Enviromental | Structures | Transportation | Other

Environmental
The laboratories at the University of Virginia are well equipped for experimental research. Laboratory equipment includes three Perkin-Elmer Autosystem gas chromatographs (GCs) with flame-ionization, electron-capture, and thermal conductivity detectors. Environmental samples can be preconcentrated prior to GC analysis by a Perkin-Elmer LSC 2000 purge-and-trap concentrator and a 16-position autosampler (for water samples) or a Tekmar 16-position thermal desorption unit interfaced with the LSC 2000 purge-and-trap concentrator (for gas samples concentrated on adsorbent traps). The laboratories are also equipped with a Waters High Performance Liquid Chromatograph (HPLC) with autosampler, an Alltech Ion Chromatograph, a Packard liquid scintillation counter, and a Digital Instruments Atomic Force Microscope. Other equipment available in the laboratories includes syringe pumps, a refrigerated high-speed centrifuge, UV-vis spectrophotometers, a turbidimeter, a temperature-controlled incubation chamber, surface tensiometers, a Micromeritics surface area analyzer, and an autoclave. Digital image analysis can be performed using a Nikon optical microscope, a Questar long-distance microscope, a Sanyo CCD camera, and image acquisition/processing hardware and software from National Instruments. Soil testing equipment includes seven flexible-wall permeameters with separate volume- and pressure-control panels (equipped with two bladder accumulators for permeability tests involving nonaqueous-phase organic liquids), a SoilTest Cyclic Triaxial Testing Loadframe, a conventional triaxial testing loadframe (SoilTest), Brainard Kilman fixed and floating ring consolidometers, and a Nold water deaerator. Standard soil testing equipment is available for soil classification, compaction, and grain size analysis.

Field research equipment includes time-domain reflectometry probes and a Tektronix TDR cable tester interfaced with a Campbell CR10 data logger. The CR10 can also be used to collect air pressure data from up to 6 Geokon vibrating-wire pressure transducers and temperature probes. An Apple Macintosh PowerBook 190/66 is dedicated to downloading field data from the CR10 for analysis. Ground water can be sampled with a Grunphos Redi-Flo 2 stainless-steel submersible pump with control box, and hose cart. During ground-water sample collection, a YSI water-quality meter with a flow-through chamber can be used to monitor pH, specific conductance, and temperature. Soil samples can be collected from the subsurface using a soil sampling kit that includes stainless-steel hand augers and a split-spoon sampler.

Significant computing resources are available within the Department. Two Sun Ultra 10 Unix workstations are dedicated to environmental engineering research, and large-scale and parallel computing capabilities are available through the research computing facility of the University, featuring an IBM SP2 facility. Other computational facilities within the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering include a significant number of high-end personal computers.

Structures
The Structural and Solid Mechanics Program within the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering has extensive experimental and computational laboratory space devoted to graduate instruction and research.

Experimental facilities include a modern advanced materials and structures laboratory, and a geotechnical laboratory. The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering also has access to the bituminous materials, concrete and geotechnical laboratories of the Virginia Transportation Research Council.

The Structural and Solid Mechanics Computational Laboratory is comprised of current generation PC's and Unix workstations, which are upgraded annually to remain at the state of the art. In addition, students have access to the Civil Engineering Computing Lab which consists of current generation PC's, and various personal computers, laser printers and plotters located in the departmental laboratories and offices. These facilities communicate directly with a number of computers on grounds through Ethernet and local area network connections. In this manner, students have access to the SP cluster recently developed in the School of Engineering and Applied Science. In addition to the departmental facilities, the Division of Information Technology and Communications operates extensive public facilities that are available to students throughout the University.

Transportation
For further information on Transportation Research, click here.

Other Facilities
Excellent library facilities are available through the Science and Engineering Library, the University of Virginia Libraries, and VDOT's Research Library located at the Virginia Transportation Research Council, also in Charlottesville. In addition, the University of Virginia is a participating member of VIVA, the Virtual Library of Virginia, a consortium of academic libraries in the Commonwealth of Virginia which share resources to permit rapid access to texts, journals, and electornic files.