1. Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences
  2. School of Civil Engineering
  3. Research and innovation
  4. Research facilities

Research facilities

Civil facilities

Our academics and postgraduate researchers have access to a wide range of specialist facilities and laboratories. Undergraduate and Masters students may benefit from these facilities during their project work.

Research laboratories

  • Public health laboratories with separate areas for water and wastewater, including areas for experimental rigs, a class II microbiology lab and clean laboratory for molecular biology work
  • Solid waste management sample preparation laboratory
  • Class II aerobiology chamber that can be used for room-scale bioaerosol experiments
  • Fluids laboratory with a flume and specialist rigs to investigate civil engineering flows
  • Geotechnics laboratories to investigate the behaviour of soil in various environments
  • Structures and materials laboratories with rigs for full-scale performance of structures, creep, casting shop and curing room, sensors laboratory and corrosion laboratory
  • Building Physics laboratory for studying different aspects of building performance including thermal behaviour, air flow, acoustics, light and climate

Analytical facilities

  • Bioaerosol sampling equipment for lab and site-based studies and in-house waste respirometers to measure process reaction rates
  • Bench-top testing facilities to look at the fundamental behaviour of materials and soils
  • PCR based techniques used for detecting and characterising microbial populations in environmental samples (e.g. 16S rRNA gene library construction)
  • Advanced techniques to study the micro behaviour of cementitious materials, including Scanning Electron Microscopy, X-ray microscopy, NMR and Simultaneous Thermal Analysis with Mass Spectrometer detection
  • A wide range of equipment for full-scale field monitoring of structures, building performance and air quality
  • A range of equipment for the analysis of water and waste, including Gas and Ion Chromatography, UV-Vis and FTIR Spectroscopy, and a Hach AP3900 Robotic Analyser for the automated analysis of water
  • A range of sample conditioning cabinets, including carbonation, freeze-thaw, salt spray, UV, atmospheric pollutants

Computational facilities

  • Access to high-performance computing for particularly intensive analytical work
  • Industry-standard CFD, structural and geotechnical modelling and Building Information Modelling packages
  • Bespoke tools developed within research groups

Large scale testing facilities

We are currently developing new large scale infrastructure test facilities as part of several major cross-discipline investments including:

  • State of the art rail test facilities for understanding track and vehicle performance. This will be one of the most advanced rail test facilities in the world and will be at the heart of our Institute for High Speed Rail and System Integration.

A suite of test facilities supported through UK collaboratorium for research on infrastructure and cities (UKCRIC):

Environmental engineering facilities including:

Working with business

We are committed to sharing our facilities and associated expertise with external academic and industrial collaborators. Contact our Research and Innovation team for more information.