RESEARCH FACILITIES

HYDROSYSTEMS LABORATORY

The Hydrosystems Laboratory, which has been in service since 1970, covers an area of approximately 11,000 square feet. The facilities available in the laboratory consist of several flumes, a rainfall generator, a stratified flow tank, and a water tunnel. The largest tilting flume is 161 ft long, 6 ft wide, and 4 ft deep. This flume can be readily adapted to be used as a wave tank and for sediment transport studies. A set of twin volumetric tanks is also available for calibration of flow metering devices. Measuring equipment includes an assortment of current meters, sediment concentration and conductivity probes, a laser-based flow visualization system, a high-speed video camera, and several personal computers and workstations for in-situ data acquisition and analysis.

Auxiliary laboratory facilities include access to the College of Engineering machine and electronics shops for construction and maintenance of experimental equipment. Available computational facilities include personal computers and a department-wide network of HP/Apollo workstations. These are connected via a high-speed fiber-optic network to several mainframe machines, including the supercomputers operated by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications.

WATER-RELATED INSTITUTES AND AGENCIES ON CAMPUS

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is a large land-grant institution and has the facilities and wide range of interest and activities one would expect. A number of these water-related institutes and agencies are of special importance to staff and students in EHHE.

The Illinois Water Resources Center, located in the University, is the research institute for Illinois as designated under the Water Resources Research Act of 1964. It is an important source of water-related research funding.

On the campus are the three State Scientific Surveys: The Illinois State Water Survey, Illinois State Geological Survey, and Illinois Natural History Survey. Also, part of the state survey is the Illinois Waste Management and Research Center. These are related state research agencies with whom cooperative investigations are conducted and that provide additional research assistantship support.

Also on campus is the University's Environmental Council, which is an administrative framework for courses and research of an interdisciplinary nature. In addition to the Hydrosystems Laboratory, water-related research is carried out in the laboratories of the Departments of Agricultural Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, and Theoretical and Applied Mechanics.

The Illinois Water Science Center of the U.S. Geological Survey is located on the University’s campus about five minutes walk from the Hydrosystems Laboratory. This is a Federal scientific agency with whom cooperative investigations are conducted and that provides additional research assistantship support.

The U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service office also is located in Champaign-Urbana. This permits convenient and frequent communication and exchange of ideas between university personnel and agency professionals.