for testing steel and concrete. A 200-ton (450,000 lb) MTS Structural Test System supported on a four-column test frame may be used for dynamic and cyclic testing of large scale structural components. 50-ton and 25-ton (110,000 lb and 55,000 lb) MTS Structural Test Systems are also used for cyclic and dynamic testing of full-scale structural components within the test bay. Actuators within the test bay are powered by two hydraulic pumps (total flow rate of 420 lpm/110 gpm), meeting the requirements for demanding cyclic test applications. High-speed Mars Labs, National Instruments, and Hewlett Packard data acquisition systems are available to monitor and record load, strain, and displacement. The structural testing laboratory includes an overhead 18-ton (40,000 lb) crane with access to the entire lab floor area. For more information, please contact any of the following professors:

The Surveying Laboratory is equipped with the instruments and tools that students use throughout the surveying course. Students learn techniques for gathering field data with both traditional and modern instruments and demonstrate their proficiency on weekly lab exercises and a comprehensive semester project and final exam. Each lab group - typically three students - has a dedicated set of instruments to use, including auto level, theodolite, and total station. Each group also has level rods, tripods, tape measures, chaining pins, and other common surveying tools and ancillary equipment. The lab serves as office space for the surveying instructor and teaching assistants, so surveying students have direct access to help for material discussed in lecture and lab. For more information, please contact any of the following professors:

The Transportation Laboratory allows research on the properties of traffic flow and is equipped with Lidar Speed Guns, Bluetube Sensors, Junior and Jamar Traffic Counters with Rubber Hoses, an Autoscope and TV, VTR, Electronic Count Boards, Site Fire Radar Units, Computer Work Stations, and a Retroreflectometer. This lab also has two telescoping trailers. For more information, please contact any of the following professors:

The Transportation Materials Laboratory has an ignition oven for asphalt binder, a rotational viscometer, a centrifuge and Abson extraction device for asphalt, a large oven, an asphalt pavement analyzer, a gyratory compactor, a light falling weight deflectometer, a dynamic cone penetrometer, a geo-gauge, a large-scale test box, a railway testing facility, a cyclic loading frame for asphalt overlay testing, and California kneading compactor, etc.

For more information, please contact any of the following professors:


Hydrology Lab

The Water Resources Laboratory is equipped for hydrologic models, experimental stress, and strain-gage analysis. It contains two water flumes, a sediment flume and open space for physical model studies. A re-circulating water system with a constant-head tank supplies water to flumes and models. The water resources group also has a GIS computer laboratory for applications of geographic information systems in water resources. For more information, please contact any of the following professors:


The environmental engineering and science laboratories include over 10,000 square feet of space devoted to environmental research activities. Instrumentation is currently available to perform analytical measurements associated with research investigations in water quality, air quality, solid and hazardous wastes, and environmental microbiology.

Major equipment includes: infrared, visible, and ultraviolet spectrophotometers; a Beckman LS6500 liquid scintillation counter; a HIAC/Royco Model 9703 liquid particle counter; a Perkin Elmer atomic absorption spectrophotometer (AAnalyst 300 with autosampler/autodilution); a Sorvall RC5 refrigerated ultracentrifuge; three 2 L B.Braun Biostat i fermentors, a 3 L Applikon fermentor; a 3 L New Brunswick Bioflo 3000 fermentor; apparatus for gel electrophoresis; a 400 Watt sonicator for cell fractionation; carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen analyzers for solid materials; four shaker table facilities; Zeiss UEM research microscope with phase contrast, DIC, and epifluorescence capabilities; a Dohrmann DC-80 TOC Analyzer; six gas chromatographs with ECD (2), FID (2), AFID, and TC detectors; two gas chromatographs with mass selective detectors (GC/MSD) (Varian Saturn 2000 and Agilent Technologies 5973); a Water HPLC system, two Dionex ion chromatographs (2001i and QIC); Milestone DMA direct mercury analyzer, four temperature controlled rooms; a PCR thermocycler and associated equipment including a hybridization oven; and a Kodak image analysis systems.

University Resources

In addition to the equipment housed in the department's laboratories, the University of Kansas provides a wide range of instrumentation and research support services. The facilities that may be utilized include the Mass Spectrometry Laboratory, the Microscopy and Electronic Imaging Laboratory, the Biochemical Research Service Laboratory, and the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology. The mass spectrometry facility is currently equipped with a high-resolution sector (VG ZAB-HS) and a high-resolution tandem hybrid of EBEqQ configuration (VG AUTOSPEC-Q). Facilities include an HPLC MS and HPLC-MS-MS and a tandem hybrid of QTOF configuration for high performance electrospray MS-MS. The Microscopy and Electronic Imaging Laboratory is equipped with a confocal scanning laser microscope (BioRad MRC 1000), transmission electron microscope, scanning electron microscope, and electronic image production capabilities.

Two potential locations for large-scale laboratory and pilot-scale test facilities are the Water Resources Hydraulics Lab, described above, and the Nelson Environmental Studies area. NESA, located about 25 minutes from the KU Lawrence campus, offers one of the largest experimental pond facilities in the U.S. and includes an integrated pond complex of more than 150 experimental aquatic ecosystems, a 2,403 square foot aquatic research laboratory, an 1,800 square foot workshop, an aquatic sample processing room, and an on-site resident manager who provides security. The NESA facility is operated within the KU Department of Ecology and Developmental Biology and the Kansas Biological Survey with staff available to support potential pilot-scale experimentation.