A new suite of laboratories at Imperial College London will put concrete, asphalt, timber, and other infrastructure materials through their paces to make them last longer and pollute less. The UK’s roads, bridges, tunnels, flood defences, and pipelines are built from materials that degrade, crack, and need expensive replacement. The Advanced Infrastructure Materials Lab (AIM Lab) will let researchers test how these materials behave under realistic conditions—from natural weathering at a linked outdoor site in Leeds to fire and impact loading at a facility in Manchester. The goal is to develop materials with enhanced technical performance, longer life, and a reduced greenhouse gas footprint, while also learning how to use existing materials more effectively. If successful, the research could lower the capital and recurrent costs of national infrastructure and make it more recyclable. Most people never think about the concrete in a tunnel or the asphalt under a road, but these materials quietly keep the country running. Better materials mean fewer closures for repairs, lower carbon emissions from production and replacement, and more resilient flood defences and transport networks. The lab will also extend its reach by inviting other research groups to bid for complementary equipment, broadening the impact across the UK’s infrastructure research community.
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This proposal is for the creation a new suite of laboratories, known as the Advanced Infrastructure Materials Lab (AIM Lab), within the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at Imperial College, part of the UK Collaboratorium for Research in Infrastructure and Cities (UKCRIC), a coordinated investment in world-class national infrastructure research capability. This is a stand-alone facility, but will be complemented by the UKCRIC natural exposure facilities being developed at the University of Leeds and the UKCRIC extreme exposure facilities being developed at the University of Manchester. These 3 facilities will form a National Centre of Infrastructure Materials: - Imperial College London - Advanced Infrastructure Materials Lab: enhanced facilities for producing, processing, imaging, analysing and testing infrastructure materials. - University of Leeds - Infrastructure Materials Exposure Facility: a field exposure site with full meteorological measurement capabilities, plus controlled environment climatic chambers for natural and accelerated ageing of the full range of infrastructure materials and assemblies in both in static and dynamic environments. - University of Manchester - Fire and Impact Laboratory for Resilient Infrastructure Materials: critical loading and characterization facilities for testing materials under realistic fire and impact loading conditions. The Imperial College submission also includes funds referred to as Imperial+ (Imperial Plus). These are funds (managed by Imperial) to extend the range of infrastructure materials and research facilities covered by the Centre, via invitations to other leading research groups to bid for complementary equipment. The focus of the research using these facilities will be to develop better materials for national infrastructure; materials with enhanced technical performance, longer life, and reduced greenhouse gas footprint, which will be more easily recycled and will contribute to lower capital- and recurrent- cost infrastructure. Research will also aim to establish how to use existing materials more effectively. The lab will be relevant to a wide range of infrastructure materials including concrete, modified geomaterials, metals, polymers, composites, timber, masonry and asphalt, for use in civil infrastructure including structures, tunnels, pipelines, paving, track-beds and flood defences.
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