Transient solid dynamics simulations are among the most widely used engineering calculations. Industrial applications include vehicle crashworthiness studies, metal forging, and powder compaction prior to sintering. These calculations are also critical to defense applications including safety studies and weapons simulations. The practical importance of these calculations and their computational intensiveness make them natural candidates for parallelization. This has proved to be difficult, and existing implementations fail to scale to more than a few dozen processors. In this paper we describe our parallelization of PRONTO, Sandia`s transient solid dynamics code, via a novel algorithmic approach that utilizes multiple decompositions for different key segments of the computations, including the material contact calculation. This latter calculation is notoriously difficult to perform well in parallel, because it involves dynamically changing geometry, global searches for elements in contact, and unstructured communications among the compute nodes. Our approach scales to at least 3600 compute nodes of the Sandia/Intel Teraflop computer (the largest set of nodes to which we have had access to date) on problems involving millions of finite elements. On this machine we can simulate models using more than ten- million elements in a few tenths of a second per timestep, and solve problems more …

The science and technology of proton accelerators have progressed considerably in the past three decades. Three to four orders of magnitude increase in both peak intensity and average flux have made it possible to construct high intensity proton accelerators for modern applications, such as: spallation neutron sources, kaon factory, accelerator production of tritium, energy amplifier and muon collider drivers. The accelerator design focus switched over from intensity for synchrotrons, to brightness for colliders to halos for spallation sources. An overview of this tremendous progress in both accelerator science and technology is presented, with special emphasis on the new challenges of accelerator physics issues such as: H(-) injection, halo formation and reduction of losses.

A new, enhanced, weight window generator suite has been developed for MCNP{trademark}. The new generator correctly estimates importances in either an user-specified, geometry-independent orthogonal grid or in MCNP geometric cells. The geometry-independent option alleviates the need to subdivide the MCNP cell geometry for variance reduction purposes. In addition, the new suite corrects several pathologies in the existing MCNP weight window generator. To verify the correctness of the new implementation, comparisons are performed with the analytical solution for the cell importance. Using the new generator, differences between Monte Carlo generated and analytical importances are less than 0.1%. Also, assumptions implicit in the original MCNP generator are shown to be poor in problems with high scattering media. The new generator is fully compatible with MCNP`s AVATAR{trademark} automatic variance reduction method. The new generator applications, together with AVATAR, gives MCNP an enhanced suite of variance reduction methods. The flexibility and efficacy of this suite is demonstrated in a neutron porosity tool well-logging problem.

Over the past decade information theory has been generalized to allow binary data to be represented by two-state quantum mechanical systems. (A single two-level system has come to be known as a qubit in this context.) The additional freedom introduced into information physics with quantum systems has opened up a variety of capabilities that go well beyond those of conventional information. For example, quantum cryptography allows two parties to generate a secret key even in the presence of eavesdropping. But perhaps the most remarkable capabilities have been predicted in the field of quantum computation. Here, a brief survey of the requirements for quantum computational hardware, and an overview of the in trap quantum computation project at Los Alamos are presented. The physical limitations to quantum computation with trapped ions are discussed.

Experiments and finite element simulations have been performed to examine error measurement of hardness and elastic modulus caused by pile-up when soft films deposited on hard substrates are tested by nanoindentation methods. Pile-up is exacerbated in soft-film/hard-substrate systems by the constraint imposed on plastic deformation in the film by the relatively non-deformable substrate. To experimentally examine pile-up effects, soft aluminum films with thicknesses of 240, 650, and 1700 nm were deposited on hard soda-lime glass substrates and tested by nanoindentation techniques. This system is attractive because the elastic modulus of the film and the substrate are approximately the same, but the substrate is harder than the film by a factor of about ten. Consequently, substrate influences on the indentation load-displacement behavior are manifested primarily by differences in the plastic flow characteristics alone. The elastic modulus of the film/substrate system, as measured by nanoindentation techniques, exhibits an increase with indenter penetration depth which peaks at a value approximately 30% greater than the true film modulus at a penetration depth close to the film thickness. Finite element simulation shows that this unusual behavior is caused by substrate-induced enhancement of pile-up. Finite element simulation also shows that the amount of pile-up increases with …

This conference was divided into eight sessions. Session one covered the following topics: material behavior and characterization; computation heat transfer; computational fluid dynamics; and hydrodynamics. Topics covered in session two were: structural dynamics; manufacturing process modeling; solid and structural mechanics; and electromagnetics. Session three topics were: materials behavior and characterization; computational heat transfer; computational fluid dynamics; neutron generators and gas transfer systems applications. Topics for session four were: mesh generation and visualization; validation and verification; and pit manufacturing. Session five covered the following: ALE techniques and applications; solid and structural mechanical; and system applications. The three topics of session six were: optimization methods; manufacturing process modeling; and weapon response in hostile environments. Session covered: material behavior and characterization; computational heat transfer; solid and structural mechanics; and mesh generation and visualization. And finally, the topics of session 8 were: manufacturing and process modeling; solid and structural mechanics; uncertainty analysis; and structural dynamics. Paper covered a range of applications, many of which were weapons and weapon systems.

Hydrogeology research has been very active in both Russia and the US because of the concerns for migration of radioactive and chemical contaminants in soils and geologic formations, as well as for water problems related to mining and other industrial operations. Russian hydrogeologists have developed various analysis and field testing techniques, sometimes in parallel with US counterparts. These Proceedings come out of a Seminar held to bring together a small group (about 15) of active Russian researchers in geologic flow and transport associated with the disposal of radioactive and chemical wastes either on the soils or through deep injection wells, with a corresponding group (about 25) of American hydrogeologists. The meeting was intentionally kept small to enable informal, detailed and in-depth discussions on hydrogeological issues of common interest. Out of this interaction, the authors hope that, firstly, they will have learned from each other and secondly, that research collaborations will be established where there is the opportunity. This proceedings presents the summaries and viewgraphs from the presentations. What cannot be conveyed here is the warm and cooperative atmosphere of these interactions, both inside and outside the formal sessions, which may well lead to future collaborations.

This document contains the manuscripts of the papers and posters presented at the 1997 International Containment Technology Conference and Exhibition. These manuscripts represent a valuable compilation of information and data on the environmental challenges and technology-based solutions associated with containment technologies. The purpose of the conference was to promote the advancement of containment technologies by providing a forum from which participants from related disciplines could meet to exchange ideas and information on recent developments. Selected papers were indexed separately for inclusion in the Energy Science and Technology Database.