TIP FACILITIES

PENNSYLVANIA TRANSPORTATION INSTITUTE

The Pennsylvania Transportation Institute (PTI) is the University’s transportation research center, a major multidisciplinary unit within Penn State’s College of Engineering.  Since its inception in 1968, PTI has maintained a threefold mission of research, education, and service.  In pursuit of this mission, the institute aspires to conduct innovative and relevant research addressing current and future transportation needs, to promote continuing education for transportation professionals, to provide significant interdisciplinary educational and research opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students, and to disseminate research results within and beyond the transportation field. 

PTI is the locus for transportation-related research conducted by Penn State faculty from more than 14 colleges and research centers.  Many of these faculty hold joint appointments with the institute and Penn State’s academic colleges and schools; areas of specialization include architectural, civil, electrical, industrial, and mechanical engineering as well as agriculture, business logistics and management, economics, geography, psychology, and statistics.  Through its multidisciplinary structure and supportive research environment, the institute provides a unique focal point of collaboration for faculty from many different areas of the University.

PTI's energies are directed toward solving problems in three major areas of transportation research: transportation operations; transportation infrastructure; and vehicle systems and safety. The institute has conducted research projects for federal, state, municipal, and industrial sources, including the U.S. Department of Transportation (FHWA, FTA, NCHRP, SHRP, TCRP), U.S. Department of Energy, Department of Defense, National Science Foundation, Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, other state departments of transportation, the Center for Rural Pennsylvania, and a broad range of private-sector entities.  The institute has established an enviable track record of successful on-time delivery of high-quality research products to its public and private-sector sponsors.  Fiscal year 2002-2003 placed PTI's active research contracts at $48 million, with over $13 million in expenditures.

Penn State’s College of Engineering has the second largest student enrollment in the nation.  The undergraduate and graduate student populations at Penn State and PTI represent a broad cross section of socioeconomic backgrounds, races, ethnicities, and nationalities.  Students directly involved in the research, education and technology transfer activities at PTI in 2002-2003 represented aerospace, architectural, civil, electrical, industrial, mechanical, and nuclear engineering; engineering science and mechanics; materials science; geosciences; physics; psychology; education; and business administration.  Over 100 graduate students, including 40 doctoral candidates, conduct their thesis research at PTI.

In the context of its 35 years of service to the transportation industry, the Pennsylvania Transportation Institute benefits from considerable continuity not only in its research programs and affiliated faculty from throughout the University, but also among its core support personnel.  Lead staff in the institute’s administrative, technical and editorial areas have 25, 23, and 15 years of experience in service of the institute at Penn State.  The institute’s research, education and technology transfer functions are currently supported by 78 dedicated staff.

RESEARCH FACILITIES 

Penn State provides a number of excellent field facilities and experimental laboratories for evaluating new, proposed, or re-engineered transportation products.  Penn State and PTI’s materials and testing laboratories provide facilities for simulation/modeling, full-scale, and bench testing for research involving materials used in nearly all civil structures: cement and concrete materials and systems; aggregate characterization; asphalt paving materials; composite materials and systems, industrial chemicals, recycled/reclaimed materials, and other bridge materials including steel and wood.   In addition, PTI’s full-scale test track facilities allow for research on in-situ field durability testing of pavement materials; tire/pavement phenomena; the effects of crashes and impacts on barriers and vehicles; and bridge loadings, design, construction, monitoring and evaluation. Some of the larger facilities available for materials testing include the following:

 ·        CATO Park Materials and Structural Testing Laboratory

·        NECEPT Pavements and Materials Laboratory

·        Penn State’s Materials Testing Laboratory (MRL)

·        Crash Safety Research Center

·        PTI Vehicle Test Track Facilities

·        Composite Materials Laboratory

·        Kappe Environmental Laboratory

Quality Assurance/Quality Control 

The Pennsylvania State University is a land grant public institution.  In this position, its policies have established that the University is responsible for providing objective research and development services to government agencies and the private sector that require the special expertise of the University.  Penn State is one of the top five research universities in the United States.  Further evidence of the quality standard within the institution is student and faculty activities striving for advancement of our knowledge base and judged via peer review of these activities.  As such, the faculty and students at PTI have published more than 1,000 peer-reviewed research papers in the past 20 years.   

Research conducted at PTI follows ASTM, AASHTO, US-EPA, US-DOE and advanced research standards for laboratory practices that ensure accountability of the test results.  Calibration of testing equipment and analytical standards are traceable to NIST standards.  Results of standardized testing protocols (i.e., AASHTO, ASTM and EPA) are routinely accepted by Commonwealth regulatory agencies and are accepted by FHWA and US-DOE.  PTI maintains dedicated professional staff with long histories of conducting organized, focused research.  The technical support staff at PTI and MRL average more than 17 years of experience.  The faculty average more than 20 years in transportation-related research.  The University has adopted a Continuous Quality Improvement policy that ensures departments are continually striving to improve upon their already high standards for research conduct.  The affiliated faculty and staff are well qualified to develop QA/QC plans as requested.

   Structural Testing

 The laboratories at Penn State are equipped with facilities for a full range of scale and full-size testing of steel, concrete, wood, masonry, and composite structures and subassemblies.  Testing capabilities include in-situ bridge and structural monitoring and evaluation; load testing; bridge instrumentation; and non-destructive evaluations.  Penn State’s expertise includes testing and evaluation of the effects of materials, construction practices, design parameters, static/dynamic/repeated loadings and environmental effects on response and behavior..  Penn State has a 56,000-square-foot, large-scale testing facility (Transportation Infrastructure Laboratories) and five other laboratories for smaller-scale structural testing.  The laboratories are equipped with reaction floors and the necessary loading and data acquisition equipment to simulate any effects that a structure would encounter.  MTS servo-controlled actuators, with capacities upwards of 220,000 pounds, and a variety of hydraulic rams, pendulums and a drop-hammer are used to apply the loads.  High-speed data acquisition systems are used to acquire and reduce the data in real-time. In addition, computer laboratories containing networked PC and UNIX platform clusters are available to perform  fully nonlinear finite element modeling using programs such as SAP2000, ANSYS and ABAQUS along with more detailed data reduction and examination. 

Penn State has three mobile laboratories for in-situ testing of subsurface foundation conditions, bridge response to applied loads, and non-destructive evaluation of all types of structures.

Laboratory corrosion testing capabilities are enabled through the Accelerated Corrosion Testing System that is comprised of the Gamry PC4/300 Potentiostat and Multiplexer with eight stations, dedicated PC and software for polarization resistance, cyclic polarization, galvanic corrosion, and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy.  Corrosion testing in the field is made possible through the use of portable corrosion testing equipment including a James Gecor 6 corrosion rate measurement system and a Canin corrosion analyzer with wheel electrode system for quick half-cell mapping of large surfaces such as bridge decks.

   Asphalt and Pavement Testing

 The Northeast Center of Excellence for Pavement Technology (NECEPT) laboratory facilities include a state-of-the-art binder and mixtures laboratory that is equipped and staffed to perform all of the SHRP Superpave tests as well as other specialized binder and mixture, subbase and subgrade, and other pavement material characterization tests.  The center is equipped and staffed to support training activities, pavements and materials-related research and development, pavement load response and performance measurements, and the evaluation of Superpave equipment and procedures. The NECEPT Laboratory is capable of performing standard ASTM, AASHTO, and agency mix designs according to the Marshall and Superpave systems.  It houses conventional asphalt binder and mixture test equipment as well as advanced testing systems and sophisticated one-of-a-kind research instrumentation.  NECEPT is also equipped with a single-axle trailer with a specialized loading system that will allow axle loadings of up to 22,000 lb.  The axles of the instrument is instrumented so that dynamic loads can also be measured.

   Cementitious Materials and Concrete Testing

 The laboratories at Penn State are equipped with a full range of AASHTO and ASTM cement, grout, mortar, masonry and concrete testing.  In addition, the laboratories contain research equipment that is capable of conducting full-scale or component structural testing, detailed petrographic materials evaluations, and in-situ non-destructive evaluations of structures.  Penn State’s laboratories are integrated by joint faculty appointments, shared research equipment, and the intercollegiate research atmosphere fostered by the University.  One of the institute's major testing facilities is the CATO Park Materials and Structural Testing Laboratory.  The second cement and concrete research laboratory is Penn State’s Materials Research Laboratory (MRL).  Together, these laboratories complete a full-service research and evaluation laboratory for cementitious materials. 

   Fiber-Reinforced Composite Materials Testing 

The laboratories of Penn State’s Composites Manufacturing Technology Center contain a wide range of equipment for the fabrication, testing, and evaluation of fiber-reinforced structural composite materials, including structural shapes, prestressing tendons, reinforcement bars, and external repair/rehabilitation materials.  Testing equipment includes long-term environmental conditioning chambers, static and cyclic loading frames with environmental chambers, and instruments for recording loads, strains, and deflections via digital computer.  Evaluation equipment available to the laboratory includes a thermal analyzers (TGA, DMA, DSC, TMA) and ultrasonic testing devices.  The types of projects carried out in recent years include fabrication and characterization of fiber-reinforced polymers (FRP) bars and grids as stand-alone structural elements, bar and grid FRP reinforcements embedded into or attached externally to concrete elements, nonmetallic anchorages for FRP tendons, behavior of concrete with prestressed or post-tensioned FRP tendons, and durability evaluation of FRP reinforced concrete elements subjected to simultaneous long-term sustained load and environmental exposure.

   Geotechnical Testing 

The PTI Geotechnical laboratories are capable of evaluating a broad range of geotechnical characteristics and conditions.  Soil, aggregate, geotextiles, and recycled material properties can be evaluated according to ASTM and AASHTO standards.  The laboratory has extensive equipment and expertise in evaluating in-situ conditions and performance with geophysics instrumentation and modeling techniques. 

   Pavement Surface Characteristics

 PTI maintains research equipment to measure and characterize pavement surfaces.  Included in this equipment is a skid resistance measuring unit meeting the ASTM E 274 standard, a British Pendulum tester, an outflow meter, and mean texture depth equipment.  PTI’s test track facility includes a special test section where test surfaces can be installed on a temporary basis for testing.  In addition, the test track features a 1-mile oval, a large vehicle handling area, and a vehicle durability-testing course that allow additional pavement, vehicle, and appurtenance testing.

Pavement Durability Research Facility 

The Pavement Durability Research Facility at Penn State, designed in the early 1970s and expanded in 1982, is a full-scale experimental highway. Research conducted at the facility has included the evaluation of seal coat performance, the evaluation of in situ instrumentation, the effects of tire types and pressures on pavement performance, and the use of in situ instrumentation for resilient moduli measurements.

Pavement Roughness Research Facility

 The Pavement Roughness Research Facility is a pavement lane constructed adjacent to a tangent of the Bus Research and Testing Facility.  The facility's artificial surface was designed to permit the calibration of roughness measurement equipment and profilometers with definable accuracy and consistency.