Established in 1986 within the NSF’s Engineering Research Center program, Lehigh's Advanced Technology for Large Structural Systems (ATLSS) Center is globally renowned for research on the performance of large structural and infrastructure systems. Herbert Imbt Laboratories, home of the ATLSS Center, was first built in 1961 as the crown jewel of Bethlehem Steel’s Homer Research Laboratories. Lehigh acquired the facility a quarter century later, as part of the Lee Iacocca-brokered deal that established the university’s Mountaintop Campus.
• It would take more than 300 concrete trucks to contain the material used in its 4,000 square feet of strong floor and 50-foot fixed reaction walls.
• Multidirectional forces of up to 2 million pounds are applied to full-scale and near-full-scale models of structural systems by computer controlled hydraulic actuators at rates of up to 50 inches per second and frequencies of up to 10 Hertz.
• Experiments include testing of a full-scale prototype deck system for the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge, a 60 percent-scale 4-story steel frame building, and a 40 percent-scale 8-story reinforced concrete building.
• Integrated control, simulation, sensing, and data acquisition are provided real-time by a 10-gigabit network and more than 12 miles of fiber and copper data transmission lines.
• Research expenditures in the past 15 years have exceeded $100 million.
• ATLSS-educated Ph.D.s serve on the faculty at the University of Akron, the University of Arizona, Case Western, the University of Illinois, Kansas State, Manhattan College, Notre Dame, Oklahoma State, Old Dominion, Oregon State, Princeton, Purdue, and the University of Toronto, among others.
Learn more about the center and the program www.ATLSS.lehigh.edu
