Civil and Geospatial Engineering Facilities

Venturi flumes 3m

Practicals:

• open channel flow - verifying energy curves and discharge equation, measuring flow based on conservation of energy

Rainfall and runoff simulator

Practical:

• experiments to determine unit hydrographs and how they form
• used to model flow

Wide flume 12m × 1m

Our new state-of-the-art hydraulic flume opened in September 2019.

Practicals (not formal teaching):

• demonstrations of open channel flow

Projects:

• experimental investigations of behaviour of leaky barriers, flow around structures such as bridges

Sediment transport channel (small flume)

Practicals:

• demonstrates the full range of bed forms that occur in a mobile bed as flow changes

Multi-Function lab

The Multi-Function Lab is used for practicals using self-circulating small benches.

Pressurised flow

• pipe friction loss
• verifying the pipe friction equation, turbulent and laminar flow

Weirs

• measuring Q and head over various weirs to investigate the relationship
• use of discharge equation, determining discharge coefficients

Bernoulli effect

• investigating variations in pressure heads and velocity heads when a steady flow goes through convergent/divergent pipe
• practise Bernoulli equation, investigate energy losses

Buoyancy

• determining the metacentric height of a floating body in static equilibrium

Hydrostatic pressures

• examining the effect of changing immersion of a vertical plane on the hydrostatic forces acting on it
• use of hydraulic thrust equation

Building and city as a lab (BaaL, CaaL) at the rrban observatory

The Urban Observatory deploys sensor networks and collects data across scales. We can observe these systems as part of a nested ‘living laboratory’.

The Urban Sciences Building is an instrumented building. It sits within the 24-acre instrumented Newcastle Helix site, within an instrumented city. It functions as a ‘living lab’ where the building itself becomes a test bed.

The Building as a Lab (BaaL) initiative includes:

• whole building monitoring systems (electricity, heat, water, CO2)
• multi-system real-time intelligent control
• energy storage and novel DC grid
• sensor infrastructure within the building
• a framework for building user participation with research

The data is open source and available through the Urban Observatory.

The Urban Sciences Building is also home to the multidisciplinary UKCRIC Water Urban Science and Engineering Research (USER) laboratory. This laboratory provides infrastructure for modular and treatment train testing of:

• novel sustainable urban drainage (SUDs) technologies
• Green Infrastructure (GI)
• Natural Flood Management techniques

The laboratory extends to the Newcastle Helix site and the wider city through the Urban Observatory sensor networks. The reach of these networks is constantly growing. All the data is open source and available through the Urban Observatory.

Geometry: Borehole array

Groundwater Engineering Operations Monitoring Evaluation and Testing Laboratory

The geometry field laboratory focuses on hydrogeological field measurements and data interpretation associated with boreholes. It is one of the Earth Systems Laboratories managed by the School of Engineering. It supports some of the Masters courses taught by the School of Engineering by providing:

• a teaching facility, giving students practical experience in borehole measurements and data collection, and an appreciation of the complexities of applying science to real situations
• a resource for MSc students to undertake research projects as part of their course.

The laboratory is located on the University's farm at Cockle Park near Morpeth, with the co-operation of the School of Natural and Environmental Sciences. This facility is used and managed by the School of Engineering and is also available as a research tool and training facility for the University's other Schools and Research Institutes as well as industrial partners.

Heavy reaction frame and strong floor

This system is highly adjustable. It gives us the ability to apply loads in a wide range of configurations. It uses single and double acting hydraulic rams capable of providing both compressive and tensile forces up to 1300kN.

Additionally, we can use these rams in parallel to provide many loads simultaneously.

A servo-controlled actuator system allows us to apply complex load histories, including cyclic and full dynamic testing.

Landslide flume

This high-angle flume is 4m long, 0.3m wide, and 0.3m thick with recirculating flow and the ability to tilt up to 45 degrees. It has glass sides to enable particle tracking using our array of high speed cameras. It has seven pressure transducers to measure flow thickness down the centre line of the flume.

Shaking table

We use this equipment to impose seismic loading on model structures and foundations. We can upload data from real seismic events in the control system to recreate real earthquake conditions.

We monitor displacements and accelerations within the model structures during testing to assess performance.

Climate control chambers

Two chambers of dimensions 0.6 × 1.2 × 1.0m are each capable of maintaining temperatures of 0-70°C and humidities of 10-80% RH at 40°C). Positionable ICH-compliant UV/Vis light sources and internal data logging enable customisable environmental time-series sequences.

We use the chambers to:

• condition samples
• run tests of water vapour sorption (eg shrinkage/swelling and cracking)
• construct BET plots of surface area

Dynamic vapour sorption

This equipment is similar to a climate chamber, but on very small samples (eg 50micrograms).

It has a temperature range 5-40°C and humidity 0-98%. It also has extremely precise (to seven decimal points) weight change measurement via microbalance. We can use this to draw sorption isotherms and compute mesopore size distributions (1-50 nm pore diameters). It also allows us to measure specific surface area via the BET method.

We are currently using the equipment to:

• study concrete damage due to fire-induced drying
• characterise of the specific surface of artificial bone (hydroxyapatite)

Our exceptional range of laboratories has a wide variety of analytical and experimental instrumentation. These facilities support our research, teaching, and commercial work.

As founding members of UKCRIC, we host the National Green Infrastructure Facility.

We’re also home to the Newcastle Urban Observatory, which has the largest set of publicly available real-time urban data in the UK. These and our other facilities support our research, teaching and commercial work. They include:

• heavy structures
• geotechnics and materials
• BIONICS Embankment Research Facility
• the Key: the UK’s first fabric workspace

We have a variety of instrumented, full-scale research facilities.

This full-scale transport infrastructure embankment forms part of the Biological & Engineering Impacts of Climate Change on Slopes (BIONICS) project (EPSRC reference GR/S87430/01).

The structure is 90m long, 6m high at its crest, and constructed from typical boulder clay derived engineered fill. The slope stability research facility has hosted a variety of national and international collaborations and trials, including:

• iSMART: Infrastructure slopes: Sustainable Management And Resilience Assessment
• ACHILLES: Assessment, costing and enhancement of long life, long linear assets
• COST Action TU1202: Impacts of climate change on engineered slopes for infrastructure
• PRIME: Proactive Infrastructure Monitoring and Evaluation
• Slope ALARMS: Assessment of Landslides using Acoustic Real-time Monitoring systems

Total number of sensors: 83

Total parameters measured: 271

Contact: Dr Ross Stirling

This equipment is state of the art. It provides the capability to measure shape, displacement, and strain in either two or three dimensions.

The system can analyse specimens ranging from <1mm to >10m. It maintains high levels of accuracy while displaying the real-time analysis results.

Within the lab at Newcastle University, we primarily use it to determine the strain characteristics of metal, soil, fabric, and composite samples.

Laboratory capabilities

We carry out our teaching and research in labs with state-of-the-art equipment.

130kN Bi-axial tension/shear rig: An in-house custom-built rig specifically designed for the testing of composite materials, and particularly bi-axial loading of woven and non-woven structural fabrics.

Large testing frames: Avery-Denison 250kN, 1000kN and 5000kN tension/compression loading machines

Advanced triaxial testing rigs: we use these to conduct triaxial, effective stress analysis on weak rocks (mudstones, shales etc) and soils.

Local strain measurement: used to measure small strain behaviour in soils and to determine their initial stiffness properties. Methods include Bender Elements and Hall Effect Gauges.

Unsaturated soil triaxial testing: enables sample testing under conditions approaching the in-situ stress state, degree of saturation or partial saturation. The Stress Dependent Soil Water Characteristic Curve (SDSWCC) may be obtained using the axis translation technique. Capable of measuring volume change: directly using an air pressure/volume controller, by HKUST inner cell, double walled cell and on-sample strain transducers.

Dynamic/cyclic loading: this apparatus can apply monotonic or cyclic loading to simulate earthquakes and other cyclic/dynamic loading of soils.

Soil direct tensile strength test

We have developed a direct tensile strength testing method for soils in saturated and unsaturated states. The apparatus uses a classic direct shear (shearbox) rig to enable a range of strain rate controlled testing options.

Soil-water retention determination

Our labs have the following equipment/techniques:

• filter paper method
• dewpoint potentiometer (WP4C)
• SoilMoisture Corp pressure plates
• HYPROP simultaneous suction-volumetric water content determination equipment

In addition to the proprietary equipment, we are developing in-house high capacity tensiometers capable of suction measurement in excess of 2.5 MPa.

Thermal and hydraulic conductivity testing equipment

We use this equipment to determine thermal and hydraulic characteristics of soils and rocks. It has applications associated with energy piles, buried pipelines, geothermal energy and soil-plant-atmosphere interactions.

We have a range of cutting-edge resources to support our world class research and teaching.

Instrumentation and collecting representative data is vital. It leads to innovation and the development of system understanding across catchments in both rural and urban environments.

We have extensive expertise in designing and instrumenting catchments and urban environments. Our instrumented sites enable us to understand:

• river flows
• floods
• groundwater
• water quality
• general hydrological processes

We have catchment wide studies in Belford, Eden, and Tyne in the UK.

Abroad, we have deployed equipment in Ethiopia and other parts of the Nile Basin, Iwokrama (Guyana), and Palestine.

We also co-lead the design and deployment of the Urban Observatory, the UK’s largest network of sensors and open data in the urban environment. It looks at water, infrastructure, air quality, biodiversity and other factors.

Our instrumented sites in Northern England include the following.

Eden DTC

A National Demonstration Test Catchment

Read more about Eden DTC

Ouseburn

The group have been involved with a number of projects on the River Ouseburn, Newcastle.

They include the Making Space for Water Project pilot project on the Upper Ouseburn, and several related water quality studies.

The Ouseburn Catchment Steering Group (OCSG) also produced The Ouseburn Catchment Action Plan (The OCAP) in 2009.

Read more about our involvement with the Ouseburn catchment