Desert tortoise series

Goldwire, H. C., T. G. McRae, G. W. Johnson, D. L. Hippie, R. P. Koopman, J. W. McClure, L. K. Morris, and R. T. Cederwall. 1985. Desert Tortoise Series Data Report—1983 Pressurized Ammonia Spills, UCID-20562, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA. 

Description of Experiments The Desert Tortoise Series of ammonia spill experiments was performed by LLNL at the Frenchman Flat area of the Nevada Test Site during the summer of 1983. There were four experiments for the study of the size, shape, and temperature of the ammonia clouds, as well as the extent of the hazardous concentrations downwind. In order to simulate simple cases, which later could be modeled, the tests were performed at constant pressure and on the dry lakebed, which provided a relatively flat and smooth surface. 

Most of the heavier-than-air cloud field experiments have focused on the dispersion of gaseous clouds. However, some experiments have been conducted with two-phase effects, e.g., the Desert Tortoise, Eagle, Goldfish series (Koopman et al., 1989) and FLADIS field experiments (Nielsen et al., 1997). In particular, the Desert Tortoise series was designed to study the dispersion of two-phase ammonia clouds. It was reported that two-phase effects had a dominating influence on the temperature and spreading behavior of the cloud and the extent of the heavy cloud dispersion regime (Koopman et al., 1986). Recently, available field data sets have been reviewed within the SMEDIS (Scientific Model Evaluation of Dense Gas Dispersion Models) project (Daish et al., 1998 Carissimo et al., 1999). 

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