The new, state-of-the-art Advanced Power and Thermal Research Lab at Wright-Patterson will be unveiled Friday by officials at the Air Force base.

The facility is a 53,000-square-foot, three-story, multi-laboratory facility devoted to fundamental and applied energy, power, and thermal research. The building includes areas for materials processing, data acquisition, clean and dry rooms, and fabrication facilities, according to base officials.

A number of research efforts are already underway in the new facility, and when the lab is fully ready, core technology focus areas will include thermal management, mechanical energy conversion, power distribution, power electronic development, and electrochemistry research, release from the Air Force said.

The APTRL was built from a complete refurbishment of the former Static Test Laboratory structure, which since 1934 had hosted a vast array of structural and mechanical testing, but had gone largely unused as a laboratory environment for many years. The existing facility was internally demolished and redesigned and rebuilt with an all-new modern infrastructure designed to meet laboratory requirements for decades to come, base officials said.

“With the establishment of the Advanced Power and Thermal Research Lab, we hope to forge a new direction for aircraft technologies and make the Dayton region a world leader in power, thermal, and energy research,” said Doug Bowers, director of the AFRL Aerospace Systems Directorat.