A renowned research hub

Lehigh’s Advanced Technology for Large Structural Systems Center (ATLSS) was established in 1986 within NSF’s Engineering Research Center program. ATLSS is globally renowned for research into 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 a transaction, brokered with help from Lee Iacocca ’49, that established the university’s Mountaintop Campus.

Did you know:

• It would take more than 300 concrete trucks to contain the material used in the ATLSS Center’s 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.
• ATLSS researchers have tested 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, to mention just three experiments.
• Integrated control, simulation, sensing, and data acquisition are provided real-time by a 10-gigabit network and by 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 faculties of the University of Akron, the University of Arizona, Case Western University, the University of Illinois, Kansas State University, Manhattan College, the University of Notre Dame, Oklahoma State University, Old Dominion University, Oregon State University, Princeton University, Purdue University, and the University of Toronto, and other universities and colleges.

Story by Chris Larkin