Sustainable Construction Laboratory

SCB

National
LTH is part of the Swedish Universities of the Built Environment where Chalmers, KTH and Luleå TU are members. Lab facilities, such as HSB Living Lab (Chalmers, Angela Sasic Kalagasidis) and Complab (LTU) are used in joint research projects. Riksriggen, a Swedish national research infrastructure (see riksriggen.se).

International
The UK centre for moisture in buildings, is a centre of competence with close collaboration with the researchers at “FuktCentrum”, a part of Civil Engineering Laboratories. Fuktcentrum has members from both LTH, CTH, KTH and RISE.

The Civil Engineering Laboratory is a collaboration between 12 different laboratories connected to the V-building, on the LTH campus. The Civil Engineering Laboratory is thus a platform that enables better collaboration, more advanced research and development to meet the needs of many. Within the Civil Engineering Laboratory we have many different instruments, testing machines but also different competencies to help you with your research and development.

The Civil Engineering Laboratory represents a substantial and unique facility among the universities in Sweden in terms of its wide scope (acoustics, building materials, building physics, building services, energy and building design, structural engineering, geotechnical engineering, structural mechanics, fire safety engineering, highway engineering, water resources engineering and engineering geology).

The Civil Engineering Laboratory conducts experimental research, teaching and development/innovation related to civil engineering. The activities span a broad field, covering different materials and structures, above and below ground, different sizes (micro to full scale), different timeframes (short and slow processes). The research today is diversified and ranges from basic research to applied research in close collaboration with industry.

Equipment within the civil engineering lab includes (from small scale to large scale)

Mechanical testing
Calorimeters
Photometric measurements
Solar simulation
Daylight and colorimetric rooms
Climate conditioning and drying
Moisture monitoring
Outdoor exposure and testing sites and weather station
Characterization of sorption properties
Characterization of thermal properties
Mixing of concrete and asphalt and sieving equipment
Remote sensing and non-invasive measurements
Sound and vibration
Fire testing
Emission and air characterization
Water quality
Microbial quality
Façade and building envelope testing
Tunnel testing site (e.g fire, evacuation)
Drilling equipment and characterization of soil and bedrock properties

The services include testing aiming at verification and characterization of:
- mechanical performance of building materials including geomaterials
- mechanical performance of components and structures,
- energy performance of materials, buildings and neighbourhoods,
- moisture properties of both building materials and components,
- acoustic performance of building materials, components and structures,
- fire performance of materials, components and structures.

The Civil Engineering Laboratory is a collaboration between 12 different laboratories connected to the V-building, on the LTH campus. The Civil Engineering Laboratory is thus a platform that enables better collaboration, more advanced research and development to meet the needs of many. Each individual laboratory within the platform is managed by the respective division.

A group with representatives from the individual laboratories form a steering group, taking joint decisions regarding e.g. common rules, availability, applications for funding and/or infrastructure or strategic funds, as well as joint staff.