Imperial College London, Mechanical Engineering Refurbishment, SW7 London, UK
The Department of Mechanical Engineering at Imperial College London (ICL) is widely recognised as one of the top ranked mechanical engineering departments in the world. In order to maintain this prominent position at Imperial College South Kensington site they appointed Sheppard Robson to provide a proposal for consolidating and creating improved heavy duty research and teaching facilities, for various research groups within the department. The brief required research facilities that would aid the researchers to develop new technologies and their application to the solution of practical problems based around energy, transport, defence and health care sectors.
This new facility is to create improved efficiencies of space and use, and improved creative adjacencies for researchers. The space created for the project consists of 5,600m² of refurbished space on the lower floors of the building. Within the new facility are a number of specialist workshops and laboratories where work is carried out in the fields of materials and automobiles testing. The former includes very specific structural designs to with stand the exertions of compression testing rigs (including amongst others a 500 tonne Instron rig & a 5m high drop tower) while the latter includes testing cells with specialist seismic bases for both petrol and diesel engines. This is also a simulated reciprocating engine test-bed for turbocharger testing utilising lasers on isolated floors alongside them. The project included Metrology laboratories which required a stable, low vibration environment to handle equipment such as a Co-ordinate Measuring Machine (CMM) and a Positioning MRI.
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