Sandia National Labs Academic Alliance Collaboration Report 2020-2021

CONTRIBUTOR SPOTLGHT

Hugh Daigle

UT Austin’s Hugh Daigle focuses on characterizing physical and transport properties of rocks using a combination of laboratory experiments and numerical simulation. His current research topics are methane hydrate accumulation in marine sediments, understanding multiphase applications of nanoparticles and nanotechnology in various aspects of oil and gas exploration and production, and transport processes and geohazards in shallow marine sediments. flow during production from hydrate reservoirs,

to detect and better characterize gas hydrate reservoirs and methane gas seafloor seepage. Another extensive Sandia-UT Austin team developed the predictive Arctic Coastal Erosion (ACE) model. Sandia expert Diana Bull presented their work at the 2019 AGU (American Geophysical Union) Advancing Earth and Space Science Conference. The ACE Model consists of oceanographic and atmospheric boundary conditions that force a coastal terrestrial permafrost environment (a multi- physics based finite element model). Emily Bristol, Craig Connolly and James McClelland from the Marine Science Institute at UT Austin performed integral permafrost material analyses, which led to accurate representations of the terrestrial bluffs. The model and data will inform scientific understanding of coastal erosion, contribute to estimates of geochemical and sediment land-to-ocean fluxes, and facilitate infrastructure susceptibility assessments. The ACE model is currently being applied in DOE’s InteRFACE (Interdisciplinary Research for Arctic Coastal Environments) project. InteRFACE, led by Los Alamos National Laboratory, aims to quantify and reduce

uncertainties in our fundamental understanding of the magnitude, rates, and patterns of change along the Arctic coast. Susan Seestrom, Sandia Associate Labs Director and Chief Research Officer said, “Our current efforts in the Arctic leverage Sandia’s deep experience in computing, from verification and uncertainty quantification to multiphysics applications to increasingly complex numerical models, and decades of experience in unique and quantitative Earth sciences research.”

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2020-2021 Collaboration Report

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