National Security

Since the oil embargo of 1973, Sandia has recognized that a secure and reliable energy supply is a national security issue. CRF researchers are providing new knowledge and tools for improving the energy efficiency of combustion devices and industrial processes.

The expertise of CRF researchers is also being applied to other, non-energy-related national security challenges. For example, researchers with expertise in combustion diagnostics and soot formation are assisting with a project for evaluating the dangers posed to nuclear weapons and critical shipping containers by accidental fires. Two laser-based diagnostics technologies are being used to construct detailed scientific databases for the validation of large computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models. These models are intended to describe and predict the behavior of pool fires and the heat flux to embedded or nearby objects.