Civil Engineering, a school with top labs

In October, the School of Civil Engineering will inaugurate the Structures laboratory - which will be used to simulate earthquakes and vibrations - the Hydrosanitary Hydraulics laboratory - necessary as a flow divider - and a virtual modeling building.

A long road for the career from that small Materials and Soils laboratory with which it began more than ten years ago.

Thanks to new technologies, today that laboratory has the highest quality equipment where professors and students investigate the physical and mechanical characteristics of various materials.

The laboratory has a large press that calculates the strength of concrete and a smaller one that studies the raw material of beams and bolts, a nuclear densimeter that measures the humidity and density of base soils and the most important equipment is a direct cut test which allows to see the resistant capacity of the ground.

'' The equipment is necessary for the quality control of the material used in the construction of the new University campus in Baños; Within the laboratory, third and fourth level students can prove the firmness of all existing construction materials, '' said José Vázquez, director of the School of Civil Engineering.

With this equipment the composition of the layers of the ground in the depth of the soil is analyzed: the exploration of the earth is necessary to know the type of foundation that is most suitable for a work to be built and the settlements of the structure in relation to the weight of the materials.

The laboratory is equipped for students to carry out pre-professional practices in the subjects of Soils I, Soils II, Building Materials, Strength of Materials, Structures I, Constructions I and Asphalts.

The same students who are already ready to use the new laboratories as of October.