LABORATORY

The Berkeley Orthopaedic Biomechanics Laboratory is located in 2166 Etcheverry Hall in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. We have exclusive facilities for the processing, storage, and mechanical testing of bone, other musculoskeletal materials and bone-implant systems.

Materials testing facilities:

• Biaxial (axial-torsion) servohydraulic materials testing system (MTS, Eden Prairie, MN; Model 858 Mini-Bionix with TestStar Controller) with 5 mm and 1-inch gage length extensometers and various uniaxial and multiaxial load cells
• Miniature tension/compression loading substage with extended travel (Ernest F. Fullam Inc., Latham, NY; Models 18211, 1000lb) for use within a scanning electron microscope.

Bone processing facilities:

• HP FAXITRON X-ray machine, drill presses, band-saw, ultrasonic cleaner, vacuum degassing chamber, Buehler grinding stations, Isomet diamond saws, oven, furnace, numerous storage freezers, and a Mettler balance.

Light microscope facilities:

• Stereology and reflected light microscopes
• Continuous focus zoom microscope
• CCD camera-based image acquisition system, fully integrated with our computers, including IDL (Research Systems Inc., Boulder, CO) image analysis software
• Intelitek 3-axis CNC milling machine for use with our serial-milling imaging system
• Benchman MX high resolution CCD camera (1317x1035 resolution)
• Princeton Instruments TEA/CCD (1317 K/2)

COMPUTERS

Our exclusive computational facilities for image processing and high-performance computation include:

High Performance Computers:

• Two dual-processor 2.0 GHz Quad Core Linux-Xeon workstations with 16 GB memory and 2.0 TB disk space each
• Dual processor 2.66 GHz Quad Core Linux-Xeon workstation with 12 GB memory and 1.5 TB disk space
• Two dual processor 3.6 GHz Linux-Xeon workstations with 8 GB memory and a combined 1.5 TB disk space
• Ten Apple Macintosh computers are available for statistical data analysis and desktop publication
• External hard drives (~5.2 TB), DVD recorders, and CD recorders provide facilities for backup and archival of data

Software:

• Abaqus and FEAP for finite element analysis
• IDL for image processing
• JMP for statistical analysis
• MATLAB for data post processing
• VisIt for visualization of results
• Various packages for word processing, graph plotting, and slide preparation.

Backup/Hardcopy Devices:

• Five TB external hard drives
• CD-ROM / DVD writer
• Networked color laser printer

Other Resources:

• Connection to the campus network and the Internet via Ethernet connections
• Access through Teragrid to a Sun Constellation Cluster (Ranger at TACC), a massively parallel super computer (63,000 processors), for computationally intensive work.

OTHER

Various modes of electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, and fourier-transform infrared [FTIR] spectroscopy are all available on the Berkeley campus. A GE 9800 Quantitative Computed Tomography (QCT) scanning machine is available in the Department of Radiology, UC San Francisco.

To OBL home page