Infrastructure
Argonne maintains a wide-ranging science and technology portfolio that seeks to address complex challenges in interdisciplinary and innovative ways. Below is a list of all articles, highlights, profiles, projects, and organizations related specifically to infrastructure.
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- The inventions offer the potential of high-power lasers to deliver enhanced performance in precise drilling, sawing, cutting, or otherwise shaping, such as carving or sculpting, of rocks and composite structures of steel casing, cement and rocks.Intellectual Property Available to LicenseUS Patent 7,487,834
- Methods of using a laser to perforate composite structures of steel casing, cement and rocks
US patent 7,416,258- Methods of using a laser to spall and drill holes in rocks
Apparatus and methods of using lasers are provided for spalling and drilling holes into rocks. A rock removal process is provided that utilizes a combination of laser-induced thermal stress and laser induced superheated steam explosions just below the surface of the laser/rock interaction to spall the rock into small fragments that can then be easily removed by a purging flow. Single laser beams of given irradiance spall rock and create holes having diameter and depth approximately equal to the beam spot size. A group of the single laser beams are steered in a controllable manner by an electro-optic laser beam switch to locations on the surface of the rock, creating multiple overlapping spalled holes thereby removing a layer of rock of a desired diameter. Drilling of a deep hole is achieved by spalling consecutive layers with an intermittent feed motion of the laser head perpendicular to the rock surface.
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