A quarterly research and development magazine
Big experimental facilities, big computers, big physics, and big problems — when you put them together, as researchers at the national labs seem uniquely equipped to do, you get massive rewards. This month we look at projects in which the marriage of experimentation and simulation is making the engineer better:
In pursuit of valuable new insights, guest contributor Hanchen Huang of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute calls for greater cross-fertilization between mathematicians and physicists, scientists and engineers, and experimentalists and modelers — as well as modeling that spans time and size scales.
Long before the I-35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis, a group of researchers who study the aging of metal structures — primarily aircraft — was working on better sensors to monitor the structural health of bridges and other infrastructures, as well as better repair techniques for those structures.
Finally, on pages 10 and 11 of the magazine, we sample the colorful output of simulations. It’s important to remember that these artful renderings signify physical phenomena involving millions, sometimes hundreds of millions, of variables interacting in time and space — in short, they represent substantial science in the service of national security. I hope you enjoy the issue.
John German, Sandia Technology Editor
(505) 844-5199, jdgerma@sandia.gov