Digital twins are exactly what they sound like: virtual models of physical reality that continuously update to reflect changes in the real world.
The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory hosted its Smoky Mountains Computational Science and Engineering Conference for the first time in person since the COVID pandemic broke in 2020. The conference, which celebrated its 20th consecutive year, took place at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in downtown Knoxville, Tenn., in late August.
Cody Lloyd became a nuclear engineer because of his interest in the Manhattan Project, the United States’ mission to advance nuclear science to end World War II. As a research associate in nuclear forensics at ORNL, Lloyd now teaches computers to interpret data from imagery of nuclear weapons tests from the 1950s and early 1960s, bringing his childhood fascination into his career
After completing a bachelor’s degree in biology, Toya Beiswenger didn’t intend to go into forensics. But almost two decades later, the nuclear security scientist at ORNL has found a way to appreciate the art of nuclear forensics.
When geoinformatics engineering researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory wanted to better understand changes in land areas and points of interest around the world, they turned to the locals — their data, at least.
ORNL will team up with six of eight companies that are advancing designs and research and development for fusion power plants with the mission to achieve a pilot-scale demonstration of fusion within a decade.
Critical Materials Institute researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Arizona State University studied the mineral monazite, an important source of rare-earth elements, to enhance methods of recovering critical materials for energy, defense and manufacturing applications.
ORNL researchers have identified a mechanism in a 3D-printed alloy – termed “load shuffling” — that could enable the design of better-performing lightweight materials for vehicles.
The U.S. Departments of Energy and Defense teamed up to create a series of weld filler materials that could dramatically improve high-strength steel repair in vehicles, bridges and pipelines.
The presence of minerals called ash in plants makes little difference to the fitness of new naturally derived compound materials designed for additive manufacturing, an Oak Ridge National Laboratory-led team found.