Facilities

The new Ralph G. Anderson Building is the latest element in the plan to provide world-class facilities for UK's College of Engineering. It will offer laboratory space for graduate research and undergraduate education, teaching facilities, a student career/resource center, conference rooms, computing labs, and a student commons area. Spaces for offices of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and College administration are also included.

The complex has approximately 114,800 total square feet on four levels. Brick and limestone are the primary materials, used in context with nearby structures in the central campus area. The building is organized in two blocks, connected by a glass-enclosed atrium. This atrium, along with an adjoining courtyard, will serve as the focal point of the building complex. The location of the building is designed to re-create an engineering quadrangle, long the marque of engineering facilities at UK. The facility, which cost a total of $24,777,000, was designed by Anshen + Allen Architects, San Francisco, California, and Taylor Whitney Architects of Lexington, Kentucky. The building was completed in August 2002.

Administration

All three floors house the administrative and faculty offices of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Office of the Dean, Student Support Services and Office of Advancement.

Basement

Machine Shop: supports the college of engineering with a wide range of fabrication services.

Structural Systems Lab: used for modeling and testing of unique structural systems, including space-deployable structures, actively controlled mirrors and inclined cables.

Heavy Equipment Test Lab: used for the measurement of sound and related quantities.

Flow Visualization Lab/Wind Tunnel: includes space for a large wind tunnel and related instrumentation, as well as smaller flow experiments.

Mechanical Systems Lab - C: used to obtain static and dynamic characteristics of large-scale systems such as vehicles and rotating machinery.

Mechanical Systems Lab - B: supports the design, control and simulation of advanced bearing and sealing systems.

Mechanical Systems Lab - A: used for designing, building and demonstrating precision machines, instruments, and manufacturing processes with special interests in nanotechnology and microsystems.

Mechanics of Materials Lab: contains tensile test machines and associated instrumentation for measuring properties of engineering materials.

ME Undergraduate Lab: main laboratory for student experiments with heavy equipment.

First Floor

Student Commons: centrally located in the building and provides space for student study and social interaction. Is designed for flexibility so that it can be used for college and alumni social functions.

Workstation and Commons Computer Labs (4): provides space for computers that will be available for student use.

Second Floor

Immersive Visualization Lab: includes a space for a CAVE-like virtual reality 3-D visualization device and required auxiliary equipment.

Engineering Computing: a fully-networked classroom with connections for laptops to access the network.

Design Labs 1 & 2: for use in student design projects and are network accessible by wireless or wired connection.

Engineering Workstation Lab: provides space for instruction of students in modern computing software and is available to students when not used for instruction.

Structural Computation and Visualization Lab: supports advanced modeling and computational efforts for structural analysis.

CFD Visualization Lab: provides computing capability for CFD analysis, including multi-processor approaches, and for visualization and display of results of complex analyses.

Third Floor

Undergraduate Instrumentation Lab: used for the course on principles and application of instrumentation for engineering applications

Undergraduate Systems Lab: contains facilities for the second undergraduate course in experimentation, involving mechanical engineering systems.

Senior Design Lab: houses the Senior Design Course (ME412) in which student teams solve design problems from manufacturing companies and national student design competitions.

Thermal-science Lab A & B: flexible to allow use in a variety of thermal experiments, with emphasis on optical methods.

ME Research Labs A, B & C: flexible to allow use in a variety of ME experiments of a bench-size, including combustion, painting technology, and surface appearance.

Bio-thermal Science Lab: provides a unique training and research space to apply physical and engineering principles to solve problems in bio-material science and to develop new bio-technology.

Materials Engineering Lab: used for materials research and education.