Our Centre for Advanced Structural Engineering (CASE) Laboratory holds a wide range of facilities and testing equipment to support research in structural engineering.
The CASE Laboratory comprises of a strong floor area; a split Hopkinson bar facility; a high capacity universal testing machine; high-performance parallel computing facilities; a wide range of hydraulic actuators; a structural workshop with fabrication, welding and cutting capabilities; facilities for the testing of steel, concrete and steel-concrete components and systems; and other equipment and resources for material characterisation.
Our strong floor covers an area of 25 x 25 metres and allows researchers to simulate a wide range of loads with actions up to 100 tonnes and frames up to 6.9 metres high. The floor itself is steel-reinforced 1.5 metre thick concrete, with large bolts and anchors to which structural components and systems can be attached and their strength tested. It can be applied to small-, medium- and large-scale specimens for research and applications in structural components and systems, bridge decks and girders, beam column connections, shear walls and other structures used in constructing buildings, bridges and infrastructure.
The MTS 20 Meganewton testing machine is the largest facility of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere and is crucial in testing innovative materials for infrastructure such as high-performance concrete, steel and composite construction members, and carbon-fibre reinforced polymers. This facility is vital in supporting experimental research to develop Australian and International Standards towards innovative solutions in construction and infrastructure.
Our split Hopkinson bar facility consists of compression, tension and torsion testers and is used to measure the dynamic properties of various materials including concrete, alloys, rocks and composites under strain rates of up to 10,000/s. This is essential to many applications in impact engineering, blast-resistant design and crashworthiness studies. There is also a temperature control device that can heat specimens to 800°C. As a result, the combined effects of strain and temperature on material properties can be studied.
Our high-performance parallel computing facilities comprise of 25 state-of-the-art computers located throughout the CASE Laboratory. Each facility serves the purpose of splitting up large and complex tasks across multiple process
The CASE Laboratory houses numerous hydraulic actuators with capacity varying between five and 500 tonnes. Each hydraulic actuator consists of a dual action cylinder that uses hydraulic power to facilitate mechanical operations for different modes of force application (static and dynamic).
Our specialist equipment and resources serve a broad range of requirements spanning from heavy engineering applications through to fine micro-components. Our equipment includes large-scale and heavy drilling work, water jet cutters, large-scale rigging equipment, wielding facilities and sheet metal machinery as well as industrial standard milling machines, lathes, grinding machines and woodworking machinery.
