Structural Dynamics Applications and Research at Los Alamos National Laboratory

Many peoples’ perception of Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) is tied to activities associated with the Manhattan Project that occurred from 1943 to 1945. Those perceptions have been reinforced by the recent movie Oppenheimer. Although led by scientists, that project was a large-scale, multidisciplinary engineering effort. Today, approximately half of LANL’s technical workforce are engineers. This talk will provide an overview of one capability associated with that engineering enterprise - structural dynamics. To begin, a brief introduction to LANL, its current mission and its engineering enterprise will be provided. Then, to demonstrate ties to John A. Blume’s legacy, various experimental and analytical earthquake engineering studies will be presented including the margins -to-failure assessments of nuclear power plant reinforced concrete structures, seismic buckling studies of reactor containment structures, paleo-seismic hazard studies of the Los Alamos site and probabilistic risk assessments of LANL’s current nuclear facilities. Next, some of LANL’s unique structural dynamics test facilities and instrumentation will be presented including a blast tube, centrifuge, high-explosive radio-telemetry system and the dual-axis radiographic hydrodynamic test facility. Current research efforts related video-based structural dynamics measurements, structural health monitoring applied to scientific infrastructure, muon tomography (imaging the Fukushima reactor core) and planetary defense (deflecting or fragmenting asteroids) will be summarized. This talk will conclude with a summary of various education programs that LANL hosts including a structural dynamics summer school. Each topic discussed will be presented as an overview suitable for students and engineers at all levels including those who do not work directly in structural dynamics.

Speaker: Charles Farrar, Los Alamos National Laboratory