Establishment of the Green Geotechnology Laboratory at Sharif University of Technology

Sustainable development for future generations has led governments and researchers to use plants, bacteria and environmentally friendly materials as compatible components with nature in modern engineering. In other words, all classical laboratories in civil engineering should be revisited to pass the minimum requirements for sustainable developments. Therefore, the main objective of this paper is to introduce the Green Geotechnology Laboratory established for the first time in the Middle East in the Department of Civil Engineering at Sharif University of Technology. The new laboratory is a nature inspired multidisciplinary infrastructure for solving a wide range of geoenvironmental problems including but not limited to the green slope engineering, eco-friendly landfilling, bioremediation, extreme climate events, bio-stabilization, soil erosion due to wind and flood and so forth. The Green Geotechnology Laboratory has been purposely designed and developed to take the advantage of living things in sustainable developments with the least side effects to the environment. The laboratory comprises several parts including a cultivation room, a ۲D green slope model, a set of multiphase flow simulators, a ۱D bio-remediation soil column, a freeze-thaw facility and a comprehensive set of measuring units including nutrient monitoring system. The details of different laboratory sections are presented in this study. The ambitious goal of this new laboratory is to propose environmentally friendly, cost-effective, and aesthetically pleasing solutions to natural hazards and to promote development of such modern laboratories.