College of EngineeringDepartment of Civil and Environmental EngineeringResearchlabsHydraulics Laboratory

Hydraulics Laboratory

The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering has different Hydraulics Laboratories with focus on teaching and research. The teaching laboratory is located in the first floor of Harbert Engineering Center, and through a series of hand-on experiments, students can perform a wide range of hydraulic experiments, which include:

  • Three flumes to study various processes involving open-channel flow profiles, rating curves for orifices and weirs, Bernoulli principle, as well flows across sluice gates.
  • Apparatuses to study various aspects related to hydrostatics and forces on gates.
  • Study of energy losses in laminar and turbulent flow conditions.
  • Flow meter calibration.

Students Working in the Hydraulics

Figure 1 - CIVL 3110 Hydraulics students performing tests in an open-channel flume.

Experimental research in Civil Engineering Hydraulics is carried on at a different facility, located at the Auburn University Research Park (Insouth Building). Experiments that are performed at the site include mostly applications involving unsteady, multiphase flow conditions. Applications involve urban stormwater systems and sediment-water flows in the context of construction sites. In addition, to this, access to the Auburn University Hopper supercomputer cluster enables comparisons between experimental results and numerical predictions. 

Hydraulics Lab
Hydrolab
Figure 2 – Examples of experimental apparatuses in the Civil Engineering Hydraulics Research Laboratory at Insouth Building.