Equipment and Resources

Major Equipment

Laboratory Equipment

Adjustable Slope Flume:  This recirculating flume is located in the Water Resources Research Laboratory and measures 3.7 meters long, 1.5 meters wide, and 0.15 meters deep and has a discharge capacity of 1.5 L/s.  Both the lateral and longitudinal slope of the flume can be adjusted.  The flume includes melamine plastic particles for simulating sediment movement and a dye injection system.  The lab has a sediment injector that can be used at the upstream end to feed sediment into a physical model.  The flume is instrumented with a point gage accurate to +/-0.001 ft and an insertion electromagnetic flow meter with an accuracy of +/-1%.

Small Adjustable Slope Flume:  This recirculating flume is located in the Water Resources Teaching Laboratory.  It is a rectangular flume measuring 7.9-cm (0.26-ft) wide and 244-cm (8-ft) long .  Instrumentation for this flume include two point gauges with an accuracies of ±0.1 mm and an insertion electromagnetic flowmeter with a sensor accuracy of ±1% of full-scale reading.  

High-speed Digital Camera:  Parks College of Engineering, Aviation, and Technology within SLU has a Phantom v1210 high-speed digital camera .  The camera can record at 12,000 frames-per-second (fps) at full 1280 x 800 resolution, and up to 820,000 fps at a reduced resolution of 128 x 16.

Digital Camera:  The Water Resources Research Laboratory at SLU has a Canon EOS 5D Mark III DSLR with an EF 24-70mm f/4L IS USM lens that can be used for recording videos of bedload sediment transport in the laboratory for the purpose of particle image velocimetry (PIV) processing.   The camera has a 22.3MP sensor; full HD 1080/30p and 720/60p formats; and 61-point high density autofocus.

LiDAR Scanner:  Leica ScanStation 2 LiDAR used for measuring topography and bathymetry in the laboratory.  The instrument has a surface precision of 2 mm.  

Rotary Laser Level:  The Water Resources Research Laboratory at SLU has a Johnson 40-6557 laser level that is used for measuring water-surface elevations in the laboratory.  The level has an accuracy of  +/-1.5mm/30m) and an electronic self-leveling horizontal and vertical rotary system.

Laser Cutter:  Parks College of Engineering, Aviation, and Technology within SLU has an Epilog Laser Etcher that can be used for creating scaled topography and bathymetry for physical modeling (accuracy of ± 0.25 mm). 

Field Equipment 

Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) with Real Time Kinetic (RTK) GPS:  In the summer of 2017, SLU purchased a Teledyne RD RiverPro 1200 HZ with a Hemisphere S321 GNSS Smart Antenna RTK Rover.  The system is for field data collection of river velocity profiles, discharges, and bathymetry.  Equipment for data collection using a tagline or kayak were also purchased.  

Laser-diffraction Particle Size Analyzer:  LISST-200X, collects field measurements of sediment size distributions and sediment concentrations in river flow.  The particle-size range for the equipment is 1.00-500 μm with a 600-m depth rating. 

LiDAR Scanner:  Leica ScanStation 2 LiDAR used for measuring topography and bathymetry in the field.  The instrument has a surface precision of 2 mm.  

Computer and Computational Resources

Saint Louis University has a high-performance computing cluster with 800 processors.  This cluster is used for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations.

Available Hydraulic Modeling Software

• CFD:  FLOW-3D

• 2-D Modeling:  SMS with SRH-2D and ADH

• 1-D River Forecasting:  FRAME and Potamod 

Laboratories  

Water Resources Research Laboratory:  This laboratory is dedicated exclusively to water resources research.  It measures 30 ft by 25 ft and currently houses an adjustable slope flume with a recirculating pump. It also stores field and laboratory equipment for water resources research. 

Geotechnical Laboratory: This laboratory is equipped with the traditional equipment for soil mechanics.  It includes: load frames, ovens, furnace, shakers, and mixers.  More specifically, the following geotechnical engineering tests can be completed:  water content, Atterberg limits, particle size analysis, permeability, specific gravity, compaction, consolidation, unconfined compression test, and triaxial testing.  

Water Resources Teaching Laboratory:  This laboratory room is shared with the Geotechnical Lab described above.  It includes a separate area where a hydraulic open channel flume is installed.  The open channel flume apparatus pumps water in a closed loop to create flow regimes that can be examined with different weirs and sluice gates.  The pump workstation can also be adapted to incorporate a closed-pipe system to study flow measurement, pump characteristic curves, and pressurized pipe systems.

Civil Engineering Computing Laboratory:  Includes twenty (20) computer workstations, large displays, and instructional podium and projector.  The lab is equipped with GIS/remote sensing, finite element modeling, computation fluid dynamics, geotechnical, and transportation modeling software to scale up typical civil engineering problems.