Poulter Laboratory

SRI's Poulter Laboratory solves practical problems in explosions, impacts, and fire and their effects on materials and structures. We have one of the largest, best equipped, privately owned explosive test sites in the world. Our accomplishments include:

• Developing low-pressure dilute explosives to defeat explosive devices improvised by terrorists and to simulate airblast effects, hypervelocity impacts, and earthquakes. We also use explosive techniques to simulate X-ray loads on structures
   
• Combining our expertise in explosives and in designing and building scale-model structures to determine explosively generated damage to reinforced concrete, steel, or hardened structures, structures buried in soil or rock, and submarines
   
• Executing the largest-ever natural gas fire experiments. We have performed numerous deflagration experiments on a variety of hydrogen clouds and jets
   
• Conducting a wide range of impact experiments including scale model aircraft impacting buildings, bombs or bomb fragments penetrating reinforced concrete, and pulsed X ray- or laser-generated micron-size particles impacting optical components
   
• Evaluating explosive detection systems (EDS) with threat quantities of various high explosives. We have solved other counter-terrorism problems including hardening windows against terrorist explosions and developing novel bombproof containers
   
• Developing a method for clearing landmines. We perform research on clearing obstacles in the surf zone , improving effectiveness of torpedoes, and simulating underwater explosions
   
• Extensively investigating the effects of pulsed X-ray deposition, pulsed lasers and shock waves on materials
   
• Launching missiles to test the performance of missiles and missile launch tubes