Sandia National Laboratories

The Department of Energy's Sandia National Laboratories is one of the nation's largest and most diverse research and development facilities. It employs more than 8,000 people at two locations in New Mexico and California.

One of Sandia's strengths is in computational and experimental mechanics where several advanced code development efforts are in progress. These codes are run on state-of-the-art vector and massively parallel computer systems at Sandia. They support internal customers with analysis capabilities and the codes are also distributed to external customers. In addition, Sandia makes use of commerical and externally developed codes when applicable.

Extensive environmental test facilities also exist, where component-level and full-scale systems can be exposed to adverse environments. In addition to providing a strong experimental engineering science capability, tests conducted at these facilities enhance the effectiveness of Sandia's extensive fluid, thermal and structural analysis capabilities.

Once the computational capability is verified, codes can be used to understand the design process parameters and optimize design and manufacturing processes.