From SURF-The Sanford Underground Research Facility
5.3.24
Mike Ray
The DUNE caverns 3D printed model installed at the Sanford Lab Homestake Visitor Center in Lead. Photo by Stephen Kenny.
The large model of the underground structure below Lead at the SURF Visitor Center now includes the newly excavated DUNE caverns.
A centerpiece of the Sanford Lab Homestake Visitor Center (SLHVC) in Lead is a towering three-dimensional model that includes the Open Cut and 370 miles of drifts, ramps, and shafts that make up the Sanford Underground research Facility (SURF). The large model helps convey the complexity and scale of the massive underground structure and myriad of interweaving tunnels that extend roughly 8000 feet below the town of Lead.
The model was made before the completion of the giant caverns at SURF for the Long Baseline Neutrino Facility / Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (LBNF/DUNE) [below].
Doug Tiedt, a research scientist at SURF, decided to take on an upgrade to see the new DUNE expansion at SURF added to the model inside the visitor center.
Tiedt first came to Lead about five years ago during postdoctoral studies on the LUX-ZEPLIN dark matter experiment [below], and enjoys working on his own 3D printers at home.
“This 3D print is something I figured was doable as a project for one of my normal quarterly goals,” said Tiedt.
Accurately modeling the DUNE caverns at SURF is not a straightforward task. LBNF/DUNE is the largest physics experiment ever undertaken on American soil. The DUNE caverns at SURF are located 4850 feet underground. They are mind boggling in size, around nine stories high, 65 feet wide, and a football field and a half long. The model helps visitors understand the scale of both DUNE and SURF.
To complete this task, Tiedt joined forces with Kyle Jankord, a technician at SURF who is an expert in Computer Aided Design (CAD). Jankord studied CAD at Western Dakota Technical College and has been a part of the engineering department at SURF for the past six years.
Tiedt and Jankord worked together to create the 3D printed scale model of DUNE.
“Kyle had much of the hard part. He had all the measurements and 3D computer models, and he came up with the numbers,” said Tiedt. “We took the computer 3D model of the DUNE caverns, and stitched it up to work for this application,” said Jankord. “Then we took measurements on the actual model in the visitor center and fit the DUNE 3D print to that scale,” Jankord adds. “It ended up working out nicely.”
Tiedt and Jankord used an iterative design process to get from the computer model to a final result.
“One challenge was getting it into the right software needed to slice the 3D computer image to get it to print the actual model, it was a lot of back and forth to get something that would work,” says Tiedt.
Thanks to their efforts, the DUNE caverns are now a part of the larger model that can be seen inside the SURF Visitor Center.
Like many models there is a little glue involved. “It’s actually super glued in place,” Tiedt said.
Visitors will need a keen eye to spot DUNE inside the SURF model. Despite being massive undertaking the DUNE caverns are dwarfed by the rest of the underground workings below the town of Lead. The upgraded model will help future visitors gain this new perspective.
“It’s interesting to see where it sits relative to the rest of the mine and seeing the scale of it, that something that massive was designed and built in this short of time is amazing,” says Jankord.
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About us: SURF-The Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead, South Dakota, advances our understanding of the universe by providing laboratory space deep underground, where sensitive physics experiments can be shielded from cosmic radiation. Researchers at the Sanford Lab explore some of the most challenging questions facing 21st century physics, such as the origin of matter, the nature of dark matter and the properties of neutrinos. The facility also hosts experiments in other disciplines—including geology, biology and engineering.
The Sanford Lab is located at the former Homestake gold mine, which was a physics landmark long before being converted into a dedicated science facility. Nuclear chemist Ray Davis earned a share of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2002 for a solar neutrino experiment he installed 4,850 feet underground in the mine.
Homestake closed in 2003, but the company donated the property to South Dakota in 2006 for use as an underground laboratory. That same year, philanthropist T. Denny Sanford donated $70 million to the project. The South Dakota Legislature also created the South Dakota Science and Technology Authority to operate the lab. The state Legislature has committed more than $40 million in state funds to the project, and South Dakota also obtained a $10 million Community Development Block Grant to help rehabilitate the facility.
In 2007, after the National Science Foundation named Homestake as the preferred site for a proposed national Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory (DUSEL), the South Dakota Science and Technology Authority (SDSTA) began reopening the former gold mine.
In December 2010, the National Science Board decided not to fund further design of DUSEL. However, in 2011 the Department of Energy, through the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, agreed to support ongoing science operations at Sanford Lab, while investigating how to use the underground research facility for other longer-term experiments. The SDSTA, which owns Sanford Lab, continues to operate the facility under that agreement with Berkeley Lab.
The first two major physics experiments at the Sanford Lab are 4,850 feet underground in an area called the Davis Campus, named for the late Ray Davis. The Large Underground Xenon (LUX) experiment is housed in the same cavern excavated for Ray Davis’s experiment in the 1960s.
In October 2013, after an initial run of 80 days, LUX was determined to be the most sensitive detector yet to search for dark matter—a mysterious, yet-to-be-detected substance thought to be the most prevalent matter in the universe. The University of Washington MAJORANA Neutrinoless Double-beta Decay Experiment Demonstrator experiment, also on the 4850 Level, is searching for a rare phenomenon called “neutrinoless double-beta decay” that could reveal whether subatomic particles called neutrinos can be their own antiparticle. Detection of neutrinoless double-beta decay could help determine why matter prevailed over antimatter. The Majorana Demonstrator experiment is adjacent to the original Davis cavern.
The LUX Xenon dark matter detector | Sanford Underground Research Facility mission was to scour the universe for WIMPs, vetoing all other signatures. It would continue to do just that for another three years before it was decommissioned in 2016.
In the midst of the excitement over first results, the LUX collaboration was already casting its gaze forward. Planning for a next-generation dark matter experiment at Sanford Lab was already under way. Named LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ), the next-generation experiment would increase the sensitivity of LUX 100 times.
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory physicist Tom Shutt, a previous co-spokesperson for LUX, said one goal of the experiment was to figure out how to build an even larger detector.
“LZ will be a thousand times more sensitive than the LUX detector,” Shutt said. “It will just begin to see an irreducible background of neutrinos that may ultimately set the limit to our ability to measure dark matter.”
We celebrate five years of LUX, and look into the steps being taken toward the much larger and far more sensitive experiment.
Another major experiment, the Long Baseline Neutrino Experiment (LBNE)—a collaboration with Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) and Sanford Lab, is well underway. Called the “next frontier of particle physics,” LBN/DUNE will follow neutrinos as they travel 800 miles through the earth, from FermiLab in Batavia, Ill., to Sanford Lab.
The MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR will contain 40 kg of germanium; up to 30 kg will be enriched to 86% in 76Ge. The DEMONSTRATOR will be deployed deep underground in an ultra-low-background shielded environment in the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) in Lead, SD. The goal of the DEMONSTRATOR is to determine whether a future 1-tonne experiment can achieve a background goal of one count per tonne-year in a 4-keV region of interest around the 76Ge 0νββ Q-value at 2039 keV. MAJORANA plans to collaborate with Germanium Detector Array (or GERDA) experiment is searching for neutrinoless double beta decay (0νββ) in Ge-76 at the underground Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS) for a future tonne-scale 76Ge 0νββ search.
CASPAR is a low-energy particle accelerator that allows researchers to study processes that take place inside collapsing stars.
The scientists are using space in the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) in Lead, South Dakota, to work on a project called the Compact Accelerator System for Performing Astrophysical Research (CASPAR). CASPAR uses a low-energy particle accelerator that will allow researchers to mimic nuclear fusion reactions in stars. If successful, their findings could help complete our picture of how the elements in our universe are built. “Nuclear astrophysics is about what goes on inside the star, not outside of it,” said Dan Robertson, a Notre Dame assistant research professor of astrophysics working on CASPAR. “It is not observational, but experimental. The idea is to reproduce the stellar environment, to reproduce the reactions within a star.”
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