Typical Day in CEE’s Soils and Materials Teaching Lab
On a typical day, Northeastern University’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Soils and Materials Teaching Lab is a flurry of activity. Students in protective coats busy themselves with a wide range of activities: mixing concrete, firing experiments in ovens, and meticulously measuring out materials at rows of lab benches. At the front of the room, students place materials into a group of ADMET machines, carefully positioning safety blast screens as they prepare to stress the objects and document their mechanical properties. These testing machines have become integral to the early undergraduate academic experience, helping to transform from theoretical to experiential the ways in which civil and environmental engineering students think about materials and experimentation.
ADMET is a Massachusetts-based manufacturer that specializes in materials testing systems. Founded by Northeastern Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering alumnus Richard Gedney, the company has spent its 30-year history developing innovative testing platforms for industry and academia. Through a partnership with ADMET, the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northeastern University (CEE) has incorporated these state-of-the-art machines into its curriculum and research.
Gedney, a member of the Northeastern Bioengineering Industrial Advisory Board whose eldest son is a current student in the College of Engineering, has long been a believer in the University’s mission. “I’ve had the opportunity over the years to be on campus, and over time I’ve become an even stronger supporter of the co-op programs.” Gedney said. He works with faculty in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering to identify their teaching and research needs, and offer a solution. Sometimes, that means designing a completely new machine for a faculty member putting together a grant proposal that requires novel testing capabilities. ADMET will work with faculty to build the new system. “We can engineer a solution to make that happen,” stated Gedney.
The partnership extends beyond faculty research and into the curriculum. The undergraduate course, Materials in the Built Environment, is a requirement for all undergraduate students pursuing a BS in Civil Engineering or Environmental Engineering, commonly completed early in their academic career. In addition to characterizing the behavior of common civil engineering materials such as steel and concrete, the students also identify innovative materials for civil and environmental engineering applications. They then must design and execute experiments to test their unique chosen material. At the end of the semester, students prepare a report documenting their experiments and present on their research, the testing procedures, and the material behavior. The department’s ADMET machines, which can perform a variety of tension, compression, torsion, and bending tests on a wide array of materials and specimen configurations, are central to students’ experiments. “One of the best things about the ADMET machines is their flexibility to be quickly configured for running different types of testing based on changing the specimen ‘grips,’” said Assistant Teaching Professor Craig Shillaber, the course’s instructor. “This allows the machines to be used for a wide variety of testing for students’ independent (and self-selected) projects.”
Instead of reading about the ways in which materials respond to stress, these experiments help students think about materials in a hands-on manner, allowing them to put their hypotheses about the material behavior to the test. “They get excited looking at their data,” said Viet Le, a doctoral student and teaching assistant for the course who instructs students in experimental design and material behavior. The students can watch as their materials bend, snap, and blow apart in the machines. “They can match what they see physically with what they see numerically in the data. It helps them visualize what they are learning.”
Michael MacNeil, the CEE Laboratory Technician, supports students in acquiring their desired test materials. “Students have chosen to test specialized materials such as titanium, carbon fiber, Kevlar and Teflon in different forms such as rods, bars, fabrics and sheets. Sustainable materials like bamboo have been tested by a number of students,” he said. “At this time, we have an inventory of about 50 specific items that are available from past student experiments.”
These direct experimental opportunities help students develop fundamental skills in innovation, research methodology, and materials engineering. As they design their experiments, they must think critically about the ramifications of the type of material they are testing. “What does it mean for a civil engineering material to be soft? To be weak? To be strong? And what are the implications for use in the field?” said Jerome Hajjar, CDM Smith Professor and Chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “Mastering the proper way to think through these concepts is essential to successfully engineering the built environment.” Students are learning foundational engineering principles by exercising their own creativity in a hands-on manner. Through the department’s partnership with ADMET, this course has transformed to enhance exploration of new materials coupled with experimental design.