Sandia National Laboratories researchers Lisa Deibler and
Arthur Brown had a ready-made problem for their computer modeling work when
they partnered with the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Kansas City
Plant to improve stainless steel tubing that was too hard to meet nuclear
weapon requirements.
When steel is too hard it becomes brittle, so the plant
ended up getting new tubing. However, Deibler said KCP needed a backup in case
it couldn’t find replacements in time to meet deadlines.
Sandia’s modeling, coupled with experiments, allowed the rapid
design of an annealing process to soften the tubing while keeping the metal’s
desired structure. The model predicted how the microstructure would be affected
by variations in the process, which improved researchers’ confidence that the
heat treatment would produce parts that met specifications.