Richard P. Feynman Visualization Laboratory

The Richard P. Feynman Visualization Laboratory located at the Materials Science Laboratory is named after one of Los Alamos's most distinguished alumni. It is a general purpose facility supporting the visualization needs of MST Division. The hardware ranges from UNIX-based SGI Origin boxes supporting legacy stereo-vision fracture mechanics graphics to state-of-the-art LINUX-based Dell PowerEdge servers with dual 2 GHz Xeon processors supporting atomistic, microscopic, and continuum simulations to a set of 180 GB Seagate Barracuda disk drives (0.7 TB total capacity) with video caching. The facility is connected via fiber to Los Alamos's Central Computing Facility. Recent emphasis has been on animation, especially portable animation. Portability is supported with free, shared, and custom software options. Portability allows the rest of the world see what we see.

Atomistic simulations include radiation damage cascades in metals, phase change behavior in Ni-Al alloys, Zr, and Ti, viscosity properties of Ni-Al alloys, and shock dynamics in metals and polymers. Microscopic simulations include dislocation dynamics and texture evolution. Continuum simulations include classical thermodynamics, shock-response of fluid interfaces, properties of nanolayered composites, and shock induced chemical kinetics.

The following QuickTime movies show examples of a radiation damage cascade in Pu, a compressive loading process, and an end-on collision of stiff polymer chains.

The Pu cascade at 100 eV, in a relaxed fcc crystal, at 300 K and constant volume shows the formation of interstitials and vacancies that lead to materials fails after long periods of time.