Structures Lab

The Structures Lab is the largest, best equipped and most advanced of its kind in SE Europe. It has two 5.5m-tall, 6m- and 4m-long reaction walls in L-arrangement on a 18m-by-16m strong-floor, to which modular reaction blocks can be anchored, enabling testing of over 12m-long systems. It has eight servo-hydraulic actuators (ranging from 250 to 1000kN capacity), one of which is dynamic (1600lpm)

The oil-supply system provides a total of 500 lt/min all around the strong floor and to the top of the reaction walls, assisted by three banks of accumulators

State-of-the-art digital controllers with a total of 8 channels are employed for a large spectrum of tests, including hybrid (pseudo-dynamic) with sub-structuring (including geographically distributed tests).

The lab is also equipped with a universal compression testing machine of 5000kN capacity.

The data acquisition system can handle input from a total of 128 sensors comprising strain gauges, inclinometers, potentiometers, string potentiometers, pressure transducers, accelerometers, LVDTs and optical displacement transducers.

Strulab Presentation

Models Lab

The Models Lab (ModLab) is an installation dedicated to provide education and training to students in experimental engineering. The lab is used for the “Experimental Methods in Seismic Engineering”, CIV 1560 (taught in English) and its twin CIV 1526 (taught in Greek) courses.

It is equipped with 6 steel frames supported on the grid-top of steel tables to allow the execution of a variety of tests on small scale models made of different materials. Each table is supplied with an 8-channel USB data acquisition system powered by the SignalExpress software (Labview).