Okemos - The 3.5-foot-thick slab of reinforced concrete will ensure that materials being tested by the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering won’t budge - even when they’re hit with simulated earthquakes, fires, explosions and pressures in the new Civil Infrastructure Laboratory.

“This is a new facility, which is supposed to be dedicated to research - research on materials, pavements, and structures.” said Rigoberto Burgueño, assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and director of the Civil Infrastructure Laboratory.

The laboratory, located at 2851 Jolly Road, should be completely open and fully operational by the end of the year. Construction began in April 2000 and wrapped up in February.

Funding for the $2 million project came from a collaboration of the College of Engineering and generous contributions from alumni and others.

Alton and Janice Granger and the Great Lakes Cement Promotion Association Inc. each donated $50,000. Both donations added up to half of the cost of the new laboratory.

The building houses several areas to perform experiments on a range of scales under the roof of the 10,400 square-foot facility.

“(We research) at the microscopic level, so we can look at the constituents of materials with microscopes,” Burgueño said. “At the meso-scale (intermediate level), things which can fit in your hand, to evaluate strength and characteristics of materials, and then the macro-scale, or large-scale, to test full-scale structures.”

There is a laboratory for each range of experiments, including one for large-scale testing. The ceiling stands at a height of 30 feet, with a floor area of 60 by 40 feet. Burgueño refers to the floor as the “strong floor,” as it can withstand several hundreds of thousands of pounds of pressure.

“This is a considerable increase on the capabilities both in space and equipment that we have available now,” Burgueño said.

Prior to the construction of this laboratory, infrastructure experiments were done in about three or four labs in the Engineering Building.

Since the new laboratory is located off campus, it allows students to leave equipment and experiments outside and has more space for larger experiments.

Many students in the College of Engineering are excited to begin using the facility.

“Not only will this new lab have an impact on our faculty, it will greatly influence our future engineers, providing them with unprecedented real-life experiences,” College of Engineering Dean Janie Fouke said. “Never before has protection of our civil infrastructure - our roadways, bridges, and building - been of such vital concern.”

Not only will this research have to be done for natural disasters, but for acts of terrorism as well. The Civil Infrastructure Laboratory is set to accommodate these new needs.

“We have conceptualized ways to improve the capabilities of building to self diagnose when subjected to multihazard events, such as what took place in 9-11,” Burgueño said. “So we are actively working on developing ways to define and also investigate what happens to structures when they’re subjected to these effects. And we can simulate that in our laboratory on full-scale components.”

The major goals of the new laboratory are to verify how specific materials and structures withstand testing, improve safety and to provide services and testing of materials for companies.

Siavosh Ravanbakhsh, lab manager for the Civil Infrastructure Laboratory, is looking forward to moving in to the new laboratory so he can continue the work he has been doing for many years in the Engineering Building.

“The building is new, but the work is not,” he said.