History
The UNLV High Pressure Science and Engineering Center, established in July 1998 with support from the U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), brings together chemists, mechanical engineers, and physicists to consider fundamental experimental, computational, and engineering problems of materials under high pressure.
Mission and Goals
While initially funded to serve as a university-based teaching and research center to support NNSA's Stockpile Stewardship Program, HiPSEC is now funded on a competitive basis. HiPSEC has built a strong research program in high pressure studies and is aspiring to be the best among DOE/NNSA Centers of Excellence. Among our goals are:
- advancing weapons material science at pressures, temperatures, and strain rates needed to interpret legacy nuclear test data and to verify design codes
- preparing scientists and engineers needed by DOE to assure the effectiveness and safety of the stockpile without requiring nuclear tests well into the future
- involving the high pressure community as well as UNLV materials science faculty in research related to criticial SSP, DOE labs, and NTS interests
UNLV HiPSEC Laboratories
- Raman Spectroscopy Lab (BPB 137)
- Large Volume Press Lab (BPB 139)
- Materials at Extreme Conditions Lab (BPB 143)
- Spectroscopy Lab (BPB 151)
- Sample Preparation Lab (BPB 163)
- Rock Deformation Lab
Computational Resources
- 128 Core, 48 terabyte Unix based cluster "Solid"
Research
HiPSEC concentrates on the following areas of research:
- highly correlated d-/f- band metals and high energy density materials
- equations of state, constitutive properties, and phase relationships
- computational modeling and bulk materials synthesis & engineering
Lists of our recent publications may be found here.
X-Ray Diffraction Facility