The Food Technology laboratory was first opened in December 2000 and later renamed as Soft Solids laboratory in October 2010 to reflect the expanding research areas of the group. The lab, which is temperature and humidity controlled, is currently located on the 5th floor of the City and Guilds building.

The soft solids lab is furnished with an Instron 4453 and a Zwick Roell universal testing machine which are equipped with 10, 100 and 1000 N load cells. Both machines are capable of performing constant true strain rate tests which is essential in the characterisation of soft solids. An in-house built environmental chamber allows tests to be carried out under controlled temperature and humidity level. There are also a wide range of custom designed attachments including compression platens, 3-point bend rig, tensile clamps, blade and wire cutting rigs, extrusion rigs and a bubble inflation rig. Optical strain measurement equipment along with in-house image processing algorithm is also available for non-contact strain measurements.

In addition, the lab is equipped with a TA Instruments AR2000ex rheometer for testing material under simple shear conditions at sub-zero, ambient and elevated temperatures. The machine has an operating temperature of up to 200 °C and a frequency range between 1 µrad/s to 100 rad/s. There is an instrumented small-scale two-roll stand rolling rig used for studies of dough sheeting and an instrumented mixer capable of recording torque during mixing. Additionally, there is a refrigerator, freezer, oven and custom designed storage for humidity sensitive samples.

The Soft Solids group is part of the Mechanics of Materials Division, which is known worldwide for its expertise in a range of experimental and theoretical techniques for modelling the performance, lifetime and mechanical behaviour of many materials including metals, polymers, composites, ceramics and adhesives. As part of this division, we have access to its facilities which include static and high-speed test machines, a dynamic mechanic analyser, an extensive range of high-speed cameras and optical microscopes, a scanning electron microscope, an atomic force microscope and laser technology.

The soft solids group has a great interest in image based finite element modelling at the microstructure level and inverse finite element method. There are a range of software licences and computing facilities available to enable this work. This includes finite element (Abaqus, Simulia), 3D mesh generation (Avizo), digital image correlation (LaVision, DaVis), as well as access to a 24 CPU multiprocessor and the Imperial College High Performance Computing supercomputers.

The Mechanical Engineering Department received the highest possible rating in successive UK Government Research Assessment Exercises and is ranked #1 as of 2008.‌