As a part of its ongoing research efforts, Sandia National Laboratories` Transportation Surety Center investigates the integrity of various containment methods for hazardous materials transport, subject to anomalous structural and thermal events such as free-fall impacts, collisions, and fires in both open and confined areas. Since it is not possible to conduct field experiments for every set of possible conditions under which an actual transportation accident might occur, accurate modeling methods must be developed which will yield reliable simulations of the effects of accident events under various scenarios. This requires computer software which is capable of assimilating and processing data from experiments performed as benchmarks, as well as data obtained from numerical models that simulate the experiment. Software tools which can present all of these results in a meaningful and useful way to the analyst are a critical aspect of this process. The purpose of this work is to provide software resources on a long term basis, and to ensure that the data visualization capabilities of the Center keep pace with advancing technology. This will provide leverage for its modeling and analysis abilities in a rapidly evolving hardware/software environment.

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This paper presents an analysis of the thermal effects on radioactive (RAM) transportation packages with a fire in an adjacent compartment. An assumption for this analysis is that the adjacent hold fire is some sort of engine room fire. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis tools were used to perform the analysis in order to include convective heat transfer effects. The analysis results were compared to experimental data gathered in a series of tests on tile US Coast Guard ship Mayo Lykes located at Mobile, Alabama.

A unique imaging modality based on Equal Thickness Contours (ETC) has introduced a new opportunity for 3D shape reconstruction from multiple views. We present a computational framework for representing each view of an object in terms of its object thickness, and then integrating these representations into a 3D surface by algebraic reconstruction. The object thickness is inferred by grouping curve segments that correspond to points of second derivative maxima. At each step of the process, we use some form of regularization to ensure closeness to the original features, as well as neighborhood continuity. We apply our approach to images of a sub-micron crystal structure obtained through a holographic process.

The relative stability of LHC type cables has been measured by the direct heating of one of the individual strands with a short duration current pulse. The minimum energy required to initiate a quench has been determined for a number of cables which have a central core to increase the effective inter-strand cross-over resistance. Experiments were performed in both normal helium at 4.4 K and superfluid at 1.9 K. Conductors in general are less stable at the lower temperature when measured at the same fraction of critical current. Results show that the cored-cables, even when partially filled with solder or with a porous-metal filler exhibit a relatively low stability at currents close to the critical current. It is speculated that the high inter-strand electrical and thermal resistance inherent in these cables may effect the stability at high currents.

This study investigates the detonation behavior of two different high explosive compounds, PBX 9404 and PBX 9502. One reason these two high explosives were selected is because data is abundant relative to other types of high explosives. Statistical analysis of data for two different high explosives was performed. The goal of the analysis was to determine how the probability of detonation varies for different run lengths and pressures.

The US government agreed to provide the Russian Federation with containers to support the dismantlement of Russian nuclear weapons as part of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program. In February 1996, the ``affirmation`` of the Russian Fissile Material container design was completed. The ``affirmation`` process allowed a joint program between the Russian and US governments to proceed without the exchange of sensitive weapons specific information. The Russian Fissile Material container program is an integral part of the Cooperative Threat Reduction program wherein the US government provides assistance to the states of the Former Soviet Union for dismantlement of their nuclear stockpile. The Cooperative Threat Reduction program is managed by the US Defense Special Weapons Agency. Sandia National Laboratories was selected as the design agency and technical point of contact for the Russian Federation. The Department of Energy, which certifies containers for weapons shipments in the US, provided an independent assessment of the Sandia designed container to assure that it met the requirements of the August 31, 1993 AT-4OOR Container Requirements [Sandia National Laboratories, 1993] document which was agreed to by representatives of the US and Russian Federation. The ``affirmation`` process was undertaken in lieu of a certification process. This process …