Facilities
Wilmore Laboratories houses the materials engineering program. The building, named after Dean John Jenkins Wilmore, is located at the center of Auburn's engineering quadrant and only a 5-minute walk from Foy Hall, Haley Center and Shelby Engineering Center.
Wilmore Labs underwent a $14 million state-of-the-art renovation, which was completed in Fall 2001. The building holds more than 12,000 square feet of laboratory space, which includes a Class 100 clean room and equipment for the high-temperature processing of materials. A few examples of what our equipment can do include:
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making single crystals by melting tungsten at more than 3400°C locally with an electron beam
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simulating the effects of gravity on molten metals with large centrifuges
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designing and building equipment to used on the International Space Station
Our laboratories can be divided into three major categories. The equipment listed below represents only a portion of the full range of resources available to our research teams:
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Materials processing laboratories: an autoclave, presses, pultrusion, injection molding and thermoforming machines for composites; hot and cold isostatic presses for powder-based materials, sputter-coating facilities for the deposition of coatings, a variety of crystal growth systems and a Gleeble thermomechanical processing system.
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Materials characterization facilities: scanning and transmission electron microscopes (SEM and TEM), automated x-ray diffractometers, scanning tunneling microscope, thermogravimetric analysis, differential scanning calorimetry, fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, AC-impedance spectroscopy and quantitative image analysis equipment.
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Mechanical testing facilities: ambient and high-temperature testing facilities and dynamic testers. An environmental exposure chamber complements these facilities.
Multi-disciplinary research with materials engineering faculty may often find students working in laboratories across the campus (and off-campus) with students, faculty and researchers from other engineering disciplines or other fields of study.
