Overview of the FSEL Lab

The Laboratory, occupying 45,000 square feet, has a main structural test area 400 feet long and 50 feet wide, served by an overhead traveling crane with 10- and 25-ton hoists. Most of this test area is provided with structural tie-down floors for attaching loading frames and equipment. Auxiliary shops and instrumentation centers are located on each side of the crane bay. Complete facilities are available for fabrication and loading of specimens. A comprehensive range of hydraulic actuators, pumps, and servo-controlled loading equipment allows the application of static, dynamic, and fatigue loadings.

A wide range of electronic equipment is available to measure structural response.  Data acquisition is carried out by several different types of scanners, controlled by micro-computers. Using micro-computer based programs, output from the Laboratory's data acquisition system is reduced, put in graphical form, evaluated, and presented.

Analytical modeling is carried out using the Laboratory's micro-computers and workstations, and the University's two Cray XMP-24 super-computers, located a short distance away on the Pickle Research Campus grounds.