Laboratories

 

Cement Laboratory

The Cement Laboratory is equipped with state-of-the-art instruments for characterizing the chemical composition and rheological performance of advanced cement-based materials.

Concrete & Aggregate Laboratory

The Concrete & Aggregate Laboratory includes the major standard equipment for preparing, curing, testing, and 3D printing of concrete materials.

Concrete Technology Laboratory

The Concrete Technology Laboratory includes the instruments for durability evaluation and microstructure analysis of cement-based materials, including CO2, humidity and temperature chambers, electrochemical workstations, high-precision saw, clean bench for microbial corrosion-related research, among others.

Construction Informatics Laboratory

The construction informatics lab aims to address parallel and pressing needs for both construction industry and infrastructure development, focusing on the most advanced research areas, including

  • Building information modelling (BIM)
  • Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR)
  • Construction automation and robotics
  • BIM GIS integrated parametric analysis and diagnosis

Croucher Laboratory of Environmental Hydraulics

The Croucher Laboratory of Environmental Hydraulics has contributed to the water environmental studies including porous pavement, hyporheic exchange of the stream, water film layer on runway, cloud water resources, wetland management and river biodiversity. The major facilities include 15m long recirculating flow channel, Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) system, high speed camera and Laser Doppler Anemometry (LDA).

Modular Integrated Construction Laboratory (MiCLab)

Modular Integrated Construction Laboratory (MiCLab), with its roots in the Department of Civil Engineering, The University of Hong Kong (HKU), was founded in 2020. Our Lab stands at the frontier of MiC focusing on the development and innovative application of digital twin (DT), structural and material solutions for smart MiC project delivery. We also provide services including Building Information Modeling (BIM), Internet of Things (IoT), Virtual Reality (VR), Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (AIR) to the industry, strategy and policy recommendations to government departments and training to professionals and students.

For more information, click here!

Net Zero Laboratory (NetZeroLab)

Net Zero Laboratory (NetZeroLab), with its roots in the Department of Civil Engineering, The University of Hong Kong (HKU), was founded in 2020. With many cities and regions having introduced targets to achieve net zero by 2050, NetZeroLab provides knowledge on HOW to translate the net zero carbon ambitions into actions by covering the areas including life cycle carbon assessment, energy simulation and optimization, policy suggestion, social partnership, and smart integrated carbon and energy monitoring.

For more information, click here!

Environmental Engineering Laboratory

Environmental Engineering Laboratory covers a wide range of teaching and research activities in the field of environmental engineering, focusing on water quality, water supply and reuse, water pollution control, wastewater and sludge treatment with resource recovery. The Laboratory is equipped with start-of-the-art instruments and facilities, providing a solid platform for professional education and technology innovation to foster a more sustainable urban water environment.

Membrane-based Environmental & Sustainable Technology (MemBEST)
Laboratory

The Membrane-based Environmental & Sustainable Technology (MemBEST) Laboratory, led by Professor CY Tang, focuses on membrane and filter technology, environmental materials, desalination, water reuse, pollution control, resource recovery, clean energy production, and water-energy nexus. In the past five years, the group has received numerous major competitive funds and awards, including a CRF project, the inaugural RGC Senior Research Fellowship, the inaugural HKU Innovator Award, CAPEES/Nanova Frontier Research Award, and Young Innovators under 35 (Asia Pacific Region) by MIT Technology Review. The MemBEST Laboratory is equipped with the state of the art instruments and facilities for membrane preparation, characterization, and performance testing as well as common instruments for water quality analysis.

More information of the laboratory, group members, and research directions can be viewed by click here!

Environmental Microbiome Engineering and Biotechnology Laboratory

Environmental Microbiome Engineering and Biotechnology Lab woks on biological wastewater treatment (N removal and P recovery), environmental bioinformatics, omics technologies, anaerobic digestion and bioenergy from wastes/wastewater, biodegradation of emerging pollutants (antibiotics, PPCP and EDCs), antibiotic and antibiotic resistance genes, etc.

Lumb Laboratory of Soil Mechanics

The Lumb Laboratory of Soil Mechanics hosts a wide range of experimental facilities, ranging from standard geotechnical characterization instruments to more specialized apparatus for advanced interdisciplinary studies, targeting to solve complex near-surface problems raised by the Grand Sustainability Challenge.

Material Testing Laboratory

Material Testing Laboratory is equipped with the following loading systems for testing structural and non-structural elements.

  • Servo hydraulic compression testing machine (YAW650), capacity 5000 kN
  • Servo hydraulic universal testing machine for rebar AC133 testing (SHT 5206-P), capacity 2000 kN
  • Material testing machine (Denison), capacity 600 kN
  • Material Testing Machine, capacity 1000 kN

Maunsell Computer Laboratory

The Maunsell Competer Laboratory is equipped with:

  • 20 PCs with Intel Core i7 CPU, 32GB RAM, 512GB SSD for system and 1TB 3.5" harddisk for data
  • 10 PCs with Intel Core i7 CPU, 32GB RAM, 2 x 1TB 2.5" hard disk
  • A1 plotter for undergraduate students
Each postgraduate student is given a free printing quota of 600 A4 pages per month

Reference Room

The Reference Room is located at room 632, 6/F, Haking Wong Building. Previous years’ final-year project reports, MSc dissertations and MPhil/PhD theses are available for students to borrow from the Reference Room.

Rock Engineering Laboratory

The Rock Lab maintains a wide range of mechanical testing, imaging and material characterization instruments, spanning from bench-top microscopes for granular materials to white light interferometry to determine surface roughness. Recently, the Rock Lab has evolved to cater for new research and development directions, broadly within geoenvironment, geomaterials and geohazards.

Imaging surfaces and granular materials: 3D Laser scanner (LPX-60, Roland DG Corporation, Hamamatsu, Japan) to image individual particles. White light interferometer (M3D 3000, Fogal Nanotech, France) to determine surface roughness. Several optical microscopes are also available.

Particle size and shape characterization: QicPic™ (Sympatec GmbH, Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Germany) to obtain 2D profiles of particles, from clay-sized to sands. The resolution of the lens is 10 µm. Cumulative distributions of particle size and particle shape parameters are generated, among them aspect ratio, convexity, and sphericity.

Abrasion testing: Micro-Deval apparatus, with inner diameter of 200 mm and a height of 154 mm and rotates along its horizontal axis at 100 rpm, to abrade granular materials. Ball mill (SPEX8000M, USA) for particle shape and topography alteration.

Surface characterization: CCD-equipped microscope (DSA 25, Krüss, Germany) for contact angle and surface tension measurements, with a fitted climate chamber with RH and temperature control, including supporting equipment to determine water-entry pressure and conduct sample treatments (fume hood).

Rock testing: A high pressure triaxial system is available: MTS 815 Rock Mechanics Test System, with maximum vertical load 2.6 MN and confining pressure up to 130 MPa. For testing of rocks and cemented materials. Photoelastic Apparatus (Gunt FL200) for visualizing photoelasticity experiments in materials. Standard rock material testing is also available: Brazilian test, point load test and various frames for uniaxial compressive tests.

Environmental testing: An array of instruments is available: a furnace, oven, climate chamber, including soil moisture sensors EC-5 (Decagon Devices, USA). The Rock Lab also has the capability to conduct simple microfluidic experiments for biocementation and microcapsules’ synthesis.

Strength of Materials Laboratory

Strength of Materials Laboratory is equipped with the following loading systems and facilities for quantifying the physical properties, corrosion performance and morphology of materials.

  • MTS materials testing systems with loading capacities of 50 kN and 250 kN
  • Dantec Dynamics laser optical measurement system 3D ESPI System Q300
  • LaVision StrainMaster digital image correlation system
  • Giatec iCOR wireless NDT corrosion detection
  • Elcometer rebar locator
  • MTS high-temperature furnace
  • Dual-channel electrochemical measurement system
  • Grinder LaboPol-30 and Cutter Labotom-5

Structural Dynamics Laboratory

Structural Dynamics Laboratory is equipped with the following loading systems and facilities for structural dynamic tests.

  • 1m x 1 m bi-axial shake table with a maximum loading weight of 200 kg
  • Multi-camera motion capture system

Structural Engineering Laboratory

Structural Engineering Laboratory is equipped with MTS servo hydraulic testing system with actuators 100KN, 250KN, 500KN and 1000KN for testing large-scale and complex structural and non-structural systems.

Surveying Laboratory

Surveying Laboratory has the instruments and tools that students use throughout the surveying course. Surveying Laboratory is equipped with Total station (Digital Theodolite), Digital and Automatic Level, GNSS Receiver, and other common land surveying tools and ancillary equipment. Students learn the techniques about how to gather field data for preparing map and setting out with both traditional and modern instruments.

Transportation Laboratory

The transportation laboratory allows research development on experimental and innovative transportation research in the university. It focuses on developing a variety of mathematical techniques and models for evaluating transportation projects and policies.

Wind Tunnel Laboratory

The boundary layer wind tunnel of the Department of Civil Engineering at HKU has a working section 12 m long, 3.0 m wide and 1.8 m tall. The test wind speed ranges from 1 m/s to 15 m/s. The wind tunnel is equipped with the floor mounted yawable turntable, which can model the angle of attack from the arbitrary wind direction. The measurement capabilities include six component force balances, simultaneous pressure measurement, stereoscopic PIV and flow visualization techniques. Hot wire anemometer is also available for the real-time measurement of wind velocity.