Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory | |
 A view of the Lab in downtown Minneapolis by the Saint Anthony Falls. The laboratory is located on Hennepin Island. Hidden to its right is the hydro-power plant operated by Xcel Energy. To its left is the Outdoor StreamLab field-scale research facility. | |
| Location | Minneapolis, Minnesota |
|---|---|
| Built | 1938 |
| Engineer | Lorenz G. Straub[1] |
| Part of | St. Anthony Falls Historic District (ID71000438) |
The Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory (former name: Saint Anthony Falls Hydraulic Laboratory), or SAFL, is a research laboratory situated on Hennepin Island in the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. Its primary research is in "Engineering, Environmental, Biological, and Geophysical Fluid Mechanics".[2] It is affiliated with the University of Minnesota's College of Science and Engineering. Research is conducted by graduate students and faculty alike using the 16,000 square feet of research space and 24 different specialized facilities.
The laboratory is unique in that its location next to Saint Anthony Falls allows it to use the hydraulic head from the waterfall to provide water for many of the experiments.
The experiments performed at the laboratory are varied, and may include:
- Contract civil and environmental engineering work, such as dam construction and removal
- Understanding river system dynamics
- Work with oil exploration to characterize deposits in deltaic systems
- Work to understand the interactions between fluid flow and the ecology of rivers
- Work to understand cavitation in fluids in order to build better propellers
The Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory is also the headquarters of the National Center for Earth-surface Dynamics, a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center.[3]
The laboratory is a contributing resource of the Saint Anthony Falls Historic District which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. [4]
- ^ "National Register of Historic Places - National Register District Property Details". National Register of Historic Places. Minnesota Historical Society. 2007-04-25.
- ^ Official Website - Homepage: http://www.safl.umn.edu/
- ^ "Welcome to NCED!". Retrieved 2009-08-15.
- ^ Coddington, Donn; Hess, Jeffrey. "Nomination of the St. Anthony Falls Historic District to be on the National Register of Historic Places". (1971, 1991). US-DOI-NPS. p. pdf 65. Retrieved April 1, 2019.