Research Laboratories

The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering houses a variety of state-of-the-art laboratories to meet experimental and computational needs.

Bernard Hankin Construction Engineering and Management Research Laboratory
The Building Enclosure Test Laboratory (BeTL), located at CATO Park in State College, is a facility that was developed to conduct performance tests on building enclosure systems and their component parts. Test specimens can include: complete wall or roof assemblies or sub-assemblies, windows, and joints.
http://www.engr.psu.edu/phrc/BetL.htm

Civil Infrastructure Testing and Evaluation Laboratory (CITEL)
The Civil Infrastructure Testing and Evaluation Laboratory (CITEL), affiliated with the Dept of Civil Engineering and The College of Engineering at Penn State, is a world-class laboratory focused on improving civil infrastructure. CITEL utilizes advanced testing and computational systems housed within a 56,000-square-foot facility to examine numerous issues related to the performance of the world's civil infrastructure. Our capabilities include: a concrete mixing area, environmental chambers that can simulate a number of climatic conditions, a composite materials laboratory, an accelerated pavement testing facility, computational facilities for advanced infrastructure analysis, a housing research laboratory and a 10,000-square-foot structures laboratory for large- or small-scale testing.
http://www.engr.psu.edu/ce/Divisions/structure/structure_Ctour.htm

Hydraulics and Environmental Fluid Mechanics Laboratory
The Hydraulics and Environmental Fluid Mechanics Laboratory is a facility for studies of sediment transport, scour, turbulence in stratified flows, turbulence studies in rivers and lakes, and other fluid phenomena and processes. Equipment includes a tilting sediment and water recirculating flume, venturi meter, manometer, acoustic doppler velocimeters, cameras and lasers for particle image velocimetry, an acoustic doppler current profiler, and microscale conductivity and temperature instruments.

Kappe Environmental Engineering Laboratories
The environmental engineering laboratories cover an area of approximately 16,000 sq. ft., including a 2,000 sq. ft. laboratory at the University Wastewater Treatment Plant (less than one mile from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering). The Water Quality Lab at the Environmental Resources Research Institute performs contract analyses for research projects.
http://www.engr.psu.edu/ce/Divisions/enveng/facilities.htm

Pavement Laboratories
The Pavement Laboratories include state-of-the-art pavement materials research facilities that consist of specimen fabrication, binder and mixture testing labs, accelerated testing and full-scale testing facilities. Currently the labs are equipped with three Universal Testing Machines, SST (Simple Shear Tester) tester, MMLS3 (Mobile Model Load Simulator) with test-bed and slab testing configurations, in addition to a comprehensive setup of specimen- and full- scale instrumentation. Binder labs are equipped with Superpave grading equipment: BBR DSR, RV, and DTT. Marshall testing equipment and volumetric instruments are also available.
http://www.engr.psu.edu/ce/Divisions/Pavements/index.htm

Penn State Experimental Forest
For more than 40 years, the Penn State Experimental Forest has been the site of water resource and environmental investigations focusing on sustainability of hardwood forests, water yield, and water quality. The Pennsylvania State University has played a key role in this effort by internally supporting the Leading Ridge, Shale Hills, and Shaver’s Creek experimental watersheds and outreach programs.
http://www.engr.psu.edu/rth_net/#Introduction

Protective Technology Center (PTC)
The Protective Technology Center (PTC) at Penn State was established prior to the events of 9/11 to focus research and development activities with the goal of protecting people and infrastructure from terrorist attacks. The center encourages the use of multi-disciplinary research teams to address problems related to blast, shock, impact, and biological terrorism related concerns. The center is house in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, but researchers include faculty, staff, and students from multiple Colleges within Penn State as well as the Applied Research Laboratory.
http://www.ptc.psu.edu/

Test Track
A major research and testing facility of the Pennsylvania Transportation Institute (PTI) is the track and the facility located in Bellefonte, PA. The 5042-foot long oval shaped track provides the needed place for a wide range of transportation related research.
http://www.pti.psu.edu/