History of the laboratory
The hydraulic engineer Hubert Engels is widely regarded as the founder of the so-called "Dresden School" in hydraulic engineering testing and in established technical hydromechanics. He initially began with experiments in the Zeuner Laboratory at the Royal Saxon Polytechnical College, which became known through his publication on the protection of bridge piers against undermining.
The origins of today's Hubert Engels Laboratory (HEL) date back to the hydraulic engineering laboratory founded by Engels in 1898 at the Royal Saxon Polytechnical College. It was the world's first permanent river engineering laboratory and was located in the basement of the laboratory building directly adjacent to the main railway station, which was destroyed in 1945. The laboratory was mainly used for tests on the movable bed in river courses.
When a campus was built in Dresden's Südvorstadt as part of the university's expansion, the Dresden River Engineering Laboratory moved to the base of the civil engineering building (Beyer-Bau) at George-Bähr-Str. 1 in 1913, where it is still located today (under renovation) and where it has been used by the university’s Institute of Hydraulic Engineering and Technical Hydromechanics (IWD). In 1944, on the occasion of Hubert Engels’ 90th birthday, the name of the research laboratory was changed into Hubert Engels Laboratory.
Thanks to the expansion of the IWD's laboratory capacities, additional laboratory space was created in 2015, following over 100 years of operation of the HEL. As a result, the new hydraulic engineering hall at Georg-Schumann-Str. 7A could be put into operation.
As part of the general refurbishment of the Beyer Building in line with cultural conservation regulations, the historic part of the laboratory dating back to 1913 has been in the process of being reconstructed and converted into a modern hydromechanical training laboratory since 2018.