Geoenvironmental Laboratories

The laboratory has excellent experimental facilities in the area of geoenvironmental engineering.

These include leaching columns and triaxial permeameters (used to investigate the effect of contaminated pore fluids on soil hydraulic properties) and analytical facilities for solids, liquids and gases, such as X-ray diffraction, X-ray fluorescence, electron microscopy, gas chromatography, ion chromatography and atomic absorption spectrometry.

Equipment

Name	Make/Model	Details
Automated Triaxial shear strength testing device	GDS	Can test both saturated and unsaturated soil samples (100 mm) with positive and negative pore water pressure control and measurements plus enables monitoring volume change of unsaturated soil specimens using double wall cell arrangement.
CU-Isothermal oedoemeter	Developed in house	Enables measuring one-dimensional deformation and isochoric swelling pressure for expansive soils at a maximum temperature of 70 deg C.
CU-Null-type axis-translation device	Developed in house	Measures negative pore-water pressures of soil samples up to - 500 kPa.
CU-Swelling pressure-hydraulic conductivity testing device	Developed in house	Enables measuring swelling pressure and hydraulic conductivity of heavily compacted swelling soils under isochoric condition with precise inflow and outflow measurements of fluid plus vapor control tests for partial wetting of soil samples.
CU-Thermo-hydraulic column testing device	Developed in house	100 mm dia. and 100 mm high, thermally insulated cell, enables measuring swelling pressure, relative humidity, and temperature during tests on compacted soils under various thermal (max. applied temp 100 deg C), and hydraulic gradients.
Medium capacity (3.5 MPa) automated oedometer device (pneumatic type)	Controls/Wykeham Farrance	To study compressibility behaviour of saturated soil samples (100mm dia) with pore water pressure disspitation and constant head hydraulic conductivity measurements.
Water potential meter	Decagon devices	Measures directly the water potential of particulate materials (soil, fly ash, concrete), salt solutions, polymer-water mixtures, and food products, within potential range of 50 kPa and 300 MPa with an accuracy of +/-0.05 up to 5 MPa and 1% thereof under various preset temperatures.