John Deere Research Lab

The John Deere Research Laboratory (JDRL) is an advanced state-of-the-art joint industry-university research laboratory located in the College of Engineering at Southern Illinois University.  The Laboratory was established in 1997 due to a cash endowment and an equipment donation received from Deere Technical Center and John Deere Foundation.  This is the result of a long-term partnership through research grants since 1990.  One of the major tasks of JDRL is to carry out the contractual work that supports research in materials and machine structures at Deere & Company and other industries.

Materials research includes the investigation of fatigue and fracture resistance of fiber reinforced composite materials at their virgin and service states.  The machine structure research includes conducting both computational simulation and experimental verification of the dynamic response of vehicles under real-life loading history. The ultimate goal of these research activities is to link material selection/evaluation, manufacturing systems, CAD/CAM/FEA, nondestructive inspection, and durability/failure analyses into a life cycle design synthesis.  Accelerated testing of vehicles due to dynamic spectrum loading and bridges under simulated earthquake conditions are two of the main emphases at JDRL.