Materials Lab Exercises

Abstract

Introduction into the basic and practical knowledge of important building materials and testing methods.

Objective

Introduction into the basic and practical knowledge of important building materials and testing methods.

Content

o Introduction of material testing equipment, with various examples of experiments on metals (tensile behaviour, hardness, bending and impact loading). o Theoretical background and practical aspects of concrete technology: mixture design, casting and setting; determination of mechanical properties. o Properties of bricks and mortar: individual materials and the composite brickwork. Parameters like strength, Young’s modulus, water absorption and thermal conductivity are determined. o Understanding the characteristic properties of wood: anisotropy, hygroscopic behaviour, shrinkage and swelling, and effect of size on strength. Introduction to test-methods for wood and wood-products. o Introduction into the basics of scanning electron microscopy: practical exercises with the Environmental Scanning Electron Microscope (ESEM). o Introduction to fundamentals of Finite Element Methods and their application in examples. o Introduction to durability of building materials and building structures: assessment of potentials for detecting and locating corrosion of steel reinforcement in concrete.

Resources