HANOVER, N.H. – The U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory’s (CRREL) new Climatic Cold Chamber Building, which CRREL research teams will utilize for the testing of materiel used by the Warfighter in extreme cold environments.
“Our partners are already lining up because they can't wait to work with us to get new technologies into this facility for development and testing,” said CRREL Director Dr. Joseph Corriveau. “It's interesting because when we're talking about extreme cold, that's when you get below minus 25 degrees, not below freezing, and this facility will go down to minus 54, and it's already been tested. We can achieve that.”
ERDC-CRREL completed assembly of the building in March, and CRREL will now start using the facility for extreme cold testing that requires a large space. The chamber is a critical research
tool used to evaluate new materials, design methods and construction techniques that can help optimize new infrastructure facilities.
“The insights gained from the research performed in this new climatic chamber will not only ensure our military is prepared to operate in some of the planet's harshest environments,” said U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, “but will also benefit everyday Americans by improving our roads and other infrastructure systems.”
The new chamber is the ERDC’s only cold facility that can house a running vehicle inside. This facility was designed to be modular from the beginning, with the possibility to install a second larger vehicle-testing chamber of a similar model.
“We have the world's largest a lot of things, and it takes the world's largest facilities to execute our world class mission on behalf of this nation,” said ERDC Director Dr. David Pittman, who flew up from ERDC headquarters in Vicksburg, Mississippi, to attend the event. “This cold climate facility is one more addition to a whole plethora of new facilities for the ERDC to execute this world class mission.”