Frank J. Germano Center
The hub of activity of the undergraduate program is the Frank J. Germano Center. The center provides a study area for students and a conference room. Also located in the center are offices for the department's student organizations: the Student Chapters of the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Louisiana Water Environment Association. Located in the center is a state of the art computer lab contains modern equipment with the necessary software to aid in all aspects of the department's educations efforts. The laboratory is open to all students enrolled in civil engineering and environmental engineering courses and offers a host of engineering-related and standard office software packages. The laboratory is monitored at all times by student workers and typically maintains the following hours: 7:30 am-9:00 pm, Monday-Friday and 1:00 pm-9:00 pm, Sunday. The Germano class room is principally used for design and project classes. The “virtual design office” in this classroom includes a computer projection system and a wireless system that allows students working in the classroom to access all the software housed in the Germano Center Computer Laboratory. The center provides a focal point for student-student and student-faculty interaction. It plays a significant role in developing esprit de corps among the student and the faculty and continues to contribute to the sense of “community” within the undergraduate programs.
Laboratories
The Department supports six instructional laboratories plus equipment for surveying. These laboratories are: Construction Materials (1407 Patrick F. Taylor Hall or LTRC Laboratory); Geotechnical (1408 Patrick F. Taylor Hall); Fluid Mechanics (2407 Patrick F. Taylor Hall and the ERAD Building); Mechanics of Materials (1411 Patrick F. Taylor Hall); Unit Operations (2407 Patrick F. Taylor Hall); and Water Quality (3209 Patrick F. Taylor Hall).
Three of the laboratories serve exclusively civil engineering students; i.e., the Fluid Mechanics Laboratory; the Construction Materials Laboratory; and the Mechanics of Materials Laboratory. At the present time, the facilities at the Louisiana Transportation Research Center (LTRC) are being utilized to teach the Construction Materials Laboratory course. Two laboratories, the Water Quality and Unit Operations Laboratories, are used almost exclusively by the environmental engineering program. All other laboratories are dual use laboratories; i.e., both research and instruction.
Fluid Mechanics Laboratory
The Fluid Mechanics Laboratory is used exclusively for undergraduate instruction. The laboratory is located in 2407 Patrick F. Taylor Hall and is equipped with water supply lines and floor drains. The open channel flume is located in the Engineering Research and Development building. The minimal equipment for students to conduct the laboratory experiments is available in the laboratory (i.e., flowmeters, centrifugal pump, pipe networks, fixed vane apparatus, force on submerged surface, and open channel flume). Auxiliary equipment such as balances, buckets, wrenches, stopwatches, etc. are also available for student use.
Geotechnical Engineering Laboratory I
The Geotechnical Engineering Laboratory is used by both civil engineering and environmental engineering students. The required equipment for students to conduct index, permeability, compaction, shear strength, and consolidation tests is available in the laboratory. Recent investments to improve the lab includ 3 sets of automated direct shear apparatus, 3 sets of triaxial apparatus, and 4 sets of automated consolidomters. In addition, 4 sets of constant head permeameters and 3 DigiFlow automated flow pumps were purchased. The newly purchased equipment has significantly improved the teaching capability of the laboratory.
Mechanics of Materials Laboratory
The Mechanics of Materials Laboratory is used primarily for instruction but also for research. The lab is equipped with beam deflection, column buckling, unsymmetric cantilever, and torsion testing apparatus and allows students to work together in small groups for greater exposure to hands-on testing experience. Recent additions include hardness testing and the Universal (uniaxial) testing machine of 50 kip load cell capacity and equipped with computer data acquisition software. With one machine for the laboratory, the students work together as a whole in verification of the testing machine, tension of metals, compression and shear tests of wood parallel to the grain. A new 20 Kip (100KN) uniaxial testing machine (MTS Insight Electromechanical Materials Testing System) is equipped with tension/compression grips and utilizes TestWorks® 4 software to control its operations. A higher capacity MTS machine for 50 Kip (250KN) was also recently added. This uniaxial testing machine (MTS 810 Servohydraulic Material Testing System) offers a higher range of load testing in compression, tension or cyclic loading. It is equipped with hydraulic grips that offer superior alignment of specimens. It is controlled using an MTS Teststar IIs™ controller that allows flexible load/displacement/strain controlled testing. Dial gages, calipers, scales, and other measuring devices are readily available for course usage. The proving ring used to verify the uniaxial testing machine is currently being refurbished.
Engineering Materials Laboratory
Louisiana Transportation Research Center’s (LTRC’s) laboratories hosts a state-of-the-art facility that provides full capability for characterizing pavement materials along with advanced asphalt binder characterization. LTRC's asphalt laboratory is AMRL AASHTO accredited. The laboratory is dedicated among (other responsibilities) to provide teaching and conventional asphalt binders and asphalt mixtures testing capabilities for undergraduate and graduate laboratory course requirements. The laboratory can be divided into 3 main facilities that compliment each other in the process of characterizing pavement materials:
Mixing facility: Asphalt mixture sample preparation is carried out using a SHRP approved procedure using a Superpave Gyratory compactor. The laboratory has a Troxler Gyratory compactor. In addition, four large ovens for temperature conditioning are available for use. There is a separate mixing facility for Portland cement concrete mixtures that provides all the necessary equipment for proportioning and mixing Portland cement concrete mixtures.
Binder Testing Facility: This section of the laboratory has state-of-the-art equipment for asphalt binder testing and characterization. The main equipment includes Superpave Rotational Viscometer (RV), Bending Beam Rheometer (BBR), Dynamic Shear Rheometer (DSR), Rolling Thin Film Oven (RTFO), Pressure Aging Vessel (PAV), and all other conventional binder testing such as penetration, viscosity, ductility, and softening point.
Advance testing facilities: This is the main laboratory for advanced material characterization for asphalt and Portland cement concrete mixtures. Several state of the art servo-hydraulic closed loop systems are housed in the Engineering Materials Characterization Research Facility of LTRC. These include Universal Testing Machines for uniaxial, direct shear, and triaxial testing of paving materials with environmental chambers for temperature conditioning. All machines have digital servo-controlled actuators with integrated control and data acquisition systems to provide accurate force or displacement waveform generation. PC based software provides a user-friendly interface with the system to carry out a wide range of test procedures.
Germano Computer Laboratory
The Germano Computer Laboratory is part of Frank J. Germano Center and is located one floor beneath the department’s main offices in Patrick F. Taylor Hall (room 2413). The Lab is used for instructional purposes and is heavily used by the department’s students for class assignments and research. Currently, Lab resources include 38 personnel computers, a color laser printer, a black and white laser printer, a color scanner, traditional white boards and an overhead computer video presentation system with over/under document reader. The Lab also houses a server system that feeds LSU’s new “Vlab”. In addition to general software, the Lab computers are loaded with a substantial array of Civil and Environmental Engineering design and analysis software.