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New method supports safer, more reliable flight control for hypersonic vehicles
News Article, September 21, 2026 • Hypersonic vehicles experience extreme aerodynamic forces and intense heating. Knowing those forces in real time is important for national security because it supports safer, more reliable flight control, helps prevent structural failure, and improves the ability to assess vehicle health during missions. A team of researchers from Sandia and The...
hypersonic rocket launch

New technology for heterogeneously integrated devices allows for underfilling of complex geometries using driven fluids 
News Article, June 7, 2023 • Underfilling is a widely used manufacturing process that helps stabilize and reinforce solder joints in electronic parts. However, heterogeneously integrated (HI) devices are challenging to underfill using standard capillary flow methods, due to large areas with narrow gaps—trenches that act as strong flow barriers, and high bump density that cause...

Optimizing machine learning decisions with prediction uncertainty
News Article, May 9, 2023 • Digital background depicting innovative technologies in (AI) artificial systems, neural interfaces and internet machine learning technologies While ML classifiers are widespread, output is often not part of a follow-on decision-making process because of lack of uncertainty quantification. Through this project, the team developed decision analysis methods that combined uncertainty estimates...
Digital background image of brain connectors

Predicting Arctic shoreline loss to protect critical infrastructure and security
News Article, August 24, 2026 • Arctic coastlines underlain by ice-rich permafrost are eroding at unprecedented rates as warming air and more powerful storm waves undermine frozen soils. This shoreline loss threatens everything from local communities and pipelines to strategic military sites, making reliable forecasts vital for national security and infrastructure planning. To meet this need,...
Alaskan sunrise

Predicting catastrophic failure and collapse in infrastructure
News Article, March 20, 2023 • The team, led by Sandia principal investigator Jessica Rimsza, developed new modeling capabilities for evaluating multiphase phenomena in cement-based materials in energy and infrastructure applications, a chemo-mechanical model for cement fracture, identified sources of uncertainty in cement degradation and concrete fracture, and created six new capabilities for modeling brittle fracture...
A large urban suspension bridge

Quantum-accurate multiscale modeling in highly compressed metals  
News Article, June 22, 2023 • Lasers are used to align diagnostics and hardware prior to shooting on Sandia's Z machine, the world's most powerful and efficient laboratory radiation source. The development of equations-of-state and transport models in areas such as shock compression and fusion energy science is critical to DOE programs. Notable shortcomings in these...
Lasers are aligning diagnostics and hardware.

Rapid, high-fidelity turbulent combustion modeling for next-generation defense engines
News Article, August 24, 2026 • Accurately simulating how fuel burns in turbulent flows is essential for designing and running jet engines, rocket motors, and new hypersonic propulsion systems, which are important for national security. However, fully capturing the complex chemical reactions and fluid transport in these flames can require solving hundreds to thousands of coupled...

Researchers develop a tantalizing method to study cyberdeterrence
News Article, November 27, 2023 • TANTALUS — The online game simulates how success or failure is within a player’s reach. Experimental war gaming provides insightful data for real-world cyberattacks In Greek mythology, Tantalus was the king of Sipylus who so angered Zeus with his treachery that his punishment was to go thirsty and hungry while...
Three countries illustrated in a cyberdeterrence game

Revealing the kinetics of atmospheric corrosion damage through in-situ x-ray computed tomography and machine vision 
News Article, June 8, 2023 • In-situ XCT enables both the growth rate and morphology (yellow) of pits to be directly characterized in relationship to the evolving electrolyte (blue) and prior stages of pit morphology (black).  Atmospheric corrosion is a critical materials degradation problem, yet the ability to predict its kinetics remains elusive. Conventional approaches provide...

Shielding future fusion reactors: DIII-D’s testing of advanced plasma-facing materials
News Article, September 21, 2026 • Research at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility addresses a critical need for materials that can survive the punishing environment inside a future Fusion Pilot Plant, an energy source with major implications for long-term national security and energy resilience. Over the first year of a two-year campaign, researchers used a specialized...

Smart materials for highly complex tags with environmental response 
News Article, June 22, 2023 • Cover of the Journal of the German Chemical Society Angewandte Chemie International Edition As counterfeiting methods become more sophisticated, countermeasures must be developed at the same pace. In this Sandia LDRD project, unique exemplars of next generation anticounterfeiting optical tags were developed that leverage the luminescent properties of materials for...
Cover of the Journal of the German Chemical Society Angewandte Chemie International Edition

Statistical earthquake models inform understanding of material degradation at the nanoscale
News Article, December 10, 2024 • Muscovite mica, used in many materials science applications, is known for its extremely flat and flaky layers, making it highly susceptible to hostile environmental conditions. (Photo by Anastasia Ilgen) Understanding how materials will interact with their environment is crucial when selecting components for engineering applications. To help inform material selection, geologists...

Stress intensity thresholds for development of reliable brittle materials 
News Article, June 22, 2023 • Cover of the Journal of the American Ceramic Society Brittle material failure can appear random and unpredictable at subcritical stresses. A fundamental understanding of how structural and environmental factors impact fracture propagation is necessary to predict fracture in these systems. Through this project, a physics-based model of glass fracture was...
The Journal of the American Ceramic Society featuring the Sandia research projects.

The study of Z-pinches with engineered defects
News Article, October 13, 2022 • 3D-magnetohydrodynamic simulations of electrothermal instability growth by studying Z-pinches with engineered defects Electrothermal instability (ETI) is driven by Joule heating and arises from the dependence of resistivity on temperature. When a metal is Joule-heated through the boiling point, ETI drives azimuthally correlated surface density variations or “strata,” which provide the dominant seed...
3D-magnetohydrodynamic simulations of electrothermal instability growth by studying Z-pinches with engineered defects

Tunable quantum metasurface for scalable secure quantum technologies
News Article, August 24, 2026 • A team including researchers at Sandia’s Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies and Microsystems and Engineering Sciences Application (MESA) Complex developed a tunable optical metasurface that improves how much light is emitted from embedded Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) quantum dots (QDs) and at what wavelength this light is emitted. The QDs produce single...
MESA building at dusk

Understanding molecular-scale effects on fracture can inform resource extraction and help maintain the nation’s infrastructure 
News Article, June 8, 2023 • Three images show liquid nanoindentation setup, the indentation site, and water inside the crack tip in a molecular dynamics simulation. Subcritical fracture controls deformation and permeability of rocks and degradation of manmade materials. To further understand the chemical mechanisms controlling subcritical fracture, this three-year project created nanomechanical and continuum-scale mechanics...

Understanding the effects of radiation on reconfigurable phase change materials
News Article, June 22, 2023 • David Adams was elected Fellow and President of American Vacuum Society: Science and Technology of Materials, Interfaces and Processing in 2023. Chalcogenide thin films that undergo reversible phase changes show promise for next-generation nanophotonics, metasurfaces, and other emerging technologies. This general class of thin films can be switched rapidly between...
David Adams was elected Fellow and President of American Vacuum Society: Science and Technology of Materials, Interfaces and Processing in 2023.

Using machine learning to create rapid stronglink mechanisms
News Article, April 10, 2023 • Computer aided design (CAD) to simulation workflows for nuclear deterrence (ND) have shown dramatic performance improvements with ML. This work targets some of the most inefficient, tedious, and error-prone bottlenecks using new ML-based methods. Common mechanisms such as fasteners and springs can now be quickly identified and reduced to simulation-ready...
A CAD model

Using nonlocal interface problem allows for 7x speedup in large-scale simulations
News Article, May 9, 2023 • Multimaterial problems exist in mission applications such as mechanics and subsurface transport. To capture effects arising from long-range forces at the microscale and mesoscale that aren’t accounted for by classical partial differential equations, the MAThematical foundations for Nonlocal Interface Problems (MATNIP) project team developed a mathematically rigorous interface theory employing...
Analytic solutions u 2D 0,0 for s = 0.4 and u 2D 1,1 for s = 0.6. The behaviour (3.17) close to the boundary is apparent.

Wide-bandgap semiconductors benefit from development of single-photo sources in gallium nitride 
News Article, June 8, 2023 • Single-photon sources based on atom-like features in solid-state materials offer the prospect for integrated, on-demand solid-state platforms and are being intensively explored for numerous mission-related quantum information technologies. Gallium nitride (GaN) is a very hard, mechanically stable wide-bandgap (WBG) semiconductor that permits devices to operate at much higher voltages, frequencies,...
A graphic showing a model of an atom over a wide-bandgap semiconductor
Results 26–47 of 47