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Facilities
Materials Engineering Facilities
The graduate laboratories jointly serve both teaching and research needs.
Bituminous Laboratory
The Purdue University Bituminous Laboratory facilities
contain conventional and Superpave asphalt binder and hot-mix asphalt (HMA) mixture test
equipment required for binder classification and mixture design. Test
equipment for conducting laboratory accelerated wheel track and full-scale
accelerated testing are also included in these facilities.
Testing equipment includes a Rolling Thin Film Oven (RTFOT), Pressure Aging Vessel (PAV),
Dynamic Shear Rheometer (DSR), and Bending Beam Rheometer (BBR) for evaluating asphalt
binder. HMA mixture design and testing equipment includes:
unconfined and triaxial testing, beam fatigue, and indirect tensile testing. Compaction
equipment includes: manual, mechanical and mechanical slant-foot, rotating
base Marshall hammers, and two Superpave gyratory compactors. An environmental
room or environmental chambers can be used to
control temperature and humidity during testing. Facilities for durability
testing include high temperature cycling, freeze-thaw and wetting-drying.
Federal, state, and industry sponsors provide funding that employs undergraduate
and graduate students, and post-doctorial faculty to conduct problem solving
research.
Practical, hands-on investigation of the mechanical properties
of concrete and aggregates.
Charles Pankow Concrete Materials Laboratory
The Charles Pankow Concrete Materials Laboratory has facilities for
specialized in-depth analysis of building materials,
in particular, cement and concrete. Recent projects have included
studies on the early hydration of cement, sulfate attack
on concrete by SEM backscatter techniques, the freeze-thaw durability
of high-strength concrete, alkali silica reactivity and means
to minimize it, influence of silica fume on the pore structure of
concrete and image analysis characterization of cement microstructure.
This internationally known laboratory was named after Dr. Charles
Pankow, President of the Charles Pankow Building, Ltd, whose generous
donation has provided for the purchase and maintenance of a
significant amount of the equipment found in the lab.
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