Towers, wind and seismic testing: the national structural engineering laboratory at Chennai

Background

The CSIR-Structural Engineering Research Centre at Chennai is one of the national laboratories of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, and its field is the behaviour of built structures. Its research is grouped into a handful of areas, among them Structural Health Monitoring and life extension, Disaster Mitigation, Advanced Materials for Sustainable Structures, Energy Infrastructure and Offshore Structures. Its laboratories include the Advanced Concrete Testing and evaluation laboratory, an advanced materials laboratory, a protective structures and mechanics laboratory, the Advanced Seismic Testing and research laboratory, a Fatigue and fracture laboratory, a Steel Structures Laboratory and a structural health monitoring laboratory. Two large outdoor facilities sit alongside them: the Tower Testing and Research Station, which works on towers and tower-like structures of the kind that carry power transmission and communication networks, and the Wind Engineering Laboratory. The Tower Testing and Research Station has a campus of its own at Tirusulam in Chennai, opposite the airport. The centre also runs the research council's school outreach work, including JIGYASA and an Atal Tinkering Lab.