GEOMECHANICS LABORATORY The Geomechanics Laboratory has been certified as a Technology Deployment Center and User Facility by the Department of Energy. As such our facilities, equipment, instrumentation, and scientific, expertise are accessible to private entities as long as the programmatic needs of DOE are not compromised. The Geomechanics Laboratory is a world-class facility primarily dedicated to (1) identifying/modeling of rock deformation and failure processes (2) laboratory determinations of thermomechanical and transport properties of competent rock and natural fractures systems including coupled effects, (3) extrapolation of laboratory measurements to field conditions, (4) laboratory and bench-scale validation studies of models and geotechnical design procedures, and (5) core-based stress measurements. The facility is also used to determine the thermomechanical properties of other pressure sensitive materials including granular materials, ceramics, and composite. Special requirements can be accommodated including, for example, the superposition of electrical fields in deformation experiments at high pressures. The available experimental tools permit the performance of fully servo-controlled hydrostatic and deviatoric loading experiments under axisymmetric and true triaxial conditions, variable load paths, and real-time flow and damage measurements to 200 degrees C. The hydrostatic (confining) pressure ranges and associated sample sizes are 1 GPa for 1cm-diameter samples, 400 MPa for up to 6.4-cm-diameter samples, and 100 MPa for up to 10-cm-diameter samples. Load frame capacities are 100kN to 4.9 MN. Multiple coaxial electrical feedthroughs permit simultaneous measurements of axial, radial, and sometimes tangential sample deformations, ultrasonic velocities, and acoustic emissions. All triaxial facilities can be combined with permeability tests. Conventional testing machines, several triaxial creep apparatus, and a Split-Hopkinson (Kolsky) bar provide the means to evaluate strain rate-effects between 103 and 10-11 sec-1. Discrete fracture and friction studies make use of a normal load/torsion apparatus with a 1 MN/10 kN-m capacity. True triaxial experiments are conducted on pressurized thin-walled hollow cylinders with added normal and torsional loading. Arbitrary true triaxial stress-path tests are also performed on rectangular parallelepipeds with dimensions of 2.5x5.7x5.7 up to 7.6x7.6x18 cm. One true triaxial machine is specifically designed for the characterization of soft rocks undergoing large deformations. The Geomechanics Laboratory and the expertise of its staff include state-of-the-art capabilities for image analysis and statistical characterization of porous and fractured media. Experienced staff and several commercial and in-house finite element and discrete clement codes are available for pre-test experiment design. For further information contact: Joanne Trujillo, Sandia National Laboratories, P.O. Box 5800, Albuquerque, NM 87185-1380, Fax: (505) 843-4163.

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