The Laboratory of Construction Materials (LMC) is a competence centre for all construction materials and carries out testing on demand for partners of the construction industry
Fields
- Cementitious mortars
- Masonry
- Plaster for civil construction (buildings and public works)
- Metallic and non metallic construction materials
Activities performed
- Characterisation and analysis of the components of concrete (cement, aggregates, additives);
- Mix design of concrete and mortars, from conventional to high performance;
- Characterisation of mechanical properties (strength, deformation and fracture mechanics);
- Shrinkage, creep and relaxation;
- Effects of temperature (thermal expansion, freezing);
- Permeability, moisture movement in porous materials, characterisation of porosity;
- Durability;
- Microstructural characterisation by optical and electron microscopy;
- Non destructive monitoring (infrared thermography).
For all these activities, please see services
List of selected Equipment available at LMC
- Several mechanical presses with closed loop control (compression up to 5000 kN, tension and flexure from 10 N to 500 kN, modulable loading frame and testing floor, dynamic loading up to 500 kN);
- Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), laser confocal optical microscope, X-ray diffraction;
- Climatic test chambers;
- Micromechanical testing equipment;
- As well as diverse equipment such as laser particle size distribution, mercury porosimetry, measurement of adsorption isotherms, acoustic emission for detection of cracking, etc.
A full description of the scientific equipment is available here
See the full list of our technical equipment here