News Tips MEDIA RELATIONS DEPARTMENT, MS 0167 ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO 87185-0167 PHONE: (505) 844-8066 FAX: (505) 844-6367
May 6, 1997 Contact: Howard Kercheval (505) 844-7842/[email protected]
STRONGER COMPOSITE AIRCRAFT PATCH FASTER, EASIER TO APPLY THAN METAL The Federal Aviation Agency has certified a Sandia-developed composite material comprising parallel boron fibers enmeshed in epoxy for use in repairing small flaws or cracks in aircraft fuselages. The new repair technique, a substitute for conventional riveted metal patches, is the result of a three-year research and validation project managed by Sandia's FAA Airworthiness Assurance Nondestructive Inspection Validation Center (AANC). THE material is applied in laminate fashion; it is much easier and faster to apply than riveted metal patches and can be as much as three times stronger than metal patches of the same thickness. It was certified April 22 after being applied in February on a Delta L-1011 in daily trans-Atlantic passenger service.
STUDY SHOWS WEAKNESSES IN TRADITIONAL LIGHTNING PROTECTION SYSTEMS Lightning strikes Earth's surface an average of 6,000 times a minute; in the United States, it causes an estimated $138 million in damages each year. Typical lightning protection systems use equipment such as grounded lightning rods meant to draw the strike to a preferred spot away from vulnerable parts of a building and down a line through the building to the ground without electrifying the building's infrastructure, and "earthing" systems meant to disperse and dilute the current at ground level. Sandia research and tests indicate, however, that such systems are less effective than they were once thought to be, and that perhaps a well-connected steel rebar network — functioning like a Faraday cage — offers the best protection. < http://www.sandia.gov/LabNews/LN04-25-97/lightning_story.html >
SUPERCOMPUTER MODELS GLOBAL CATASTROPHE FROM THEORETICAL COMET IMPACT Even before reaching full strength, Sandia's new teraflops (trillion operations per second) supercomputer showed its stuff in a simulation that captured people's imagination and newspaper headlines around the world by modeling the effects of a kilometer-wide comet impacting the Atlantic Ocean. At a 45-degree angle, the comet would have an impact energy of 300 gigatons of TNT (about 10 times the explosive power of all the nuclear weapons in existence at the height of the Cold War in the 1960s). It would generate a high-pressure steam explosion rising into the stratosphere, dent the ocean floor, create a wave that would wash over the Florida peninsula, and send comet and water vapor around the planet, causing a global catastrophe. < http://www.sandia.gov/LabNews/LN04-25-97/comet_story.html >
CHEMIST FINDS METHOD THAT COULD LEAD TO CONTINUOUS EMISSIONS MONITORING A Sandia quantum chemist trying to fingerprint a potential cancer culprit so it can be rapidly detected if it escapes smokestacks has discovered a method that could contribute to development of continuous emissions monitors to check for regulated compounds produced by the burning of refinery fuels for process heat. Currently, emissions samples are collected periodically and analyzed at off-site labs. Continuous monitoring would enable plant operators to detect spikes in emissions and try to control them in real time. < http://www.sandia.gov/LabNews/LN04-25-97/molecular_story.html >
PROTONIC MEMORY KEEPS DATA EVEN WHEN POWER OR COMPUTER FAIL A process that originated on the back of a napkin at an IEEE conference in Charleston, S.C., at the end of 1995 and is being patented by Sandia and France Telecom will solve one of the minor horrors of the computer age: the loss of all work not saved to a hard drive or diskette when the power fails or the computer freezes up and has to be shut down. The memory-retentive chip is created by bathing a hot microchip in hydrogen gas, which permeates the chip and breaks up into single ions (protons) at defects in the silicon dioxide, which were created by heat from the manufacturing process. When the power goes off, the protons carrying the data stay where they are and retain the data.
PHOTOVOLTAICS PROVIDING CLEAN, QUIET POWER IN REMOTE PARK SITES Sandia's work with the National Park Service, recently recognized with a 1997 National Park Partnership Leadership Award, has left a number of park sites with less noise, cleaner air, and powered facilities — the result of replacing diesel generators with photovoltaic systems or putting the systems where power was not previously available. Cooperative installations, in association with local utility companies, have been installed at Grand Canyon's North Rim, the Presidio in San Francisco, and Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument in New Mexico, and are becoming common arrangements for remote installations in the western US.
COMPACT RADIATION DETECTOR HAS LAW ENFORCEMENT, MEDICAL APPLICATIONS Radiation detection work that can distinguish between different sources of radiation and operate at a fraction of the size of conventional detectors has won its developer a spot among 35 finalists for Discover Magazine's eight technological innovation awards. The compact detectors under development at Sandia's Livermore, Calif., lab sense gamma ray emissions and have applications ranging from detection of smuggled nuclear material to environmental monitoring and better medical imaging for more precise cancer treatment. The Discover award winners in eight technological innovation categories will be announced May 31. < http://www.sandia.gov/media/discover.htm >
Sandia National Laboratories' World Wide Web home page is located at http://www.sandia.gov. News releases, fact sheets, and news tips can be found at http://www.sandia.gov/media/whatnew.htm. The Sandia Lab News Online Edition is at http://www.sandia.gov/LabNews/LabNews.html.
RSS