8 August, 2001

CRREL The Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory

Today we got an extensive tour of the research facilities here at CRREL. The laboratory studies all aspects of engineering as it is related to cold areas

in the United States.

We started the tour with a look at the waterway simulation labs. Within these labs the CRREL scientists and engineers study the effects of ice on inland waterways and how build-ups of ice can be prevented.

The most interestingh part of the tour for me was the road materials testing lab. This lab is the test site for the effects of ice and frost on road building materials. A road is actually built within the building. The road then is tested with simulated traffic conditions at different cold weather extremes. You can imagine all of the useful applications of this type of research. Of course, being summer, the lab was not actually conducting any testing, but technicians were installing sensors in the roadbed for future tests.

Later in the tour we also had the opportunity to visit the research library and the cold storage rooms. One large storage room was set up for storing ice cores from the Greenland ice sheet. The -25 degree tempertures were a nice change from the upper 90's of outside.

After the tour, I can only wonder if I will be able to contribute to the types of amazing research that we see from the scientists and engineers at CRREL.

CRREL engineer Glen Zabolinski begins our tour with a description of CRREL research.

Experimental road bed being prepared for future testing.

This road bed testing vehicle can simulate two years of traffic in two weeks.