Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory
The Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory, or SAFL, is a research laboratory situated on Hennepin Island in the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. Its primary research is in "Engineering, Environmental, Biological, and Geophysical Fluid Mechanics". It is affiliated with the University of Minnesota's College of Science and Engineering. Research is conducted by graduate students and faculty alike using the 16,000 square feet of research space and 24 different specialized facilities.
The laboratory is unique in that its location next to Saint Anthony Falls allows it to use the hydraulic head from the waterfall to provide water for many of the experiments.
The experiments performed at the laboratory are varied, and may include:
- Contract civil and environmental engineering work, such as dam construction and removal
- Understanding river system dynamics
- Work with oil exploration to characterize deposits in deltaic systems
- Work to understand the interactions between fluid flow and the ecology of rivers
- Work to understand cavitation in fluids in order to build better propellers
History
SAFL was designed and built in the 1930s with funding provided by the Works Progress Administration and was headed by Lorenz G. Straub until his death in 1963. Construction began in March, 1936 and the Lab was opened and dedicated in November, 1938.At first, SAFL focused on hydraulic and engineering research, but after Straub's death the Lab began to expand its research to broader focuses such as stratified flows, turbulence and hydrology. An atmospheric layer wind tunnel and multiple flumes were also added to the collection of research facilities. This was made possible through funding from the National Science Foundation.
From 1977 through 1993, the Laboratory emphasized the integration of education and basic and applied research. Several new faculty were appointed to bring new research efforts to SAFL like computational fluid dynamics, water resources and energy, environmental water research, naval hydrodynamics, cavitation, wind engineering, small hydropower development, rainfall modeling, and geomorphology to name a few. The NSF made SAFL the headquarters of the National Center of Earth-Surface Dynamics in 2002, a center devoted to greater predictive earth surface technology and research.
In 2006, the University of Minnesota and St. Anthony Falls Laboratory implemented a wind-energy research consortium, called EOLOS, which brought together academic partners, industry, and government laboratories with help of a grant from the Department of Energy. This new facility located just south of Minneapolis brought SAFL more into the world of renewable energy research with the addition of a wind turbine among other things.
Since then, SAFL has become an internationally renown leader in the study of earth surface and fluid dynamics. Multiple new facilities have been added over the years to expand research capabilities and many have actually been created by the staff and are exclusively used by SAFL researchers.
Funding for SAFL's expansions has come throughout the years from a number of outside sources like NASA, NSF, U.S. Navy, Department of Energy, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Hamburg Ship Model Basin, the Legislative-Citizen Commission for Minnesota Resources, and many more.
The St. Anthony Falls Laboratory was added as a research facility to the University of Minnesota's College of Science and Engineering in 2011.
Research programs
Research at SAFL includes the work of many fields, including civil engineering, hydraulic engineering, hydrology, ecology, and geology. Research at SAFL has been spurred on in the first decade of the 21st century by its status as the headquarters of the National Center for Earth-surface DynamicsAnalog material models of fluvial and depositional systems are employed by geologists at SAFL to understand the causes of river channel morphologies and dynamics, as well as to reconstruct the history of events that produces particular stratigraphic packages. Researchers working on channel morphology have shown the importance of vegetation in restricting braided channels to a single thread system. Research done on experimental alluvial fan deltas has highlighted the statistics of flow occupation and their potential hazard to life and property, shown autogenic cyclicity in patterns of sediment storage and release that determine short-term shoreline positions, and has been connected to sequence stratigraphy and the processes that form the stratigraphic record.
Research at SAFL is primarily concentrated in four major areas:
- Earth surface, water, and life
- Mitigating impacts of global environmental change
- Renewable energy systems
- Biomedical fluid mechanics for personalized health care
Earth surface, water, and life research
At present, SAFL's Earth surface research revolves around the following interlinked themes:
- Multi-scale virtual aquatic environments
- Interplay of fluid flow, microorganism physiology, and biogeochemistry
- Particles, bubbles, and other multi-phase flows
- Deltas and depositional systems
- River networks as corridors of environmental change
Global environmental change research
SAFL has active research programs in a number of areas to assess and quantify global change impacts and to develop science-based solutions for mitigating their consequences such as an altered atmosphere and a degradation of water resources.SAFL research areas include:
- Earth observations from space for assessing global environmental change
- Debris flow hazards
- River flooding
- Air quality
- Water quality and habitat
Renewable energy research
Since 2007 SAFL has developed new experimental facilities at laboratory and field scales, advanced computational tools, and new partnerships with industry and government laboratories to position itself for more capable research in fluid mechanics and renewable energy systems. This research focus aims to use research and technology to combat and study the effects of climate change such as more frequent extreme weather phenomena, and sea level rise.SAFL research in this field includes:
- Wind energy
- Water power
- Biofuel production from microscopic algae.
Biomedical fluid mechanics research
The coupling between fluid mechanics and biology has led to growth in recent years of research aimed at understanding the fluid mechanics of the human body and quantifying their linkages with disease pathways.SAFL is a leader in cardiovascular fluid mechanics research using a simulation-based research approach. Novel computational hemodynamics tools have been developed, validated, and applied to study a wide range of clinically relevant problems. Partnerships have been established and leveraged within the UMN with the Department of Biomedical Engineering, the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics, the Medical School, and the Institute for Engineering in Medicine, as well as with the Mayo Clinic and other collaborators around the country.
Research themes include:
- Cardiovascular fluid mechanics research
- Respiratory fluid mechanics research
Research facilities and engineering services{{Cite web|title = Advance Your Research with Our Laboratory Facilities St. Anthony Falls Laboratory|url = http://www.safl.umn.edu/facilities|website = www.safl.umn.edu|accessdate = 2015-11-30}}
The St. Anthony Falls Laboratory is a 16,000 square foot research facility on the Mississippi River. The Lab has 15 general purpose flumes, tanks, and channels that are readily configurable to the needs of a project and can indefinitely pump in water from the Mississippi at up to 300 ft³/s. Facilities at SAFL include the main channel, through which Mississippi River water can be sent for large-scale sediment transport experiments; the delta basins, designed to quickly build experimental stratigraphy; the eXperimental EarthScape facility, a subsiding basin for large-scale depositional modeling; the Outdoor Stream Lab, which is used to understand fluvial processes and riparian ecology at closer to a field scale; and many other pieces of equipment. The lab is known for rapidly constructing and destructing experimental apparatuses, including full-scale models of rivers to understand the effects of dam removal.Engineering services{{Cite web|title = Engineering Services St. Anthony Falls Laboratory|url = http://www.safl.umn.edu/services|website = www.safl.umn.edu|accessdate = 2015-11-30}}
Main channel
The main channel is SAFL's largest research channel, measuring 275 feet in length, is a straight, concrete channel that has the capability of a 300 ft³/s flow rate of water from the Mississippi River that can be run as a pond system or a flow-through system. The channel is equipped with a wave generator, sediment flux monitoring and recirculation system, and a data acquisition carriage.EXperimental EarthScape (nicknamed "Jurassic Tank" or XES)
This specialized basin is used to study delta and basin morphodynamics on geologic time scales. This basin is unique to SAFL because of its design and capabilities: it can incorporate the effects of tectonism on surface processes by simulating subsidence in the basin floor and its data carriage allows data collection over the entire XES basin and assists in "slicing" for more visible cross-sections. The XES basin is home to SAFL's most advanced data carriage.Delta basins
These two rectangular basins part of SAFL research on deltas and deltaic systems. The basins allow control of water surface, sediment feed, and water feed rates. Data acquisition includes a new SAFL-designed data carriage, topographic scanner, and various camera systems. Both basins are 16.4 x 16.4 feet and are 2.1 feet deep.Outdoor streamLab{{Cite web|title = Life-Sized Environmental Research: Outdoor StreamLab St. Anthony Falls Laboratory|url = http://www.safl.umn.edu/facilities/osl|website = www.safl.umn.edu|accessdate = 2015-11-30}}
Located outside of the SAFL building, this uniquely designed was developed by SAFL and NCED and can be used to conduct larger experiments under controlled conditions. It is capable of creating floods and has a large range of flow rates for hydrological, ecological and biological research. the OSL allows for a range of water flow rates, sediment feed rates, a meandering river bend, channel formation, and flooding capabilities. This is used to facilitate a variety of floodplain, vegetation, and channel research opportunities. The StreamLab has a recirculating water outflow of up to a 200 L³/sWind tunnel{{Cite web|title = Atmospheric Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel St. Anthony Falls Laboratory|url = http://www.safl.umn.edu/facilities/wind-tunnel|website = www.safl.umn.edu|accessdate = 2015-12-03}}
Designed for modeling of the air/land boundary layer, the wind tunnel can provide a circulating or once-through flow of air that can reach up to 148 ft/s. It is equipped with a glass observation wall, temperature and surface variation capabilities, a rotating turntable, smoke generator, and laser instrumentation. The tunnel has temperature control capabilities that allow for study effects of thermal stratification in atmosphere on structures.CloudIA
CloudIA is a SAFL-created facility that is composed of 256 individually controlled air jets that can generate 1 m³ of air turbulence. It is designed to replicate conditions found in the atmosphere to study particlebehavior on a smaller scale. Liquid or solid micro-particles can be dropped in at adjustable rates and are tracked by multiple high-speed cameras and a high-repition laser. CloudIA is also fully transparent to allow live
visibility.