Anthony Guajardo knows a thing or two about hydraulics.
Guajardo, a former aircraft maintenance support engineer for Lockheed Martin Corp. and now a mechanical testing and evaluation assistant working in Advanced Nuclear Materials in the Materials Science and Technology Division, assembled and disassembled aircraft and helped maintain fleets around the world.
Before working at Lockheed, Guajardo spent six years in the U.S. Air Force, where among other things, he maintained the hydraulics of F-15 fighter jets.
“I’m able to use that knowledge here,” Guajardo said. “We use hydraulics to run all of our equipment.”
In fact, Guajardo, who started at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in November, is a recent recipient of a Technicians Award from the Physical Sciences Directorate. He was awarded the Major Equipment Installation Award for his role in the installation of an MTS hydraulic power unit in the fracture mechanics lab in Building 4500S.
In addition to mechanical testing, Guajardo now also works on testing irradiated and unirradiated materials. “The job is challenging. I’m always learning something new,” he said. “But I like that challenge.”
Trained by researcher Xiang “Frank” Chen, Guajardo is learning techniques and procedures for testing all types of advanced nuclear material. Having access to the directorate’s Technicians Council also is very helpful, he said. “It’s nice to have the Council so I know who I can ask questions, and who the other technicians are.”
Guajardo’s days can be varied. He uses a variety of testing techniques to gather data on the mechanical properties of various alloys of interest to materials scientists. For example, he is currently running elevated temperature tensile testing of irradiated samples at the Irradiated Material Examination and Testing Facility.
He is also running creep tests on various materials. These tests measure the amount of deformation over time under a continuous load or constant temperature. He recently completed fatigue pre-cracking some fracture toughness specimens, which he will break at cryogenic temperatures.
Guajardo also performs Charpy impact testing to determine the amount of energy absorbed by a material during fracturing. This test is widely used in industry to determine toughness. If that were not enough, he conducts high-cycle-fatigue testing and post-test analysis of specimens, including fractography using scanning electron microscopy.
“All of this supports various domestic and international programs, as I also support testing for a Japanese national lab as well as the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority,” he said.
Guajardo grew up in Phoenix, graduated high school in Jacksonville, North Carolina, and received a degree in aviation maintenance technology from the Air Force. His first duty station was Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, but he has worked in several states such as Texas, Florida and North Carolina. During his 10 years working on aircraft, he has been all over the world, including to Africa and Asia. Guajardo finished his aviation career working internationally for Lockheed Martin.
But he calls Oak Ridge, Tennessee, home. “I’m happy right here in Tennessee,” he said. “This is probably the best place I’ve been to.”
UT-Battelle manages ORNL for DOE’s Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. DOE’s Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://energy.gov/science. —Lawrence Bernard
