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Archive: April, 2020
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    Ryan James, a digging contractor, breaks through into the back of the gravel room for the first time from the new back crosscut in the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory's Permafrost Tunnel Research Facility in Fox, Alaska. The excavation was part of the phase four expansion of the permafrost tunnel, which added a new 300-foot tunnel and improved 200 feet of the pre-existing tunnel.

    Discovering the Mural in Permafrost

    In the forests of Fox, Alaska, carved into a frozen hillside is a unique manmade 350-meter long research tunnel. Situated on a 16-acre parcel near the confluence of Goldstream and Glenn Creeks, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Research and Development Center’s Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory’s Permafrost Tunnel Research Facility was excavated deep into a large block of discontinuous permafrost that has been going through several recent periods of expansion. The expansion project began back in 2011, taking advantage of the digging seasons when the ground is at its coldest, with an overall project goal of expanding the tunnel facility to better support ongoing and growing research and engineering needs. The most recent expansion effort, this year, has added 300-feet of new tunnel, improved 200 feet of the existing tunnel and added links between the old and new tunnel sections at several locations, to include at an interface between subsurface bedrock and overlying gravels.
  • The U.S. Army Engineer and Development Center’s Justin Wilkens, a research biologist with the Environmental Laboratory, checks the waypoints using the SubSeaSail’s G6 navigation software on his laptop. The unmanned surface vessel was taken to Vieques, an island off the coast of Puerto Rico, for a demonstration by Wilkens and a team of ERDC-EL research biologists, including Dr. Guilherme Lotufo and Dr. Mark Ballentine. The USV gathered data indicating the presence of munitions constituents from unexploded underwater ordnance, a problem at sites around the world. Chris Todter, far left, a SubSeaSail partner, and Tom Goddard, far right, SubSeaSail Fabrication and Testing, are also visible in the photo.

    Team successfully tests new unmanned autonomous surface vessel

    Anxious at first about the specter of possible software glitches that would derail the project, the U.S. Army Engineer and Development Center’s Justin Wilkens, a research biologist with the Environmental Laboratory, soon confirmed that everything was functioning well. He and a team of other EL research biologists, including Dr. Guilherme Lotufo and Dr. Mark Ballentine, visited Vieques, an island off the coast of Puerto Rico, for five days in February to demonstrate a new unmanned autonomous surface vessel, or USV.
  • ERDC’s Directorate of Public Works staff work to build two types of mock-up hospital rooms.

    U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center prototypes makeshift hospital rooms

    The Commanding General of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Lt. Gen. Todd Semonite has made headlines for his plans to construct makeshift hospital rooms across the country as the Nation prepares for an onslaught of COVID-19 patients. Recently, Semonite called on the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Develeopment Center in Vicksburg to ask for help in accomplishing that mission.