TECHNICAL SERVICES AND FACILITIES

DEPARTMENT OF GEOLOGICAL SCIENCES AND GEOLOGICAL ENGINEERING

• Electron microprobe analysis
• X-ray diffraction
• Isotope geochemistry
• Inductively-Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS)
• 40Ar-39Ar geochronology
• Numerical modelling for geomechanics (Map 3D, RocScience, Hasca)

DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL ENGINEERING (RMC)

• Large-Scale Retaining Wall Test Facility (for testing full-scale conventional and geosynthetic-reinforced soil walls and slopes)
• Shaking Table (to test soil-structure response under simulated earthquake loading)
• Small-Scale Retaining Wall Test Facility (1/5-scale model testing of earth structures)
• Temperature and Humidity Control Room (long-term creep and stress relaxation testing of polymeric materials)
• In-soil testing of geosynthetics
• Index tensile testing of geosynthetics

DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL ENGINEERING (Queen's University)

• Large scale shear boxes
• Large and conventional scale triaxial test facilities
• Buried pipe testing cells: both hoop compression and biaxial loading
• Large scale buried infrastructure test pit(service and ultimate load testing of shallow buried structures, and investigations of trenchless technologies)
• Parallel plate loading of thermoplastic pipes
• Manhole test cells
• A variety of geosynthetic test equipment, including tests under high overburden pressure
• Test facilities to evaluate geomembrane strength and durability
• A video of test preparation in part of the large scale test pit is available