September 2019 High Maintenance the New Wave of Technologies Keeping Planes in the Sky

160 years of innovation

theengineer.co.uk September 2019 High Maintenance The new wave of technologies keeping planes in the sky

Late Great Engineers In the ﬁ rst of a new series of articles we look back at the life of enigmatic power pioneer Nikola Tesla Sea change Pride of the Valkyrie Light speed Thales UK CEO Victor Chavez Inside the V12 powerplant of Aston How Li-Fi technology promises a goes deep on maritime Martin’s new supercar data speed revolution autonomy »34 »38 »44 »54 ® NEW ProtoTRAK KMX

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Volume 300 Issue No. 7910 Established 1856 Air time engineering news 06 Energy Danone unveils plan to slash emissions with biomass boiler n a world where the rapid pace of technological change means that many 10 Automotive VW to cut carbon with engineered products are obsolete in the blink of an eye, the aviation industry “downspeeding” tranmission occupies a curious position. 12 Medical Bionic chip trials restore sight From the development of advanced propulsion technologies, to the deployment of a host of advanced manufacturing processes there’s no doubt in patients that the sector is at the absolute cutting edge of technological innovation. 16 Materials Leeds Univeristy team strikes And yet its end products - whether they’re military fighter jets or civil airliners gold with ultrathin material – are typically expected to last for decades. Indeed, with the exception of large chunks of infrastructure like bridges opinion and power stations, it’s hard to think of another area of engineering that presents such an extreme challenge in terms of complexity and longevity. 18 Viewpoint Ethical engineering Against this backdrop, the 20 Mailbox Your letters to the editor aviation sector has been one of the 30 Talking Point Is sustainability pioneers of the concept of Ithrough-life engineering, the “It’s hard to think of sustainable? notion that a manufacturer doesn’t wash its hands of a product once it any other field that features rolls off the production line. 24 Cover story The maintenance and repair The technology that enables presents such an innovations that are helping keep planes existing aircraft to continue operating safely and to evolve to in the air extreme challenge” meet emerging efficiency and 34 Interview Thales UK CEO Victor Chavez safety demands is a key part of on maritime autonomy delivering on this vision, and in this issue’s cover story we take a look at how 38 Automotive The Cosworth V12 at the innovations from the often overlooked MRO (Maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) industry are at the heart of this approach. heart of Aston Martin’s new supercar As we report, it’s a fertile area of technology innovation, with technologies ranging 40 Bloodhound Q&A interview with Ian drone-mounted inspection systems cable of detecting defects invisible to the human Warhurst eye; to AR devices able to guide technicians through complex inspection and 44 Photonics Could visible light power a processes; through to the development of robots that can crawl into the combustion chambers of jet engines and carry out repairs in-situ. data revolution Elsewhere in this issue we take an in depth look at one of the most hotly anticipated 53 Car of the issue Hyundai Nexo car engines in recent years – the naturally aspirated V12 powerplant at the heart of 54 Late Great engineers Nikola Tesla Aston Martin’s Valkyrie supercar - and present the first in a new series of articles 57 Archive profiling some of historical icons of engineering. This month it’s the turn of the enigmatic 58 Digest Nikola Tesla – one of the founding fathers of modern electrical power (page 54).

Your number-one website for engineering news, Jon Excell Editor views, jobs and products theengineer.co.uk [email protected]

Cover Image: Aviation jet engine

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SEPTEMBER 2019 | THE ENGINEER 5 news technology

ENERGY Readmoreonline Council (FSC) certification scheme, to ensure fuel is being sourced from Danone plans Aerospace sustainably managed forests,” he said. “Danone also plans to broaden LightSail 2 orbiting Earth its source of fuel to include urban with solar propulsion biomass boiler wood waste.” The boiler is due to be installed by Automotive Food manufacturer invests in new plant to the end of 2020 and will be Jet engine pre-chamber slash carbon emissions HELEN KNIGHT REPORTS commissioned in 2021. tech could transfer Danone will be investing to cars lobal food producer Danone’s New Zealand operations approximately €25m in the Balclutha Danone is planning director. facility, which also includes the Electronics & to cut carbon- ‘Biomass’ is energy from plants or installation of a new water treatment Communications dioxide emissions plant bi-products, in which solar plant to more efficiently treat water Microwave resonator at one of its plants energy is captured and stored via the waste. It also plans to switch to sensor spots in New Zealand by process of photosynthesis. When renewable sources of electricity at ice-accumulation 20,000 tonnes per biomass is burned, it releases CO2 the plant by 2020, which it claims will year, with the installation of a new and other by-products but this is cut CO2 emissions by 96 per cent. Energy & Environment Gbiomass boiler. largely offset by the CO2, which is The remaining four per cent of Simple method improves The €17.5m boiler, which is to be absorbed in the growth of the plant. CO2 emissions will be generated by HVAC heat exchangers installed at the company’s Nutricia “Danone’s biomass boiler at the the plant’s gas consumption at times by 500 per cent spray-drying plant in Balclutha, on the Balclutha facility will be fuelled by when the biomass boiler is country’s South Island, is the first by-products or residue of forestry undergoing maintenance. The stage of Danone’s plans to make the activity that may ordinarily go to company is also working towards Study aims for deep facility entirely carbon neutral by 2021. waste,” said Marniquet. “These finding a renewable source of energy water offshore wind The Balclutha plant processes lumber production by-products, to cover these maintenance periods, viability raw milk sourced from 18 local farms while traditionally disposed of or which it hopes to complete by 2021. into a powder that is used as the burned, are valuable sources of heat, The development is part of Medical & Healthcare base for the production of its Infant steam, and electricity when used in a Danone’s ‘One Planet. One Health’ Smartphone controls Milk Formula (IMF) brands. biomass boiler system.” vision to be carbon neutral by 2050. therapeutic brain Spray-drying plants convert milk With four commercial forests As part of this aim, the company implants into a dry powder using heat from a within a 50km radius of the has also set itself intermediate boiler. As a result, around 85 per cent Balclutha plant, the facility will have targets, in line with international Cyborg organoids reveal of the plant’s energy consumption a reliable source of biofuel, in efforts to meet the Paris Agreement early stages of organ comes from steam production. addition to providing an economic objective of keeping global warming development The new biomass facility will benefit to the local forestry industry, below 2°C. These targets include replace the gas or coal typically used Marniquet said. halving carbon emissions intensity Manufacturing as an energy source in boilers with “Danone will source fuel from across the company’s full scope, Textile-based solar cells sustainable, locally sourced wood local partners who participate in which it dubs “from farm to family”, on a roll in Germany fuels, according to Cyril Marniquet, New Zealand’s Forest Stewardship by 2030. n Made in space: additive in orbit

Policy & Business Engineers must embed an ethical approach

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Newsinbrief

therefore learn the best course of Fast-track visa plan action to take. Government departments are to AI scores on road However, this training technique is work with Britain’s scientific less helpful in a multi-agent situation community in developing a new such as driving or playing football, fast-track visa system that to autonomy where it is more difficult to identify an ‘attracts the very best minds obvious reward for a given action. from around the world’. Additional funding will be Sports data gives boost to robots So instead the researchers are provided to scientists and HELEN KNIGHT REPORTS using a technique known as imitation researchers who have sought EU learning, in which the AI system is funding before the UK leaves the trained by observing the actions of EU. In the event of a no-deal experts, in the same way that humans Brexit, the government will learn new skills by imitating those ensure that pending Horizon who have already mastered them. 2020 applications will be “What we are doing in this case is automatically reviewed by UKRI. looking at years of football data, specifically player and ball tracking On track for new trains Abellio UK has awarded Hitachi data, and using this to see how Rail £400m to build a new fleet of players behave on the field, and in intercity trains. Set to operate this way to build a robotic model of a from 2022, the new trains will be footballer,” said De Silva. “Similarly, if based on Japanese bullet train we were to give autonomous vehicles technology and will serve the the ability to drive in a situation that main cities and towns on the they are not used to, we will look at Midland Main Line. Abellio has how humans have handled the same ordered 33 five-carriage trains, Robots look to humans for team skills situation, to teach the robot a which will be operated in suitable and safe course of action.” 10-carriage formations once delivered from Hitachi’s factory riving on a busy other agents. Such AI systems could be used in in Newton Aycliffe, Co. Durham. road, or playing The project, which is led by Dr autonomous vehicles and sports competitive team Varuna De Silva at Loughborough analytics, De Silva said. In sports Fully-charged funding sports such as University London and also involves analytics, the system could be used An additional £2.5m has been football, requires Chelsea Football Club Academy, will to measure players’ skills, to identify made available by the people to make use an extensive dataset of player particular talents. Players could be government to fund the split-second and ball tracking from football and measured against the benchmark of installation of over 1,000 new decisions based on an anticipation of basketball to train machine learning the computational model, De chargepoints for electric Dwhat those around them will do next. algorithms on what humans would Silva said. vehicles. The funding will support Now robots are set to be equipped do in such circumstances. In driverless vehicles, De Silva is the on-street residential chargepoint scheme, launched in with the skills needed to perform Existing artificial intelligence investigating the possibility of using 2017, which helps drivers access such real-world tasks, thanks to an systems are often trained using a camera data road infrastructure to suitable charging points near EPSRC-funded project that aims to technique known as reinforcement instruct autonomous vehicles in how their homes when they don’t have teach them to interact with and learning, in which they are rewarded the best human drivers tackle off-street parking. The scheme anticipate the actions of multiple for making a desirable choice, and difficult scenarios. n has already seen 16 local authorities ready to install 1,200

MEDICAL chargepoints in 2019. of Vienna, have carried out a residual upper arm and convert small-scale test on a group of three these signals into the movements of UK first for 3D printing amputees who had lost an arm above the robotic arm and hand. However, The Manufacturing Technology Fresh feel to Centre has become the UK’s first the elbow, and reported encouraging slippage of the socket, sweat, and research and development prosthetics results in Science Robotics. swelling of tissues can disrupt STUART NATHAN REPORTS centre to install precision The research involved relocating detection and pickup of signals equipment for the 3D printing of For amputees who use prosthetics, nerves in the stumps of three between muscles and sensors. small and complex electronic control of their robotic limb is an patients, implanting wirelessly- The latest technique involves components. MTC has taken important factor for their quality of life. chargeable electrodes and fitting connecting electrodes directly to delivery of a Nano Dimension The closer medical engineers can get to new prostheses. The patients found nerves and muscles in the arm DragonFly LDM additive the function of a natural limb, the more that, in the two years after the stump, allowing the prosthetic to manufacturing system at its base comfortable the amputee tends to be, surgery, they could move their arms “feel” deeper muscles to get a better in Coventry. The new equipment and comfort tends to correlate to more easily and with better accuracy. idea of the user’s precise movements will allow the production of components used in smart confidence in using the prosthetic. Current prosthetic control works wanted by the user. connected devices, plus Now, bioengineers at Imperial using sensors in the socket of the According to the group this led to multi-layer printed circuit boards College London, along with prosthetic to detect subtle improved control and the fitting of and sensors. colleagues in the Medical University movements in the muscles of the the prosthetic socket. n

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AUTOMOTIVE MATERIALS was developed. Using finite-element analysis, the team also optimised the use of New Going green with materials and their distribution within the gearbox housing, said connections Göbbels. This allowed the maximum for electronics manual gearbox stiffness level for the structure, while Volkswagen to cut carbon with new minimising material use, he said. Patterned metal made The team also used a virtual with greener technique HELEN KNIGHT REPORTS transmission ‘acoustic fingerprint’ development STUART NATHAN REPORTS method to design the gearbox’s greener, more this method,” he said. “The simulation acoustics. efficient manual focused particularly on operating “This method was used to gearbox that can ranges with a low engine speed, simulate the sound radiation reduce vehicle which pose particularly demanding behaviour at the transmission’s carbon-dioxide requirements regarding transmission connection points under emissions has fluid delivery.” consideration of an optimal gear been developed By improving the lubrication of all engagement behaviour,” he said. by Volkswagen. gear wheels and bearings, the The new housing improves driving AThe MQ281 gearbox will be fitted company was able to reduce the comfort by reducing the level of noise to the new Passat, which is due to amount of oil required by the gearbox and vibration. launch in September. It will later be over its lifetime to just 1.5 litres. The new gearbox is being Warwick University chemists have added to almost all vehicle classes To reduce friction even further, a manufactured in house, with created a new technique for making within the Volkswagen Group. bearing concept adapted to the production being ramped up at metal contact and connection pathways Depending on the engine and gearbox, using friction-minimised Volkswagen’s plants in Barcelona in for electronics. vehicle combination, the gearbox can bearings with low-contact seals, Spain and Córdoba in Argentina. n The method uses non-toxic save up to 5g of carbon dioxide per chemicals and avoids metal wastage. kilometre, according to Helmut Described in Materials Horizons, it is Göbbels, head of manual gearbox also compatible with continuous and four-wheel-drivetrain roll-to-roll processing methods. development at Volkswagen. Ross Hatton and Silvia Varagnolo This includes ‘downspeeding’, or received EPSRC funding for their project, driving in high gears at low engine which is based on their discovery that speed in order to save fuel. silver and copper do not condense onto “The gearbox must play its part extremely thin films of certain highly in the continuous improvement of fluorinated compounds when the metal the overall vehicle’s fuel is deposited by simple thermal consumption,” he said. deposition. The organofluorine To develop the new gearbox, compounds are similar to those used to Volkswagen’s engineers used make non-stick coatings on cookware, computer modelling techniques, and so are readily available.. including simulating transmission The method involves printing the fluid flow in order to ensure negative pattern where connections are uniform and optimum lubrication not needed onto a polymer substrate, of all necessary components under and then using thermal deposition to all operating conditions, create a metal pattern where the coating said Göbbels. is absent. The metal surface created is “The delivery action as well as uncontaminated, which Hatton believes the turbulence generated by rotors makes the technique very suitable for such as gears were simulated with The new gearbox will first be installed in the new Passat making next-generation sensors. Another potentially important

SENSORS application is colour-tunable, flexible Statistical analysis of the subtle variations in how and lightweight photovoltaic cells. Artificial tongue gets taste these tiny taste buds absorb light while submerged in Perovskite minerals, organic different liquids allowed the team to identify different semiconductors and nano crystals are for whisky types of whiskies. all being investigated as possibilities for An artificial tongue that detects subtle differences The team used the tongue to sample a selection of these, but they all require a low-cost, between different drams of whisky could help thwart whiskies and was able to taste the differences between flexible organic electrode in order to the trade in counterfeit alcohol, according to a group the drinks with greater than 99 per cent accuracy. It function. The team used their methods at Glasgow University. was also capable of picking up on the subtler to produce semi-transparent organic Described in a paper published in Nanoscale, the distinctions between the same whisky aged in different solar cells in which the top silver system uses a checkerboard arrangement of tiny gold barrels and tell the difference between the same electrode is patterned with millions of and aluminium taste buds. whisky aged for 12, 15 and 18 years. JE tiny apertures per square centimetre. n

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MEDICAL ROBOTICS Robots need Bionic system to get a grip restores sight Study argues robotic systems will have to Trials reverse effects of age-related change STUART NATHAN REPORTS macular degeneration HELEN KNIGHT REPORTS Robots working alongside humans ive people with 2mm-diameter photovoltaic chip, will need to understand the context Credit: Lightfield Studios age-related macular containing 378 electrodes, which is of their tasks, according to a study degeneration have implanted under the retina where it from the National Centre for Nuclear consequences of holding the item in been able to read acts like an array of solar panels. Robotics at Birmingham University. the wrong way. letters again, following These panels are powered by a Currently, industrial robots do what “Imagine asking a robot to pass a successful pulsed beam of near-infrared light, their controlling algorithms tell them you a screwdriver,” Ortenzi said. feasibility study of a transmitted by a miniature projector to do with no understanding of why “Based on current conventions the bionic vision system. on the glasses. The light also acts as they are doing it. To work alongside best way for a robot to pick up the FPixium Vision’s Prima system was a signal, containing images captured humans safely, robotic systems will tool is by the handle. Unfortunately, trialled on five patients in France, all by a mini-camera on the glasses, have to change. that could mean that a hugely of whom had advanced dry age- said Buc. A team led by Dr Valerio Ortenzi powerful machine then thrusts a related macular degeneration (AMD). “The patterned light is projected has looked at how robots grasp potentially lethal blade towards you, The system, which is designed to through the pupil of the eye, and the objects and the actions to which that at speed. Instead, the robot needs to restore sight in patients blinded by implant at the back of the retina grasping is linked, and as the team know what the end goal is.” retinal dystrophies, consists of a leverages that signal both as power explains in Nature Machine In another example, Ortenzi noted miniaturised, wireless sub-retinal and a signal,” he said. Intelligence, it concludes that a that if a robot was passing a glass of implant, and augmented reality “There is a lot of intelligence drastic change in the philosophy of water to a resident in a care home, glasses, according to Guillaume Buc, inside the glasses themselves, which robotics may be needed to make the the action is successful if no water is chief technology officer at Paris- acquire the signal from the interaction between human and spilled over the recipient and the based Pixium Vision. miniaturised camera and transform automated systems safe and glass could subsequently be taken “We target diseases where the it into a simplified version of the effective. from the robotic gripper. photoreceptors, the part of the retina digital scene in front of the patient.” Currently, a ‘successful’ grasp is Such criteria are currently not that receives light and converts it AMD is the leading cause of one where the robotic gripper holds programmed into the control into an initial signal for the brain, severe vision loss and legal blindness an object securely without causing algorithms for robotic systems. “The may have died,” said Buc. “The idea is in people over the age of 65 in Europe damage. However, this may in fact be traditional metrics used by to replace the photoreceptors’ and the US. a real-world failure if, for example, researchers, over the past 20 years, function by electrical stimulation, While there are treatments to the gripper is obscuring a barcode, to assess robotic manipulation, are using an implanted prosthesis.” slow the progression of wet AMD, which means that the object cannot not sufficient. In the most practical While none of the patients had there is no cure available for the be tracked. To be fully successful, the sense, robots need a new philosophy any remaining central vision at the more frequent dry form of the system has to understand the to get a grip,” Ortenzi said. n start of the trial, after 12 months disease. with the bionic implant most could Patients suffering with this form MARINE identify letters, with some able to of retinal dystrophy gradually lose identify sequences of letters, he said. their central vision due to the loss of The system consists of a photoreceptors, said Buc. n Auckland charges propellers to help the vessel carry towards e-tug out the same tasks as Hauraki, Patterned light could help to restore sight Ports of Auckland has placed an which consumes 120 litres of order for the world’s first full-size diesel an hour. electric port tug, a green marine For redundancy, two 1,000kW vessel predicted to save 465.31 back-up generator sets will allow tCO2e annually. the vessel to operate at 40 tonnes Set for delivery in 2021, the bollard pull if electrical systems Damen RSD-E Tug 2513 – built by fail. Gorinchem, Netherlands-based “It was important to us that a Damen Shipyards – will have a new electric tug should be able to 70-tonne bollard pull, which carry out normal port operations, matches Hauraki, the port’s just like our existing diesel tugs,” strongest diesel tug. said Tony Gibson, CEO of Ports of At 24.73m-long and with a 6m Auckland. “Our new e-tug will be draft, the e-tug’s 2,800kWh-rated able to do three to four shipping battery pack will drive two azimuth moves on a full charge, or around thrusters with 3m diameter three to four hours work.” JF

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ELECTRONICS AUTOMOTIVE significantly improving yields, according to CEO Michael LeGoff. UVeye out for Sensor boost for “Manufacturers are currently throwing half their material away, so if they can find a way to improve inspections their yield, the economics are Systems to be 3D chip production compelling,” he said. deployed in the To build complex compound automotive industry FBAR system is 1,000 times more accurate semiconductors such as Gallium JASON FORD REPORTS than existing sensors HELEN KNIGHT REPORTS Arsenide (GaAs) VCSELs, atomic layers of material are deposited onto acial-recognition used to produce these cameras is a silicon wafer substrate under software is inaccurate, resulting in around 50 per extreme temperatures and pressure increasingly being cent of the chips being discarded and within a chamber. used on smartphones adding to their cost. Within this chamber is a quartz such as the iPhone X Now Sorex Sensors, a spin-out crystal microbalance sensor to for security and from Cambridge University, has measure the material, which is not payment purposes. developed a new sensor for use in the particularly accurate. Consequently, The technology, which is based on production process, which it claims is tool operators are forced to make Fa 3D camera chip known as an 1,000 times more accurate than educated assumptions about when infra-red vertical cavity surface existing sensors. to shut off the materials, and when emitting laser (VCSEL), is expected to The FBAR (Film Bulk Acoustic to change temperatures and An Israeli technology start-up has be used on one-billion smartphones Resonator) sensor, which will be pressure. raised an additional $31m to expand within the next two years. launched this autumn, can help to “An atomic level understanding of the deployment of its external However, the technique typically improve the production process, what is going on throughout the inspection systems for the process is critical to the automotive industry. FBAR provides an performance of the device,” said The latest investment in UVeye atomic level of LeGoff. was led by Toyota Tsusho, Volvo Cars understanding The much higher accuracy of the and WR Berkley Corporation with FBAR sensor, in contrast, means it participation from partners, can be used to measure the including FIT Ventures. deposition rates directly, said LeGoff. UVeye’s technology carries out The FBAR sensors, which are automatic vehicle inspections fabricated on a silicon wafer, consist utilising artificial-intelligence of a thin film of resonating purpose-built for vehicles. piezoelectric material. When a mass “It’s all based on the deep-learning is attached to the surface it changes engine and computer vision image- the resonant frequency, providing an processing algorithms we developed extremely accurate measurement of in house to solve a very simple but the amount of mass on the sensor. hard problem,” said David Oren, “Our sensor is much smaller UVeye’s chief strategy officer. “We are [than a quartz crystal microbalance] automatically detecting whatever you and operates at much higher can see with your eyes. We are frequencies of between 2GHz and enhancing all the manual inspection 2.6GHz,” LeGoff said. “So, any tiny with an automatic, objective and very mass that lands on it has an efficient system.” UVeye’s drive- immediate effect on its resonant through systems can detect external frequency.” n and mechanical flaws and identify anomalies, modifications or foreign

AEROSPACE objects along the undercarriage and scramjet deliver a combined 30 minutes of combustion around the exterior of the vehicle. The All a matter of thrust for time, performing in test conditions that simulated scanning process completes within speeds in excess of Mach 4. Hypersonic flight is seconds and can be used throughout US scramjet generally accepted as Mach 5 and above. the entire lifecycle of the vehicle. An experimental Northrop Grumman scramjet has set According to the AFRL, the new engine was born on “Our cameras – our acquisition a new US Air Force record for the highest thrust the back of the X-51 Waverider programme, an systems – take multiple images from produced by an air-breathing hypersonic engine. experimental scramjet built by Boeing that launches around the object we are inspecting, During ground tests conducted by the Air Force from under the wing of a B-52 bomber. In May 2013, the then the deep-learning engine kicks Research Laboratory (AFRL) and Air Force Test Centre, X-51 exceeded Mach 5 for 210 seconds. in and does the analysis, which is the engine delivered more than 13,000 pounds (57,850 “A new engine with 10 times the flow of the X-51 based on segmentation, Newtons) of thrust. The nine-month test programme at would allow for a new class of scramjet vehicles,” said classification and some other very Arnold Air Force Base in Tennessee saw the 18ft AFRL’s Todd Barhorst. AW unique algorithms… we developed in house,” Oren told The Engineer. n

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MATERIALS DEFENCE operated at home, in which the results can be observed through Armed and Leeds team strike colour change. “The ultra-sensitivity will enable the detection of analytes at very low unmanned RIB concentration,” said Ye. “This will takes to sea gold in laboratory facilitate the early detection of disease and also the monitoring of Demonstration vessel Rich seam of applications for ultra-thin therapeutic effect, in particular shows its capabilities 2D material HELEN KNIGHT REPORTS cancer treatment after surgery.” JON EXCELL REPORTS The material’s catalytic properties he thinnest dimensions, so the researchers have also means it could be used to unsupported form of dubbed it gold nanoseaweed. transform some industrial waste into gold ever created has When the researchers tested the useful resources for synthesising been synthesised by ultra-thin gold, they found that it is pharmaceutical molecules, Ye said. researchers in the 10 times more efficient as a catalytic “It also has a potential application UK, an advance with substrate than existing 3D gold in water treatment, by providing an applications in the nanoparticles. effective degradation of organic medical device and electronics. The researchers now plan to scale pollutants in wastewater,” she said. TThe 2D material, which consists of up the process to industrial levels. The flakes are also flexible, two layers of atoms sitting on top of The material could be used for meaning they could form the basis of An unmanned armed boat each other in a sheet, has been nanoenzyme-enabled ultra-sensitive electronic components for bendable demonstrated by engineers at BAE developed at Leeds University. bio-sensing devices that can be screens or electronic inks. n Systems could pave the way for naval The material could be used to vessels able to travel further, faster, create extremely sensitive home and into more dangerous biomedical testing devices, as well as environments than is currently in pharmaceutical development and possible. wastewater treatment, according to Developed with engineers from Dr Sunjie Ye, from Leeds’ Molecular L3Harris and MSI Defence Systems, and Nanoscale Physics Group and BAE’s autonomous Pacific 950 Rigid the Leeds Institute of Medical Inflatable Boat (RIB) demonstrator is Research. Ye is lead author of a paper able to operate and navigate describing the work in Advanced autonomously whilst the weapons Science. system remains firmly under a To synthesise the material, the human operator’s control. researchers added chloroauric acid, According to BAE, the vessel can an inorganic substance containing operate for up to 10 days at ‘patrol gold, and a reducing agent, sodium speed’ or 300 nautical miles in pursuit citrate acid aqueous solution, into a mode, reaching speeds of up to 45 solution of a “confinement agent”, knots, whilst either being remotely methyl orange. controlled or on a semi-autonomous After being kept undisturbed for mission. 12 hours at an ambient temperature, BAE added that the vessel has the chloroauric acid was reduced to potential applications across a range its metallic form, with the of missions, including anti-piracy confinement agent having operations, border control, persistent encouraged the gold to form a two intelligence gathering, maritime atom-thick sheet, said Ye. security and force protection. The The gold appears green in water, use of autonomous vessels in as a result of its nanoscale Synthesised gold could be used in transparent conducting displays high-risk areas would allow operations to be conducted without endangering sailors. MEDICAL Lancaster University’s Engineering Department and Dr Commenting on the trials Mike Jane Martindale of the Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh Torso simulator braced for Woods, chief technologist for BAE NHS Foundation Trust and includes a male torso- innovative back support Systems’ Maritime Services shaped mechanical test rig, alongside computer Engineers have for the first time created a simulator business, said: “This technology simulation models. It also includes a 3D-printed spine mimicking the mechanical behaviour of the human represents a huge step forward in the torso, an advance that could lead to innovations in the and rib cage, created using modified CAD models interaction between human and design of medical back supports. derived from CT scans, and a torso with geometries and machine, combining sophisticated The simuator will let researchers test different back other properties that closely resemble and behave like autonomous technology with human brace designs and configurations without needing to human tissues. capabilities to overcome many of the test them on people. The rig also allows for different spine configurations challenges faced in difficult n The simulator was developed by a team from and deformities, such as scoliosis. JF conditions at sea.”

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Let’s get ethical Does engineering need to do more to embed ethics at the heart of the profession? Dr Jim Baxter, an ethicist at the University of Leeds, thinks so

ngineers make the seemingly impossible, possible. They fired the Industrial Revolution. They landed a man on the Moon. They’ve built the world’s great megacities. Do engineers And they will shape the future. have a They will find ways to help the world feed itself, responsibility Ekeep vast populations on the move, and protect to help ensure people from climate change. that emerging But the challenges to come are more complex technologies than those faced by the engineers of the past. such as AI don’t Emerging technologies that promise good also undermine our pose threats to our well-being, privacy and human well-being, rights – and inappropriately-used technology could privacy and further damage a stressed global ecosystem. human rights? Faced with all of this, engineers can draw on Image credit: ethics and values to help them make day-to-day sdecoret via judgements; to reach balanced decisions amid stock.adobe competing demands and pressures. But is the system in the UK for ensuring engineers are applying those values robust enough? engineers fall outside professional oversight. proposing a new ethical code. The values Back in 2005, the Royal Academy of Engineering There is no assurance that they are keeping up to established 14 years ago still hold true. – Engineering Council jointly published its date through continuing professional development. It aims to establish an ethical framework. The Statement of Ethical Principles. Those obliged all The serious implications of this weakness first objective is to bring more engineers within the engineers to act with honesty and integrity, to emerged with the inquiry into building regulations scope of professional oversight. challenge unethical behaviour and to hold and fire safety following the Grenfell Tower blaze. Engineers also need to think about ethical paramount the health and safety of others. Dame Judith Hackitt, who chaired the enquiry, competence. How good are they at applying ethical What is fundamentally expected of engineers is Building a Safer Future, identified “… a lack of principles, are they comfortable speaking about no different from other professionals, such as skills, knowledge and experience and a lack of any decisions that are being made, and can employers doctors. But in engineering there is a weakness: formal process of assuring the skills of those support staff who challenge corporate decisions? the system for ensuring that ethical values are engaged at every stage of the life cycle of higher- Engineering Ethics 2028 calls for responsible followed and applied is fractured. risk residential buildings as a major flaw in the innovation where practitioners play a part in the It is the 36 professional engineering institutions current regulatory system”. public debate around new technologies. (PEIs), working with the Engineering Council, that The inquiry also noted the importance of And, of course, engineers have to consider the provide oversight of an engineer’s professional continuing professional development, particularly impact of their work on a fragile world and to work conduct. However, there is no requirement for a in fire safety. In other countries, it noted, people in a way that is sustainable. If the profession practising UK engineer to be a member of a PEI. who work on complex buildings require achieves this, it will fulfill what is the over-arching As an outsider, when I first started working with certification and registration. duty of engineers: to serve the public good. the engineering profession, I was somewhat taken I am involved with a 10-year plan to root ethics Engineering Ethics 2028 was written to provoke aback by the extremely low number of engineers at the heart of the profession, and for it to become a debate about how ethics should operate in who are professionally registered. a tool to guide and inform day-to-day decisions. engineering. As the profession moves into a world The engineer and lawyer John Uff QC conducted The plan was written following consultation that is increasingly dominated by technology, it has a major review into the structure of the engineering with the leaders of the profession, including the to show that decisions are ethically sound. profession: UK Engineering 2016. In that review, he Royal Academy of Engineering, the Engineering Failure to do so risks eroding the standing of quoted estimates that only 15 per cent of Council, Engineers Without Borders and the engineers at a time when they can grab an engineers were members of a professional body. Engineering Professors’ Council. opportunity to establish a role as stewards of a In consequence of this, the vast majority of Called Engineering Ethics 2028, it is not future shaped by technological advances. n

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Why are these projects being considered using 1950s pantograph technology? Surely, we need to develop train systems with integrated clean power sources such as hydrogen. Mailbox Fahrzeugmanagement Region Frankfurt RheinMain, a rail operator in the Frankfurt Rhine-Main Metropolitan Area, has ordered 27 Thehottopic hydrogen-powered trains of the Coradia iLint type. The vehicles will be delivered by the end of 2022. The supply costs around €500m. Our government will spend at least that long deciding what colour the meeting room chairs Getting to grips with HS2 should be; then the project will take twice as long and cost three times as much as Our online poll on how the UK’s new government budgeted. So where is this new vibrant, thrusting should tackle HS2 provoked a debate on UK government going to put its new Trans- 5G infrastructure Pennine track? Has Boris even considered that pantographs don’t fit into Victorian tunnels? If they don’t cut a new tunnel, they will have to go around, via Burnley or Woodhead, defeating the object of making it faster. The whole system needs to be massively upgraded, otherwise it will be like a motorway, never fully open from end to end because of rolling minor improvements. Sandy

We don’t need high speed as much as we need high capacity. Door-to-door total time means that high speed doesn’t give much gain, especially over the relatively short distances between Liverpool and Doncaster. But frequent high-capacity trains would make a difference... after we’ve sorted out the roads first, of course! Tim

Unlike the major airports, where landings and take-off slots are at capacity, rail lines can easily accommodate more trains per hour. The rail infrastructure could and should be upgraded to reflect this obvious fact. I agree The large companies involved so far have not would suggest that ‘any’ work on improving/ that high speed is less important in a country of shown their best side; it’s already out of control. upgrading the railways should always start with our size than the capacity to travel in comfort We still have to establish when Crossrail will be the northern sections and only complete the and at a frequency conducive to both business completed. Not a good position. Do that many London sections last. This would ensure the north and leisure activities. people need high-speed rail compared to their is not short changed and would provide the Mike Blamey need for reliable broadband, 3G or 4G? Even in requisite pressure on schedules from London the middle of our major cities you often can’t get (and, for the record, I’m a southerner). Crossrail ran into troubles trying to complete 4G. The future is digital communication and a Another Steve too many new technologies in one project reliable service everywhere is what people seek. simultaneously. The existing infrastructure, This will enable flexible working, especially in Since Beeching took his axe to the rail network in although very stressed, evolved to its current rural communities. I am a regular rail user; let’s the 1960s the population of the UK has more than situation, which is why it just about copes, make the current system more reliable. doubled. To expect the existing lines to cope with most of the time. The chaos that Crossrail is Declan Flynn additional demand with the greater population trapped in is likely for whichever flavour of HS2 and a push to get us to use public transport is is imposed on the country. There are too many Upgrade existing lines only. Our existing railway pure fantasy. More capacity is needed; anyone new features in a mix that has too many infrastructure is falling apart and suffers who has used the vastly over-crowded network problems already. Cancel the London-to- through lack of investment, so if we have will have noticed. Using air travel on this island Birmingham section. It’s the wrong route and £100bn to spare (because that is the current demonstrates how far behind French, German and the wrong solution. HS2 cost guesstimate) it would be better spent Spanish railways we are. The Colonel on upgrading the existing infrastructure. Also, I Malcolm Jennings

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Thesecretengineer Variety is the spice of an engineering life A new role working on an unfamiliar product prompts our anonymous blogger to reflect on the value of working in a wide range of sectors

I can now reveal that the Secret Engineer is changed, along with the jobs market, but the loss moving jobs once more. Hardly unexpected this of this early personal diversification – whether time as I’ve been working as a sub-contractor by design or happen-stance – feels like and, as such, this has been of an intrinsically something of an own goal for industry. temporary nature. I have been both a ‘permie’ People still move about between companies; and a ‘subby’ regularly throughout my career, if anything, we have seen a marked reduction in having found there are advantages and the ‘job-for-life’ paradigm but my focus here is disadvantages with each role. What I have always towards the youngsters and how they looked for is a change from what I have done accumulate a broad working knowledge as before. There are industries I’d like to go back to quickly as possible. After all, what is ‘experience’ given the chance but even then I hope that there other than being exposed to multiple influences would be some new challenge involved. and finding out for yourself what works and what My own approach to seeking variety within doesn’t in various situations? my career became crystallised early on. I was As regards the latest stage in my own working on space-related gubbins when myself adventure within the realms of engineering, I am and a much more experienced and senior (ironically) currently at the slightly apprehensive colleague were called into the boss’s office. He ‘should I have stayed where I was comfortable’ was looking for someone to work on a new and achievable for most of us but where do we go phase. The new position is below heights I have revolutionary propulsion system. However, from there? Where is the challenge and scaled before and involves manufacturing where I was immediately enthusiastic at being excitement that is at the core of engineering? techniques I am entirely familiar with, yet I still involved in something cutting edge and new to Worse for me – and I believe I have touched worry that I will find some aspects difficult to me, m’learned colleague simply replied: “I only on this before – is how companies seem to master. Look at it another way. I will be working do waveguides.” I’m still quite shocked at him restrict the scope of fresh-faced graduates. I feel on a product I have not worked on before, for a having such a limited outlook even now, about 30 very lucky to have worked on a wide variety of new company, and I will have the chance to learn years later. products within a range of companies, but rather something new. I will of course be absolutely I can understand the mentality of wanting to than ‘lucky’ I would prefer to feel that I had committed in my approach and I hope that this be very good, or comfortable within your own simply followed a path that is still readily will be the start of a lengthy and mutually fruitful specialisation but to not even consider the available to those currently joining our ranks. Of association. In fact, I would go so far as to say, at occasional diversion is surely both limiting and course, back in the day, with apprentices at least, this early stage, that the signs are good for potentially tedious? It also seems to reduce such peripatetic tenancies were positively settling in for the long haul. If it doesn’t work out options in personal development. To be the best encouraged. Once you received your papers that though, there are plenty more opportunities to within such a closely defined field should be was it, you were off and away. Times may have learn and flourish. n

that television was not the best route to a knows when or what the replacement might be. Inyouropinion high-flying engineering career. The RAEng would So the number of new cars sold drops. We do not be most willing to help. cope well with negative growth, but we ought to Engineering on television Prof Terry Wilkins get used to it as it will be a feature of the future. I see the imperative behind ‘dumbing down’ but Oliver Dunthorne suspect that those for whom it is dumbed down The problem I have with most of the ‘engineering’- will not be watching anyway. I don’t believe that based coverage is that it has to repeat the last Car production has obviously been hit by the engineering qualifications are essential for the three minutes after every ad break. I may be diesel problem, but investment confidence is presenters, but a thorough understanding of the advancing in years, but I am not in the goldfish obviously going to be hit by Brexit, because no one technology and enthusiasm most definitely is. category yet. By the time the repeated bits are told people this was going to happen three years Richard Jenvey edited out, that ‘30-minute’ programme contains ago. What do you expect when you intend to kick barely five minutes of actual data and most of that out your best customer and when the few motor There are not enough engineers involved in is so lightweight that it becomes tedious to watch. manufacturers in the UK have alternative television. Some years ago, the Royal Academy of Pete production sites? Engineering (RAEng) ran media fellowship Sandy competitions for rising young engineering stars. UK car production declines We had several winners. They were so good in the Cars now have a longer life of five-plus years. Join the debate role that the media (BBC etc) wanted to keep People and companies keep them longer. The theengineer.co.uk them. But they were smart enough to recognise internal combustion engine is fading and no one

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HEADLINE SPONSORS cover feature | Civil aerospace maintenance Repairs on high How are aircraft returned to active service as soon as possible? The answer lies with the MRO industry. Stuart Nathan reports.

hile much of The Engineer’s coverage of the aerospace sector involves the research, development and manufacture of new aircraft, this is hardly the whole story of Wengineering in aerospace. The average lifetime of any aircraft can be measured in decades, and the effort – and innovation – that goes into keeping them in the air is considerable. And like so many aspects of the engineering world, it has its own set of acronyms. The most important of these is MRO – maintenance, repair and overhaul – which refers to the activity and the companies that Drones are particularly useful for provide this service. The MRO industry is as inspecting parts of aircraft that are varied as any other part of the engineering difficult for maintenance staff to landscape, consisting of companies both Image:Lufthansa Teknik access, such as the tailfin large and small. At the top end of the spectrum, many of the large airlines run MRO operations on behalf of smaller heavier metals. and nothing happens. For the airlines, it’s a case of players, something that has grown with the For MROs, efficiency has a slightly different how long will it take for us to turn that around? And increasing prevalence of low-cost airlines meaning. It’s to do with the most efficient use of the because they don’t know what’s wrong, they don’t that find it cheaper to contract in services aircraft in service of its owner: in practical terms know how long the plane will be the ground or how than to provide their own. At the small end of making sure it is earning money for the largest- much it will cost. So, increasingly, the goal of the market are operations that tend to possible fraction of its working life. An aircraft being scheduled maintenance is to, as far as possible, stop service ‘executive airlines’ that run a few maintained is not carrying passengers and therefore that from happening. When you ask airlines what business jets. not earning fares – so in almost all cases, innovation they want from maintenance, the answer is that they It would be fair to say that virtually all in MRO is to do with making the process faster and want 100 per cent availability of their asset. Of innovation in the aerospace sector is driven returning the aircraft to active service in the air as course, that’s not really possible: what they want is to by efficiency, although different parts of the soon as possible, rather than it being stuck in a be able to use their aircraft when they need it. And sector attach their own meaning to this. For hangar with components strewn over the floor. that means ‘no surprises’.” aircraft manufacturers, efficiency means Prof Ian Jennions, director of the IVHM (integrated In common with many sectors of industry, that extracting the maximum possible vehicle health management) centre at Cranfield means preventative maintenance is the priority performance from their vehicles for the University, explained that airlines have scheduled during those scheduled maintenance periods. minimum input of fuel: flying further for less maintenance, where the aircraft comes in for various “Scheduled maintenance is called A, B, and C cost and producing low emissions of kinds of checks at set periods, and unscheduled checks,” Jennions explained. “A checks are like ‘check greenhouse gas and noise. The obvious maintenance, which is fixing things that have gone the oil and the tyres’. Bs are where you might also consequence of this is aircraft becoming wrong. “That’s the expensive stuff, where the pilot check the batteries and things like that. C is more the lighter and using composites in place of comes into the cockpit turns the key [figuratively] heavy maintenance where you strip the aircraft down,

2 4 THE ENGINEER | SEPTEMBER 2019 cover feature Civil aerospace maintenance

as far as taking the engines and even wings off, and checking for corrosion. During those periods, a lot 01 of activity is about playing safe. If you have a component that you know will last for about 1,000 hours of flying time, you’ll give it 950 hours and then pull it for replacement. That’s simple, of course, but the area I work in is moving towards condition monitoring. And that’s to do with informing maintainers how components are behaving. So, we fit sensors, we take data, we perform algorithms, and look at how those different parts are degrading to avoid this unscheduled maintenance. “One kind of algorithm is a diagnostic; that will tell you what has gone wrong with something. The other is a prognostic, which is saying, ‘something is not quite right and it will ultimately fail in the future’. It’s giving you a time, saying that if you continue to use this vehicle in this way, you have a month, two months, three months in which to repair it before it can fail. That’s kind of where it’s at. So, you can inform the airline that they need to take action. They can arrange that with their Image: :Lufthansa Teknik maintenance staff, so they do it when they want to rather than when the plane breaks.” A variety of sensors are used for these purposes, prtrying to get things moved there.” Some of the Jennions said. Depending on the type of component 02 technologies being tested are on the cutting edge of or subsystem in question, they might be engineering techniques, said Guelck. “One very temperature or vibration sensors, for example. And good example is 3D printing, which we are using to this is bringing about a change in the way that make small tools and fixtures. It’s a very fast way maintenance is carried out, he added. “Aircraft have for us to prototype these tools, and we’ll work up a maintenance computer and when they land, a towards printing them on demand to be used first-line maintenance engineer will go into the during actual operations, rather than having to have cockpit and it will tell them what to do. That’s quite them manufactured off site.” a big change in culture, and you often get a Another technology that has been trialled in the response of ‘that’s not gone wrong, it’s never gone Innovation Bay is the use of drones in aircraft wrong before.’ But once people check and see that inspection. “Today, that’s all done by the human eye. it’s right, they quickly start taking the systems Image:Lufthansa Teknik A maintenance engineer inspects the surface of the much more seriously.” aircraft for scratches, corrosion and dents. A Such scenarios are likely to be familiar to camera mounted on a drone system with machine engineers in manufacturing sectors, where vision checking the camera output is potentially factories are also becoming increasingly sensor- 01 Exoskeletons can help faster and more able to reach some of the difficult equipped and oriented towards condition operators peform areas, such as the vertical tail fin, which can be very monitoring and preventative maintenance. But the repeatetive tasks, but may high off the ground, so getting a person up there on MRO sector is also turning towards new limit flexibility a gantry and getting them close enough to inspect technologies to help maintenance engineers do 02 3D printing speeds up properly can be a problem.” their job more effectively. For one of the biggest production of tooling UK company Blue Bear is among those MROs, Lufthansa Technik, which provides services developing drones for this activity. Operations for many smaller and budget airlines, there is a director Gavin Goudie told The Engineer that drone dedicated business function for developing, inspections are intended to supplement rather than assessing and forming usage procedures for such replace altogether visual inspections by new technologies. Kevin Guelck, who works in the “You often get a re- maintenance engineers. “However, we are looking at base maintenance product division (which handles sponse of ‘that’s not installing different types of sensor on the drone mainly what Jennions referred to as C checks, the that could potentially detect the kind of defects large-scale strip-down activities that occur at gone wrong, it’s never that would not be visible even to the experienced relatively long periods in the aircraft’s duty cycle, gone wrong before.’ But human eye,” he said. “As with all technology in this typically every three years or so depending on the space, the goal is to improve the thoroughness of aircraft’s flight hours), explained what happens in once people check and the inspection and to reduce the time it takes.” Lufthansa Teknik’s Innovation Bay. Guelck also explained how Lufthansa Technik is The bay is a hangar at the business’s base in see it’s correct, they looking at the introduction of augmented reality Malta, he explained. “We came up with the idea in start taking mainte- systems to help maintenance engineers perform 2018,” he said. “It’s a lot about internal process their role. “We’ve looked at one system that helps optimisation and improvements. We are not aiming nance computer sys- the operator to get a direct visual feedback on the for a theoretical improvement idea. It’s really tems more seriously” dimensions of a dent or scratch. The more ‘classical practical, next to the aircraft, interacting with the applications’ of augmented reality, with systems customer, interacting with the experts on site and Prof Ian Jennions, Cranﬁ eld such as Google Glass or Microsoft HoloLens, have

SEPTEMBER 2019 | THE ENGINEER 25 cover feature | Civil aerospace maintenance

different options company decided not to implement either solution. where they are “We got some positive feedback in that they do help “An engine will be ser- 03 Augmented reality rig to used in training with support, but operators also found that they viced every 10 million help scan for supeficial or to help guide limited flexibility of movements. We continue to damage people through work closely with suppliers to develop such miles of flight service - the various steps systems – in these cases they came from the that’s the equivalent of of inspection or medical sector to help people rehabilitating from repair processes.” injury and from prosthetic technology, but we flying to the moon and Aircraft manufacturers are looking at ways of decided they weren’t for us in routine operations.” back 20 times” augmenting engineers themselves to help with their Much of Guelck’s work is with airframe jobs. For example, Airbus now uses partial maintenance; for Lufthansa Technik, at least, Chris Heason, Rolls-Royce exoskeletons to help engineers perform repetitive engine maintenance comes under a different operations that require awkward physical division. But here, new technology is again positioning, such as lifting heavy tools many times developing, with the aim of making engine to fix fasteners in position. Lufthansa Technik is also maintenance faster. At Rolls-Royce, a suite of looking at exoskeleton usage, said Guelck. “Base robotic systems is being developed to maintain maintenance is very man-hour intensive. The people engines without having to take them off the wing of back 20 times. When they come in for overhaul, working on the aircraft have to carry out tasks that the aircraft. many if not most of the parts look misshapen are sometimes very, very heavy and take a lot of Rolls-Royce joining and addition specialist Chris compared to when they came out of the factory.” energy. And that gave us the idea to bring the Heason explained that taking an engine off a wing Rolls-Royce is developing three different problem side and the technology side together and makes working on it much easier, as all the systems on-wing robotic maintenance systems. Flare is a trial exoskeleton systems in the Innovation Bay.” are more accessible, but it means that the aircraft snake-robot-based system that can go inside Two different types of exoskeleton have been will be out of operation for weeks. If the engine combustion chambers and carry out in-situ tested, said Guelck. One of these is a ‘chairless maintenance and repair operations can be carried repairs. The interiors of combustion chambers are chair’, a device that supports operators in a relaxed out with the engine in place, that could potentially coated with a specialist ceramic that helps them sitting position when they have to work on be shortened to days. “We only make an engine resist the high temperatures of burning fuel, but something at a lower level. Another is a device once, but it will be fully serviced four or five times, these coatings can, over time, flake and expose the called the Airframe, which supports the operator’s and that tends to be every 10 million miles of flight underlying metal. The flare system uses a pair of arms when they lift heavy items. Eventually, the service – that’s equivalent of flying to the Moon and snake robots, the diameter of a pen, one of which is

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accrued with cameras and the other with a working with Swansea and Birmingham flame-spray nozzle that melts powdered ceramic universities on a system that uses relative layer “Every blisk repair we at around 3,000°C and fires it at a damaged area. manufacturing to repair damaged blisks. make in the cell is “When we find a bit of coating that’s flaked off, we It’s a multistage process. First, the blisk is can go inside the engine and put a patch back on; sprayed with a thin coating of a white paint so that hughly adaptive and rather like a high-tech sticking plaster, to make a visual scanning system is not confused by unique. We need to sure that the engine gets back to base when it’s reflections from the highly polished metal of the scheduled to,” Heason explained. This system is blisk. Then, a camera system mounted on a robot have a digital twin to being developed in partnership with Nottingham arm is used to inspect blisks from all angles to make sure it takes University and Dudley-based company build up a detailed three-dimensional scan of its Metallisation, which specialises in flame- geometry, including any damaged or snapped place.” spray technology. blades. “They may have picked up a lot of damage. Chris Heason, Rolls-Royce Another system, Cobra, is a 5m-long, 8mm They might have bent a little bit slightly. The point is diameter, highly manoeuvrable snake robot that they don’t look like the CAD model that we sent out would be used in conjunction with augmented the door. They have to be digitised first. Every repair reality technology to inspect the interior of a jet that we make in that cell is highly adaptive and engine to diagnose any problems it might have. unique to that damage feature. We need to have Cobra can also carry tools to melt, for example, some kind of digital twin to make sure that that cracked turbine blades so that the crack is adaptive repair takes place.” has led to companies such as Delta Air Lines replaced by a scallop shape that cannot propagate The scanned blade is then put into a laser moving aggressively into the MRO market, he said. and break off the blade while the engine is in additive layer manufacturing cell under a carefully “They overhaul engines; they overhaul everything. service. This system is being developed in controlled argon atmosphere, where a metal They recognised very early that the money was in association with RACE (Remote Applications in powder jet is used to repair any defects. “There the parts, not just in attached labour. So, they Challenging Environments), the UK Atomic Energy aren’t any other laser cells like that in the world reverse-engineered the entire structure of the Authority robot development organisation, as it that enable you to have such a control of the blades, for example, got them approved, and then may also have applications in inspecting the atmospheric conditions, so the resulting repaired they do their own blade repairs.” interiors of nuclear reactors, said Heason. blade is as good as it would be when it leaves the But this is not the case everywhere, he added. In The third system is called Swarm and, as the factory floor. So, we don’t have any kind of fatigue Europe, KLM, Air France and Lufthansa also offer name implies, it consists of very small bug-like life loss within this component after its repair.” The similar services, but Middle East carriers such as robots. These are based on a chassis developed by final stage of the process is re-machining the Etihad and Emirates prefer the OEMs to carry out Harvard University, which would explore the interior repaired blisks on a six-axis machine-tool so they their own MRO activities, Jennions explained “It’s a of an engine combustion chamber. “A range of these conform precisely to the original design fascinating space because on one side, you’ve got beetles would be introduced into the engine using a specifications. the MRO organisations of airlines like Delta saying, snake-like robot. Each of them is looking at a The MRO business is currently undergoing ‘we have all this operational data on how to fly feature within the engine and it is sending its significant changes, according to Cranfield’s Ian Boeings. Would you like it and how much are you position, as well as what it is seeing, back to a Jennions. This, he explained, comes from the going to pay for it?’. On the other hand, you’ve got centralised location. That enables you to complete airlines realising that the profit margins in MRO are equally large airlines like Emirates saying, ‘okay, Mr a scan of what you’re seeing. And once you’ve considerably higher than those for operators: 25 to Boeing or Mr Airbus, you arrange the maintenance finished, all of those little devices are then 30 per cent compared with 10 to 15 per cent. This for us. Just take care of it.” ■ collected back by the same snake robot and taken out of the engine.” Although the swarm beetles would not themselves carry out any repairs, their 04 data would help a system such as Cobra or Flare to be deployed more quickly and effectively, Heason explained. Currently, the beetles use electrostatic forces around their feet to enable them to walk upside down inside the complex shaped spaces of the combustion chamber. Another system that Rolls-Royce is working on, although not this time in the on-wing paradigm, is the automated repair of blisks: bladed discs that make up part of the compressor section of a gas turbine engine. Blisks are lighter and stronger than discs onto which blades have been welded, but they are high-value components that are difficult to repair, Heason said. The company has been

04 Rolls-Royce’s maintenance innovations, clockwise from top left: Cobra, being controlled by AR; Swarm; FLARE, ﬂ ame- spraying; and FLARE, exploring

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Sustainababble and the circular economy What might the future look like for manufacturing when we have to take sustainability more seriously? Stuart Nathan puts on his thinking cap

s sustainability sustainable? I don’t mean the concept itself. At a time when we are supposed to be on the lookout for runaway growth in all sorts of environmental markers, one thing that is growing exponentially is the use of buzzwords, and that threatens to rob them of their meaning and their force. An event organised by Dassault Systemes in IJuly was concerned with sustainable industry and explored the implications of the term. The changes that true sustainability will require from industry are profound. While talk of “sustainable people” might be pure ‘sustainababble’, to borrow an irresistible term from keynote speaker James Woudhuysen, it’s worth thinking about what a truly sustainable vision of industry would be. It would take product stewardship to a level so far unseen. If we are to think sustainably – that is, ensuring that the pool of usable raw materials is not permanently depleted – then we will have to adapt our business models so that manufacturers can still make a profit when they return the materials to the supply chain. That’s a lot of rhenium. Are we going It might be that the recycling aspect of the to need to recycle it? ‘circular economy’ would fall to a new industrial Image: Rolls-Royce sector, but that sector would still have to generate a profit for its investors. s the feeling at a political and public level is that the manufacturer should lives depend for their function on the unique Are jet-engine manufacturers going to have to take responsibility for recycling, there would properties of one element: indium. Touchscreens build rhenium recovery into their business models? have to be some sort of transaction between will not work without indium tin oxide, a Questions such as these are one reason that manufacturer and recycler. transparent conductor. And indium is quite scarce. some people are thinking about space mining. This raises an interesting question. Who is the Most of it comes from China as a byproduct of Elements are produced in supernovas. There might manufacturer? If Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) builds zinc mining, and at the rates we are producing be deposits on the Moon and they will exist inside a car, it’s made mainly from aluminium and steel, touchscreen electronic devices we only have asteroids. But the cost and complexity of finding, which are highly recyclable. At the end of its life, enough for the next couple of decades. Somebody extracting and bringing them back to Earth is not having passed through the hands of several owners, is going to have to seriously work on a process for going to be economic soon, and so turning the it needs to be recycled. Many of its components recovering indium from end-of-life touchscreens. industries that use them into part of the circular will have been made by companies in JLR’s supply The aerospace industry is one that is probably economy is probably the only practical solution. chain, and that origin will have been captured as more familiar to most Engineer readers, and it has So, what is a sustainable person? Is it somebody part of its business processes. Will JLR have to a similar problem. Low-cost flying is a result of who can work out how industry can continue to become a reverse distributor, taking responsibility the development of more fuel-efficient engines operate? Is it somebody who can adapt and learn somehow for returning those components back to that operate at high temperatures. That is a direct new skills that don’t currently exist to handle such their origin for disposal and recycling? result of the heat-resistant properties of rhenium, processes? Is it somebody who can cope with the This is even more complex than it seems. I’m a component of the alloys from which jet engine changes to a way of life we have come to take for indebted to friend of The Engineer Prof Mark turbine blades are made. Rhenium is one of the granted as the iron laws of elemental properties Miodownik of UCL for a couple of thought- rarest elements on Earth; 70 per cent of all annual and abundance in the Earth’s crust take hold? Or is provoking examples. The touchscreen devices that production goes into turbine blades and we’re that so much ‘sustainababble’? so many of us have incorporated into our everyday going to run out of it at current rates of production. Comments on p32

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“Perhaps the circle is more of a helix with different options - such as repair and reusability or repurposing. Car spare parts could be made cheaper and easier to fix” Julian Spence

I find this opportunity really exciting. More and more of my students are engaging in these conversations, which I love to see. I’m going to use this in my classes. A question for you and your readers. From a supply chain perspective, and in the main, do you think we will have to create brand-new supply chains to move successfully into the circular economy? Or can we adapt existing supply chains? Chuck Nemer The indium in the coating on The circular economy requires new mindsets at touchscreens is in short supply. every level. If we look at the JLR and aerospace Image from Pixabay cases being at the more complex end of the spectrum, this topic has to become a central part of the management process, but governments will oxide looks a good bet. However, the point is well superconducting composite tape: gadolinium– also have to be seriously involved. made about resource scarcity and resource limits. barium–copper oxide (GdBaCuO). At the product-owner level (JLR, Airbus), every The point about the costs of recycling (money, How much funding is the EU prepared to put component will have to be designed for a high pollution and so on) has been well made. into a sea change in marine RE design, to make level of re-cycling with the responsibility of each However, perhaps the circle is more of a helix all these electrical components redundant? member of the supply chain identified and signed with different options – such as repair and re- Install integral energy storage too. Then you’ll up to the re-manufacturing process as an integral usability and re-purposing. I’m not sure how this have sustainable, dispatchable electricity around part of the supply contract. could be encouraged. Perhaps, for example, car the globe. If the re-manufacture of a components cannot spare parts could be made cheaper and easier to David Smart be guaranteed, the design should be changed fix. This would reduce insurance costs and could even if this might mean reduced performance or encourage the birth of small local ‘fixit’ companies I have long seen the word “Sustainability” as an increased cost. End-of-product life will also need (and could also apply to other electronic goods). excuse for lazy thinking, as noted in the article it is to be handled. In addition, lightweighting, by design (including used in the media to justify anything. The natural The greenhouse-gas emissions for the complete multi-functionality) has a part to play in increasing supply/demand side of sustainability should be manufacturing and distribution process will material efficiency. As cost is often ‘designed able to cope but needs regulations to ensure that need to be continuously monitored with point-of- in’ it is perhaps worth considering affordable the right costs are applied to the right wastage sale tax added for goods for which appropriate manufacturing technologies and then get stream. Thus, the disposable food wrapping (and documentation and guarantees are not available. designers to consider manufacturing opportunities even wasted food therein) are taxed very lightly at This may well reduce the demand or change Julian Spence present and there is little incentive to recycle or the supply chain: for instance, local supply may avoid wastage. become more competitive. “There really isn’t anything to compete with The real implication of wastage is litter, Sound drastic? Perhaps, but with good PLM, neodymium for magnets”. This according to a mines increased waste treatment and disposal manufacturing and maintenance systems this expert in 2019. costs and sometimes loss of a valuable asset. is achievable, but the design process has to be In November 2018, a 3.6MW wind turbine in “Sustainability” is used instead of “good- seriously re-thought. Denmark had its permanent magnet generator housekeeping” and “common sense” to try to make Ian Duncan replaced by a high-temperature superconducting reducing wastage and poor economic evaluation ceramic as part of the EU-funded EcoSwing of this seem scientifically based. Look at the I think this is a good article that gets the project. The superconductor reduces the size of reduction in plastic bag usage since charges were ball rolling. the generator and replaces about 1t of neodymium imposed: this simple, sensible bit of conservation People are already looking to replace indium (Nd) used in NdFeB permanent magnets with took years longer than it ought to have taken. tin oxide because of its cost and toxicity, and zinc about 1kg of the rare earth gadolinium used in the Jack Boughton

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Charting a course for autonomy

Thales UK chief executive Victor Chavez spoke to Andrew Wade about maritime autonomy, cybersecurity, skills and Brexit

iven Victor Chavez’s background, it’s perhaps no surprise that he ended up at the helm of one of the UK’s biggest naval contactors. “You might not get it from my surname, but I was born in Barrow-in- Furness in Cumbria,” Chavez told The Engineer. “My father ran off to join the Chilean Navy at the Gage of 15. My mother was British and they met when Vickers in Barrow was building ships for the Chilean Navy. So I am the product of a defence exports sale, which seems entirely appropriate!” Chavez was speaking on the back of a Thales UK roundtable on maritime autonomy that the chief executive had chaired himself. Having joined the company in 1999, he graduated to the top job in 2011. Thales today counts more than 50 of the world’s navies as customers, many of whom view autonomy as a growing priority. “Maritime defence is basically our biggest sector as Thales UK, so maritime autonomy is naturally an area that we’re gravitating to and it’s a huge opportunity for navies around the world,” Chavez said. He points to the dominance of Predator drones in the unmanned aerial market when they arrived more than 20 years ago. By comparison, no such hegemony exists in the “As capacity increases, it gives us the maritime world, giving space for a broader ecosystem to 01 With more than 50 of opportunity for ever-richer analysis, because evolve. Thales UK’s expertise in mine clearance puts it in the world’s navies as we’ll have a richer data set to look at. At the prime position to be part of that ecosystem, according to customers, maritime moment, we have to rely on smarter algorithms the CEO. defence is Thales UK’s on board to compress data sets in certain “Not only is maritime our major sector, but mine biggest sector scenarios.” countermeasures and mine hunting is an export product Satcoms for surface vessels may not be a and capability that we’ve been providing for decades to 02 Both surface and problem, but subsea communications remain a the Royal Navy. And mine clearance is one of the most subsea autonomy are stubborn conundrum. To reach submarines or obvious use cases for autonomy,” he said. major priorities for Thales unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) at “We’re at that transition where navies around the world significant depths, radio signals need to be in will start buying autonomous systems and phasing out the extremely low frequency (ELF) range, historic mine countermeasures vessels. So, for us it’s generally considered to be between 0-300Hz. existential that Thales UK succeeds in this market.” more we use,” he said. “For defence autonomous Creating these mega longwave transmissions Mine hunters may be the obvious entry point for systems, we design them to be robust in the requires grounded wire antennas up to 60km autonomous naval vessels, but there is a much wider face of a hostile RF [radio-frequency] long that use huge amounts of energy, maritime market on the horizon. This raises the question environment as well.” sometimes requiring their own power stations. of data and communications. In a future where fleets of In many instances, this means redundancy Even then, communication is limited to just a autonomous or unmanned vessels rule the waves, will that allows platforms to operate in the complete few characters per minute, with submarines satcoms be capable of relaying all that data? Chavez, absence of satcoms. often simply instructed to climb to periscope whose academic background is in physics and satellite “You can use satellite if it’s there. If it’s not depth so that more detailed orders can be given engineering, says the current infrastructure is sufficient there, then you have to make do with something via traditional RF methods. but that defence systems are rarely built to rely on else. So, it teaches us to be very meagre in “It’s a little bit specialised,” Chavez joked. satcoms alone. terms of our data rates; we really will compress “Whales seem to be quite good at it.” “As we all know with bandwidth, the more you give the everything down as far as humanly possible. Although research is ongoing, the Thales UK

34 THE ENGINEER | SEPTEMBER 2019 interview victor chavez

digital identity and biometrics. The company will become Thales’s seventh global division, named Digital Identity and Security (DIS). According to Chavez, Gemalto’s capabilities will benefit the entire Thales Group. “They are at the heart of all of the digital identity and security that you touch and use every day of your lives, whether it’s SIM cards in your mobile phone or the security for the banking and payment card in your wallet,” he explained. “It’s quite a different sector for us. It’s a much more 01 ‘civil’ sector, a more mobile tech sector. And that’s really exciting because we will transform all of our businesses using these technologies, regardless of which sector it is. chief admits that subsea comms is a technical “At Thales we’re currently working on Digital trust is at the heart of securing all of those issue that may never be solved. unmanned air vehicles, unmanned surface autonomous systems, for example… and as we become “The laws of physics tend to be fairly vehicles, unmanned underwater vehicles, more and more dependent on these capabilities, immutable in that respect.” autonomous trains, unmanned air traffic advanced trust architectures are the answer to how we Tomorrow’s engineers may not be expected to management, and satellites, which are pretty can trust these systems with our lives.” solve the problem of subsea communication, autonomous once you put them up there.” With Brexit looming, Thales is again preparing for but skills around autonomy will be a Autonomy in the maritime segment – possible disruption to its supply chains. It’s a worry, but prerequisite for many. Indeed, Thales sees particularly in commercial shipping – could also not one that Chavez seems to be losing sleep over. Having unmanned vessels as something of a honeypot help substantially reduce emissions, striking a ramped up preparations in March, the company will be for the maritime sector. Where the brightest and chord with climate-conscious millennial doing similar ahead of the 31 October deadline. As for any best may once have been lost to the ‘sexier’ engineers. skills squeeze, Thales should be insulated from the worst disciplines of aerospace and automotive, the “There’s no doubt that maritime autonomy of it by the nature of its business. rapid advances in maritime autonomy could has a good potential in exciting people and, as “Because we do a significant element of defence work help redress the balance. with all autonomous systems, they actually in the UK, the vast majority of our people are UK “We do really see things such as autonomy require a wide range of engineering disciplines,” nationals, but as you’d expect we do have some non-UK and robotics as said Chavez. EU nationals as well,” said Chavez. “And it’s really exciting the next One of those important that we retain access to this sort of talent.” generation of talent in disciplines will be Key to that, according to Chavez, will be a responsive engineering, and “We’re at that transition cybersecurity and the visa regime that enables swift access to overseas people who are area of digital trust. In engineers. Boris Johnson’s recent announcement for just interested in STEM where navies around the April, Thales such a system will no doubt be welcomed by the Thales want to work on new world will start buying completed the €4.8bn UK chief. As always, however, the devil will be in the detail. technologies and acquisition of Dutch The future of the high seas may well be unmanned, but capabilities,” autonomous systems” software firm the human skills required to build that future have never said Chavez. Gemalto, specialists in been more in demand. ■

SEPTEMBER 2019 | THE ENGINEER 35 ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE

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Digitalisation to the fore Education has always been part of the WBE format of Maintec. The new-look programme will feature a variety of different session formats including; keynote presentations, in-depth case aintec is somewhat an study reviews of active maintenance outlier in the world of projects, technical sessions, and panel engineering discussions. exhibitions in the UK. As the longest- Each day begins with a keynote Mstanding event dedicated to the presentation, both of which emphasise maintenance industry, which this year the role of digitalisation in modern will be celebrating 44 years, it has stood confirming their participation for 2019 maintenance. Today, digitalisation offers the test of time – evolving and adapting before the show doors had closed. wide-ranging potential for long-term to the changing profession and and predictive maintenance. becoming the only annual event of its Details of its success has since caught kind. the attention of a breadth of new A company’s digital transformation exhibiting companies participating this journey can start small to address a When the event returns to The NEC, year including global manufacturer and single issue, such as pump health or Birmingham on the 30-31 October 2019, automation solution specialist, Emerson personnel safety and build from there. it will be third edition of Maintec under who announced their headline event Or it can explore company-wide the steerage of Western Business partnership back in May. programmes across a full impact area, Exhibitions, part of the Nineteen Group, such as reliability. On an even larger who have invested significant time and Gary Ingram, Sales Manager UK & scale, it can mean an enterprise-wide resources into revolutionising the event Ireland – Reliability Solution at Emerson strategy across all manufacturing and to ensure it remains pertinent to the Automation Solutions said of the Companies operations areas, with a view to maintenance and reliability engineering partnership: “We are delighted to be enabling true business transformation. that have professionals operating in the UK today. attending Maintec 2019 as Event Partner. The event will provide a invested in IIoT uses network-enabled intelligent In 2018, Maintec was delivered under fantastic forum to share our latest IIoT are now sensing devices and applications to the theme ‘The future of maintenance digital technologies with the industry.” achieving collect, analyse and act upon huge and reliability’, and was described by quantifiable amounts of plant data. Companies in Jos Diamond, Event Manager, “a new Platform to Launch business process and manufacturing have for direction” with organisers moving to a Its high-level seminar content and value many years been using connected new date line of November and breadth of exhibitor base attracts through a sensors to feed data into computers to reducing the show down to two more maintenance, reliability and asset significant control their processes. The IIoT uses impactful days. These major changes to professionals from across UK industry reduction in connectivity to extend this the event format were hailed as a and as such is seen by many exhibitors maintenance methodology, so that real-time data can success with 65% of exhibitors as the best platform to launch their costs. be accessed and interpreted by experts

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anywhere in the world. They can then provide actionable insights that can lead to significant improvements in PROGRAMME HIGHLIGHTS core areas such as energy This year’s Maintec seminar programme features some of the UK’s leadning engineering voices. consumption and equipment reliability. Highlights include: Companies that have invested in IIoT are now achieving quantifiable business KEYNOTE SESSION - Accelerating the Digitalisation Journey with Operational Certainty value through a significant reduction in Speaker: Gary Ingram, Sales Manager UK&I, Emerson Automation Solutions maintenance costs. The technology can Gary Ingram, Sales Manager UK&I at Emerson Automation Solutions speaks about the increasing warn that a piece of critical equipment significance of digitalisation in the maintenance function. is about to fail, enabling them to repair or replace it before it does so. Maintec Insights Deep Dive session: Improved reliability and productivity at oil storage and offloading facilities But how do we that ensure the data Speaker: Dr Bassey O Bassey, Cranfield University needed for planning, processing and A balance needs to be struck between meeting production targets and minimising breakdowns. This case documenting maintenance measures is study looks at a petroleum transportation and storage facility in the Eastern Niger Delta area of Nigeria. exchanged reliably? On day one (30 Your guide is Dr Bassey Bassey, who studies Energy and Power at Cranfield University. He was previously October), Gary Ingram from Emerson the flow assurance team deputy lead and facilities inspection coordinator for Northwest Petroleum and Automation Solutions will talk on Gas Company Limited, Calabar, Nigeria. ‘Accelerating the Digitalisation Journey with Operational Certainty’. Emerson Active Maintenance Case Study: Building a Predictive Maintenance Program from scratch in the studies suggest that a company can pharmaceutical industry save around £40 million on their Speaker: Chris Hallum, Technical Support Engineer, UE Systems ongoing maintenance budget for every Ultrasound technology offers a wide range of application areas, notably in the pharmaceutical industry. It £1 billion of capital that they already can be effectively applied in maintenance activities, and UE Systems Technical Support Engineer Chris have deployed in their plant. Hallum leads a presentation with Ipsen Biopharma, for whom the UK is one of three global hubs.

On day two (31 October), Martin Walder, Reliability Dialogue Panel Discussion: Asset Maintenance Strategies Chairman of the Engineering and Back by popular demand, the Reliability Dialogue panel discussion on Asset Maintenance Strategies which Machinery Alliance (EAMA) and Vice had visitors standing in the aisles last year. This lively Q&A session will give visitors to put forward their President Industry, Schneider UK, will questions on any aspect of asset maintenance to professional panel. talk on ‘Merging IT (Information Technology) and OT (Operational All sessions are CPD accredited and approved by the Society of Operations Engineers. Technology) to Maximise the Potential of Digitalisation’. Information Technology (IT) teams that are also promoting public safety by year and will do so again in October. accustomed to working in spotless data supporting and encouraging the So, what can visitors of the show centres now need to collaborate with standards of competence when expect from the programme? We have Operations Technology (OT) colleagues contributing to the society. all now heard about elements of who often work in dangerous industrial Industry 4.0, predictive maintenance, settings. What happens when OT and All of the Maintec seminar sessions will The Internet of Things, AI and big data, IT collide? If not managed well, the be CPD accredited and approved by but what is the significance of this result can be a clash of cultures and a the Society of Operations Engineers, technology, how will it be integrated, potential crisis. who review each session prior to the and what are the repercussions for event to ensure the highest level of engineering maintenance teams? One Schneider case study talks of an educational quality. What will its impact be on education instance where IT and OT were not and skills, strategy and policy? Two or working well together so the In an open letter to the industry, Bruce three years ago we were looking manufacturer sent both IT and OT to McGill, CEO at SOE states: “Last year the ahead at how this technology would school to learn about each other’s area Society of Operations Engineers change our working lives. Would it of expertise! partnered with Maintec to approve its render some of us obsolete in the CPD programme for the two-day event workplace? Now it has begun, we are Raising the standard in Birmingham. It was an easy decision asking different questions about what After the extremely successful The quality given that the show has a reputation it means - to what extent can it partnership in 2018, Society of on offer at for attracting a high-quality line-up of improve efficiency, flexibility and Operations Engineers (SOE), the guest speakers, while fulfilling CPD productivity? Speakers and expert Maintec is professional engineering membership requirements which have now become panels at Maintec will tell you how, organisation, has once again confirmed why we mandatory. As there are many shows in exactly, it will affect maintenance that it will be partnering with Maintec approved this the calendar throughout the year, it is engineers and what it means for the for 2019. CPD reassuring to know that this one is the future of the sector.” programme only one dedicated to the maintenance SOE promotes efficient, safe and last year and engineering community. Free visitor registration for Maintec environmentally sustainable Operations will do so is now open at www.maintec.co.uk. Engineering for the betterment of the again in “The quality on offer at Maintec is why Follow @UKMAINTEC on Twitter for community at large, with the view of October. we approved this CPD programme last show news.

Visitor registration for Maintec 2019 is now live. To claim your free visitor badge visit www.maintec.co.uk feature | automotive Force to be reckoned with Aston Martin’s Valkyrie is one of the most hotly anticipated supercars of the decade, and its V12 powerplant has been hailed as the ultimate expression of the internal combustion engine. Jon Excell reports

ven behind two hermetically sealed doors, three layers of bullet-proof glass, and several layers of acoustic damping, the 01 scream of the chunk of precision-engineered metal strapped to a dynamometer deep inside the HQ of UK powertrain specialist Cosworth is frighteningly impressive. We’re reliably assured that were we standing next to it we wouldn’t be able to hear ourselves think. This is the engine for the Aston Martin Valkyrie, the long-awaited £2.5m Ehypercar jointly developed with Red Bull Racing, which made its first public appearance at Silverstone during the British Grand Prix earlier this summer. Developed by Cosworth in close collaboration with Valkyrie’s chief designer, Red Bull CTO Adrian Newey, this 6.5-litre V12 boasts the highest specific power of any normally aspirated production road engine in the world, producing 1,000bhp at 11,100rpm, and is key to the performance of what is claimed to be the fastest street-legal vehicle in the world. Cosworth, which celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2018, is the natural choice for such a project. Best known for its long association with motorsport – its legendary DFV (Double Four Valve) V8 engine remains the most successful prime mover in racing history – the Northampton firm has been expanding into two things, if not mutually exclusive, drive you in different directions.” other areas in recent years, and as MD Bruce Wood told The Engineer, the The key problem here is one of airflow: while high power requires lots of lucrative and growing market for high-end production engines is a logical laminar flow into the engine, reduced emissions require turbulence. And with outlet for its expertise. Adrian Newey adamant that the Valkyrie couldn’t simply use a turbocharger, “All the skills we’ve learned in motor racing are absolutely applicable in the Wood’s team had to come up with a different approach. road-car world,” he said, “because motor racing really is just about efficiency, While Wood wouldn’t be drawn on precisely how his team pulled off this whether it’s power-to-weight ratio, fuel consumption in F1; they’re all efficiency tricky balancing act, the story of how it got to this point is fascinating. And it by another name.” began with the design and simulation of the combustion system. “It all comes Nevertheless, the Valkyrie engine pushes this dynamic to its limits. “It’s a down to the combustion system,” he explained. “You start with the combustion combination of everything we’ve learned in the last 30 years both in terms of system and clothe it with the architecture of an engine.” the engineering design and manufacturing excellence. This is not just some Within six weeks of kicking off the project, before any hardware had been track-day special, this is Aston’s flagship car, and it’s a production vehicle.” developed, Wood’s team was confident that it could meet the emissions Indeed, while Aston may only be targets and get the airflow. making 150 cars, the fact that it is The next step was the development of a mule engine: a scaled-down technically a road car and has to meet three-cylinder version of the full engine. “We didn’t want to wait 12 months [the the same regulations as other road “ You start design time for the entire engine] to find out whether we were right about our cars is key. And balancing the demands combustion simulation, so we set out to make a quarter of an engine,” for high power and low emissions with the explained Wood. This three-cylinder model was up and running on the without using a turbo charger was, said dynamometer within five months, and after just a couple of weeks of running, Wood, the core challenge of the project. combustion the team was confident that the final engine would deliver. “To make a 1,000hp, 6.5-litre engine, Beyond the combustion system, another major innovation in the design of while a challenge in itself, is what we’ve system and the engine is the fact that it’s also a full structural element: remove the engine done for our entire lives. The real and there’s nothing connecting the front and rear wheels. Cosworth introduced challenge is to make a 1,000hp, clothe it with structural engines to F1 in 1967, but it has never before featured on a 6.5-litre engine that meets Euro 6 production vehicle. emissions standards, because those an engine” This means that the engine has had to be designed to withstand some

38 THE ENGINEER | SEPTEMBER 2019 feature automotive

02 03

04 05

pretty ferocious loads: “The forces are forge, while the cranks were painstakingly machined from a single billet of absolutely enormous,” said Wood, “which is triple vacuum re-melted steel. Cosworth has been producing engines at a rate 01 The Valkyrie V12 has the why most people don’t do it – we’re quite used of about two per week since March 2019. highest specific power of any to designing engines as structural elements In the meantime, the engine continues to be put through its paces in the normally aspirated road of a car but even for us this was very difficult.” firm’s state-of-the-art Dynamometer facility. engine One of the reasons for this is that the car Originally built to test F1 engines, the facility – one of the most advanced of is a two-seater, and the engine mounts are its kind in the UK – enables Cosworth’s technicians to replicate anything from 02 Bruce Wood with his V12 therefore much further apart than in an F1 the Nürburgring to a sedate trip to the supermarket, and to expose the engine brainchild ©DEAN SMITH car. “To drive the weight out but to have the to the full range of conditions that it will meet in the real world. “We can create stiffness to take all of those loads and anything from 10-degree air inlet to 45-degree air inlet, with anything from 03 The Valkyrie is Aston’s transmit them down to the only stiff bit of the 0-100 per cent humidity,” explained lead dyno technician Liam Gorton. flagship car engine was very, very difficult,” said Wood. While Valkyrie is going to keep Cosworth’s engineers busy for some time yet, 04 All parts of the engine were Another challenge has been integrating the firm already has another supercar in its sights: the Gordon Murray T50, for machined in-house the Valkyrie engine with the car’s hybrid which it will be making what’s expected to be the highest-revving engine ever element, its 160hp electric motor, which was used in a road car. 05 The engine is a structural developed by Milton Keynes-based Integral In the age of electrification, its perhaps surprising to see the V12 engine at component, connecting the Powertrain. Largely used to drive the car in the heart of any automotive firm’s plans for the future, but Wood is in no doubt front and back wheels of reverse and to help with the gear shifting, this that the market for high-end engines is growing and will form a significant part the car system – which is integrated into the gearbox of the company’s future. – doesn’t come into physical contact with the And while acknowledging the need to diversify – somewhat surprisingly, engine. However, Wood said that a lot of the aerospace and marine projects now account for around 50 per cent of calibration strategy for the engine has Cosworth’s revenues – he rejects the notion that the high-end space revolved around the hybrid elements. represents some rarefied final bastion for the internal combustion engine. “In In terms of manufacturing, pretty much 20 years, every vehicle will have some form of electrification, but I don’t every part of the engine (from the cam covers, subscribe to the view that that’s the death of the IC engine, and I don’t see block and sump to the cranks, cylinder heads anything on the horizon that will change that. The future is hybridisation. and pumps) were machined in house. The Electrification and the internal combustion engine have a happy life together pistons were made on the firm’s own piston for at least the next 10 to 15 years.” n

SEPTEMBER 2019 | THE ENGINEER 39 feature | land speed record

Q&A: Ian 01 Warhurst on rescuing Bloodhound The Engineer speaks to the Yorkshire businessman who rescued Bloodhound from the scrapheap

s reported earlier this summer, Bloodhound, the car designed for Britain’s next assault on the world land speed record, is set for high-speed tests in South Africa this autumn. The news is a welcome sign that the project is back on track following its rescueA late last year by Yorkshire businessman Ian Warhurst. Earlier this summer The Engineer spoke to Warhurst about his involvement in the project and his plans for the future. the administrators How did you end up buying were going to cut up 02 Bloodhound? the car and sell it off. I thought I’d retired. I’ve been running my own The MoD was business for the last 16 years [turbocharger banging the door down specialist Melett]. I sold the business in 2017 and trying to get in to take retired officially at the end of November. I had no its stuff out, and the plans to do anything other than take it easy and administrators couldn’t enjoy life. get it out because it I’d been following the Thrust SSC project back was very deep inside in the 1990s and thought it was fantastic, and I’d the car so they came to been following Bloodhound. I became a member the conclusion the only of the 1k Club [the supporters’ club] in 2009. My way of getting this son came here to the NEC to do a STEM rocket- thing out was getting car challenge and he thought it was great, so I an angle grinder and knew the project was doing a really good job of cutting the car in half. inspiring new engineers. I knew when I left When I heard the project had gone into that building that if I administration in October I was very disappointed hadn’t done a deal the like everybody but I also thought “well, it’s gone next man in that under covers, it needs a bit of a break to get more building was the man with the angle grinder got involved the sponsorship, I’m sure it’ll reappear and carry on”. coming to break it all up, so I did a deal. more I found 01 Bloodhound’s new owner, Ian Then I was sitting at home one Friday night in On Wednesday, we were talking to each other; myself having to Warhurst with new acquisition December and my son Charlie sent me a text and on Thursday I was confirming the contract and on get the team said: “Hey dad, have you seen the Bloodhound Friday morning I signed up, job done. I then owned together; having 02 Revitalised Bloodhound LSR car’s for sale? Why don’t you go and buy it?” So, I this massive long car. to find out more sporting its brand new livery Googled Richard Noble and sent him an email about the car; saying: “Hi Richard. You don’t know me, but I’ve got What’s your role in the project? having to find a a few quid, can I help?” and he came straight back. I initially thought I’d buy the car, ring-fence the building to put it I spoke to the administrators on the Monday, assets and hold it together in one place so that no in. And because it was my money I was spending, I went down on the Tuesday and I realised that the one bit could disappear, and the project could felt I’d like to look after what I was spending so I problem was that the car has some military- rebuild and regroup. ended up almost naturally stepping into the role controlled equipment in it and that had to come I was supposed to be the man with the money and I’m now running the project. out because the MoD had got wind of the fact that helping out not running the project but the more I While I’m CEO the key people are also still in

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place: Andy Green is still 03 driving the car; Mark Chapman is still the chief engineer and he knows the car inside out. Everybody’s getting on with the job now and I’m just overseeing the project and giving them some direction and some money.

What’s the economic mode for the project now that you’re running it? The problem the project had in the past was it was not supposed to take 10 years, it was supposed to take three or four. It run with a JLR V8 engine, and 04 ended up costing huge amounts more than we we’re looking to electrify that. first anticipated and when you’re trying to sell From a safety point of view, you sponsorship you can only sell the space on a car don’t want to mix hydrogen once. It got to the point where there was no space peroxide with anything organic left to sell and because it kept not hitting such as oil. At the time when it deadlines people were less and less interested in was designed the technology sponsoring it, so it went into a bit of a downward didn’t exist to electrify the spiral. motors but because it’s gone on Having effectively bought the car out of a skip for 10 years the technology now I’ve got a new company, and all the original sponsor exists. deals were with the original company. We like to the think the original sponsorship was for the When will the rocket be design and build phase of the project. integrated? What we’re looking at now is the running phase That ties in with what we’re of the project, which is a different part. To doing at the moment. I’ve split commercialise this I want to be able to find new the project into two parts: land sponsors. speed record and maximum The question is what’s it going to cost to get to design speed. the desert and do something and what do we think Everyone bills this as the the value of sponsorship is worth on the car? After 1,000mph car, but that’s the we did some analysis, we estimated the value to second phase. That allows us to back in 2010 run the car to the land speed record would be focus clearly on the land speed record, who are now 03 Bloodhound has three covered by the cost of sponsoring the car. understand the costs involved in that and focus engineers. brakes: air, parachute and disc I’m 100 per cent committed to get this car to on that part of the project. Bloodhound the desert for the high-speed testing. We’re That’s because the rocket required to get to Education [the 04 Outside view of the cockpit already having great conversations with sponsors maximum design speed needs a big redesign of STEM arm of the Andy Green will occupy – existing and new – and I’m very comfortable this the back end of the car. It doesn’t fit in the project] never will become sponsored. The most important thing current configuration. stopped; it was my money is doing is providing cashflow and that carrying on gives certainty to sponsors. When do you hope to go for the record? through the administration and we’re continuing One of the problems the project had last time was with it. Are you proposing any fundamental they kept making dates in the hope it would changes to the core technology? happen to try and bring sponsors on board but Apart from STEM Impact, will Fundamentally it’s still an EJ200 jet engine with a then didn’t hit the date. I prefer the ‘under- Bloodhound have any technological monopropellant rocket. The one thing that is promise and over-deliver’ approach, but, at the spin-off projects? changing is that the rocket motor was originally moment, our plan is to get to the desert this year. Clearly, no one wants to go to the shops in a 1,000mph car, but the technology behind it is Is STEM engagement still an important pushing the boundaries and taking us to places “I’m 100 per cent part of the project? we don’t go. The great thing about that is you don’t committed to get this I got involved in this because of the STEM aspect. do these things, you don’t go there, you won’t find Britain needs more engineers. What’s been out what happens when you do get there, car to the desert for the fantastic about this project is the inspiration it gives to people to get into engineering. Because Will you have a ride in it yourself? high-speed testing” it’s been going 10 years there are people inspired I don’t want to go in it myself. It’s really scary! n

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VERSATILE & DURABLE LINEAR MOTION SYSTEM Email: [email protected] Technical Sales: 01908 511733 www.euro-bearings.com/vee feature | electronics & communications And then there was Li-Fi Market Insights, the Li-Fi industry is expected to be worth $75.5bn by 2023. Wireless technology that enables Unsurprisingly, one of the main players is the firm spun-out of Haas’s users to send and receive data in research, Pure LiFi, which, since its launch in 2012 has developed a number of Li-Fi-based hardware peripherals that can be used to upload and beams of LED light will help overcome download data. As the market has evolved, Pure LiFi has shifted its focus to refining the the limitations of radio frequency Li-Fi specific components that could be integrated into next-generation communications. Jon Excell reports. smartphones and other connected devices. It used this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona (March 2019) to demonstrate its burgeoning n today’s connected world, wireless data has become a critical utility: an capabilities in this area using a modified laptop with a 1Gbps Li-Fi system. invisible element of our modern infrastructure that increasingly “We’re focusing on developing the Li-Fi components that will enable anything underpins many of the services upon which we rely. to talk to everything else,” Pure LiFi CEO Alistair Banham told The Engineer. And as we deploy connected devices in ever-greater numbers, and “Our goal has always been to develop the components to enable these big embrace emerging technologies such as autonomous systems, the companies to design their own Li-Fi systems around our light antenna device.” internet of things and virtual reality (VR), the demand for wireless Banham said that there are now around 189 deployments of the firm’s connectivity is expected to increase exponentially. technology worldwide and that it’s working with a range of customers, But there’s a problem. The radio spectrum upon which much of our including smartphone firms and major lighting companies – such as Lucibel, Iconnectivity depends is getting crowded and some fear that our insatiable Zumtobel and Signify (formerly Philips Lighting) – who view Li-Fi as an exciting appetite for data will ultimately lead to a ‘spectrum crunch’ that will soon crash new market opportunity. our communications networks, rendering many of our fancy new Banham identified a range of potential applications for the technology: technologies useless. from its use in smart office spaces, to domestic and consumer applications Against this backdrop, unlocking new levels of data and bandwidth is a either for high-bandwidth machine-to-machine communications or, ultimately, priority, and one area of technology that looks set to play a major role in to provide domestic ‘hotspots’ in high-bandwidth areas such as living rooms addressing this challenge is Li-Fi, an emerging wireless optical networking and bedrooms. technology that enables data to be transmitted over short distances via the He added that the technology also has great potential for location-based rapid and imperceptible (to the human eye) modulation of LED light bulbs. services. Indeed, in a separate development, Signify has been working with Pioneered almost a decade ago by Edinburgh University’s Prof Harald Haas, French supermarket chain Carrefour on a Li-Fi-based indoor-positioning the technology has some compelling advantages. For a start, the data systems, whereby each LED has a distinct location code and is able to interact spectrum for visible light is 1,000 times greater than the RF spectrum so with a smartphone app to help users locate products and promotions. there’s more capacity to drive bigger bandwidths and higher data rates. Li-Fi Clearly, despite all of its many advantages, light-based communication developers have already demonstrated speeds of 224Gbps in laboratory relies on line of sight to work, and for this reason it’s viewed as a conditions and expect 1Gbps or above – around 100 times faster than complementary technology to existing wireless solutions rather than conventional Wi-Fi – to become the norm. a replacement. What’s more, because data can be contained within a tight area of “Where we can really bring a benefit is in the crowded radio spectrum where illumination, there’s little risk of interference and it’s also highly secure: while we see the launch of a new wireless LAN standard pretty much every year but radio waves penetrate through walls and can be intercepted, a beam of light fail to deliver those data rates in practice because there’s just so much RF is confined. noise and interference out there,” explained Pure LiFi co-founder and CTO Haas first caught the headlines with the Mostafa Afgani. “By offering to shift that communication to a technology following a 2011 TED talk in which he different band – the light band – we can now provide another demonstrated how a standard LED lamp could be wireless channel that can deliver those data rates over a used to transmit high-resolution video directly to a medium that is much more reliable and can actually deliver the receiver placed just beneath the bulb. “Where we can quoted data rates.” In the years following this jaw-dropping While refining its own technology, Pure LiFi is also playing an illustration of the technology in action, Li-Fi has really bring a active role in developing what it terms the Li-Fi ecosystem and it begun making waves beyond the academic research recently joined forces with organisations including Nokia, space, with a number of organisations already benefit is in the Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company, Liberty commercialising the technology, and a growing Global and Lucibel to set up the Light Communications Alliance, number of companies supporting research into what crowded radio which aims to ensure collaboration to help stimulate the market is increasingly being viewed as a key emerging sector. for the technology. Indeed, according to a recent report from Global spectrum” A key member of the wider Li-Fi community is Oxford

44 THE ENGINEER | SEPTEMBER 2019 feature electronics & communications

University photonics specialist Prof Dominic Signify is at the forefront of efforts to commercialise Li-Fi technology. In June 01 & 02 Pure LiFi has been O’Brien, who has discerned a growing 2019 it announced the launch of its Truelifi product range, which it claims can working with lighting commercial interest in the academic research be used to give 150Mbps connectivity to its lighting units. specialist Zumtobel on base in recent years. “There’s a lot more Another initiative singled out by O’Brien is the EU-funded WORTECS applications of its technology interest and the interest is at a higher level of (Wireless Optical/Radio TErabit Communications) project, which is exploring commitment, with companies such as Signify how a combination of high-frequency mm-wave radio communications and 03 Pure LiFi’s ultimate goal is committing a considerable amount of Li-Fi technology could be used to meet the incredibly high data rate demands to see its technology incorporated into mobile resources to bringing this stuff to market,” he of virtual-reality technology. devices told The Engineer. O’Brien said that the project – which involves, among others Pure LiFi and One example of this growing appetite for Orange – is working on a concept in which separate branches of optical fibre collaboration is the recently announced ELiot would be taken into each room of a house and used to direct a narrow beam of (Enhance Lighting for the Internet of Things) light at a terminal. “We can get very high data rates from that, because we’re project, a €6 million EU-funded effort essentially using the data directly from the fibre, which is transmitting at involving, among others, the University of 100Gbps,” he said. Oxford, Signify, Nokia and Deutsche Telekom, With the technology progressing rapidly, and the weight of real-world which is looking at developing mass-market commercial applications and trials providing compelling evidence of its applications for Li-Fi technology. advantages, it seems inevitable that Li-Fi will one day be as widespread as the Speaking at the launch of the project in other wireless technologies we now take for granted. But despite the wow July 2019, Prof Jean-Paul Linnartz, who’s factor of Prof Haas’s 2011 TED talk, it’s entirely possible that when it does leading Signify’s research into Li-Fi, said: arrive, we won’t notice it. It may simply become another technology that “Li-Fi can deliver high-speed communication, creeps into the mix by stealth, humming away quietly in the background, its interference-free with high reliability. The success predicated on its complete invisibility to those it serves. available spectrum can be fully reused in “It might be one of those things that actually the average user doesn’t really every room. The lighting infrastructure is in an know about because it’s just another wireless technology integrated with the excellent position to provide wireless RF technologies that are available already,” said O’Brien. connectivity for the rapidly increasing “Together they provide some augmented service. But are users going to number of wireless devices in every room.” know it’s light and not radio?” n

SEPTEMBER 2019 | THE ENGINEER 45 comment | prof anthony finkelstein An Ingenious mission for engineers The Royal Academy of Engineering’s Ingenious awards programme is playing a vital role in taking engineering to a wider audience

hat inspired you to be an engineer? Taking an old record player apart? Adapting some code from a magazine so you could STEM play ‘pong’ on your Sinclair engagement in Spectrum? A craft project action with the that unexpectedly took a technical turn? A copy of Guerilla World Engineering Marvels from the local library? W Science Fire Meccano? Maybe even school science lessons... Organ hold it in your mind as you read this. ©Richard For me, it started at The Molecule Club, Eaton sometime in the late 1960s, early 1970s. The Molecule Club was basically a science pantomime. It took place at the Mermaid Theatre near Blackfriars, London. I was taken by my mother from my home in suburban Hendon. I went to several different performances, each themed around different physical principles. There were bangs, songs, Heath Robinson devices, mild citizens and communities. skills and networks, but this is a small part of the peril and audience participation. There were quiz Of course, I was a boy from the middle-class return. Public engagement is enormous fun. To see sheets to complete in the interval. I was captivated London suburbs. Ingenious aims to reach beyond a child’s eyes light up; or, to see an adult about to as were the many tens of thousands of children this to women, still underrepresented in our turn away and start back, startled by a who experienced performances over the years. profession (only 12 per cent of UK engineers are demonstration of some physical effect. Each I now suspect that the theatre company and my female), and to disadvantaged and underserved reignites the pleasure of our early engagement or mother had educational intent, but fortunately I groups (fewer than 8 per cent of UK engineers are reminds us not to take things for granted. was blissfully unaware of this, otherwise I might from black and minority ethnic backgrounds). So, if you see an Ingenious event in your local have resisted. Their stratagem was successful, I Ingenious awardees develop amazing area, make a point of going. Take some children... was bitten by the bug and a career in engineering programmes harnessing museums, theatres, daughters would be good. Sign up to participate in has followed. This career has given me many festivals, to make people excited about STEM and delivering Ingenious content. I absolutely opportunities, and much to engage me, but I would get engaged with its possibilities. Across the UK guarantee you will enjoy it. Persuade your employer put high on that list that I now chair the Royal they get involved with cities and with local and colleagues to participate. Ask yourself if your Academy of Engineering Ingenious awards panel. communities to reach out and present engineering organisation, dependent upon engineering talent, The Ingenious awards support innovative public in new contexts. Activities include space camps, is doing enough to prime the pipeline that feeds its engagement to promote engineering. A major goal interactive problem solving and experimentation. future. Finally, having primed your energy and of Ingenious is to give people from a wide variety of Engineering is mixed in with music making, model enthusiasm as well as built your skills, you could backgrounds a real experience of engineering. In building and community action. Many programmes apply for an award yourself. the STEM (science, technology, engineering and use local schools and colleges, supporting In opening, I asked you to hold your engineering maths) world, we call this science capital. teachers with high-value resources. inspiration in mind, now I want you to take a little Science capital can be likened to a holdall that I would be misrepresenting Ingenious if I piece of it and share it. A legacy of the Molecule carries a person’s the science-related experiences. focused only on the ’audience’. Although many of Club and the mission of the Ingenious Awards. A person who has parents employed in science will the awardees are professional communicators, For more information and to apply for an have high exposure to the sciences, and hence, that most of the content is delivered by practising Ingenious grant, see person would have high science capital. Equally, engineers and engineering students. Indeed, www.raeng.org.uk/grants-and-prizes/grants/ the Molecule Club gave me some science capital. Ingenious is the only UK grant scheme specifically ingenious-grant Each bit of capital adds up, and people with high aimed at building capacity and enabling more capital tend to go on to work in the sciences. engineers to do public engagement. Their Prof Anthony Finkelstein CBE FREng DSc is Beyond careers, science capital contributes to enthusiasm accounts for the high degree of chair of the Royal Academy of Engineering science literacy, attitudes and values. It empowers success enjoyed by the programme. They gain Ingenious awards panel

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Energy company EDF is deploying The deal marks a significant coup PTCS’s ThingWorx IoT platform to for PTC’s UK operations, with EDF the help its customers monitor and UK’s biggest supplier of electricity by control energy usage. ThingWorx is volume. According to Boston-based supporting EDF’s Powershift, a PTC, ThingWorx will help EDF and its cloud-based energy trading, customers be leaner and greener monitoring and control system that through its extended suite of IoT provides businesses with a flexible applications. The software platform way to manage how and when their contains a broad set of features, energy is consumed. The tool will including multiple connectivity enable EDF customers to generate options, application revenue by selling spare capacity ThingWorx development tools, back to the UK grid. The integration will enable analytics, and AR. was facilitated by PTC partner EDF “ThingWorx enables Capula, an integration specialist for customers to improved energy control, automation and operational manage efficiency by providing IT systems. power operational “PowerShift enables customers to efficiently intelligence to EDF both save and make money, allowing Energy customers,” them to optimise energy, as part of a partnered with technology experts to efficiencies and cost reduction by said David Grammer, VP for UK and wider distributed power network,” enhance the monitoring and control monitoring, collecting and analysing Nordics at PTC. said Chris Regan, EDF’s head of aspect for PowerShift users. Capula’s energy data. By using Powershift, “Helping to reduce the carbon energy trading services. OPUS tool, which is built on PTC’s EDF Energy customers can drive footprint is another excellent “Having utilised our significant ThingWorx IoT platform, is now a core savings and revenue from their example of how the right IoT experience in the energy trading component of PowerShift. flexible assets by making capacity technology can positively impact element of PowerShift, we then “ThingWorx’s role is to drive available for the National Grid.” businesses and the world. ” n

Working on a CAD transformation Immersive visualisation positions CAD products in contextual environments, alongside dependable data Suppplier: Virtalis

Virtalis has enlisted Tech Soft 3D’s expect to see reliable data when HOOPS Exchange to transform CAD they’re making important decisions data into data sets for a myriad of based on visualisations and having applications in numerous sectors. reliable and dependable data is one Visionary Render is Virtalis’s of the most important things for platform for importing and visualising them. What’s great about HOOPS is large datasets from a range of sources, that it supports almost all the The software while maintaining the geometry, formats, including VRML. Our allows products naming hierarchies, metadata, and customers have legacy data, and we to be viewed product and manufacturing rely on the fact that HOOPS Exchange within their information (PMI). supports those formats.” natural Accurately supporting the formats Virtalis goes beyond visualising environments used in industries including aerospace, CAD data from an external view by defence, construction, and geoscience immersing users in the environment data. In addition to the core formats, “When we initially were getting to is critical because companies need to where the model may live. being able to bring in data such as grips and integrating it, Tech Soft 3D visualise large amounts of data from “We’re looking at products in the Revit is key as well.” was really responsive and diverse sources. context of where they sit,” said Gavin HOOPS Exchange provides access collaborated with us to get the “When we import CAD data with England, product marketing manager to data, including B-Rep geometry, results that we needed,” said King. HOOPS Exchange, we get the data that at Virtalis. “We could be looking at a metadata, PMI, model tree, views, “When we communicate an issue, we we expect,” said Barry King, product product installed inside a factory, or persistent IDs, styles, construction always get it fixed in the next release, owner at Virtalis. “Our customers a building structure coming from geometry, and visualisation without and the releases come out steadily building information modelling (BIM) depending on any CAD system. and reliably.” n

48 THE ENGINEER | SEPTEMBER 2019 show previews

Northern Manufacturing with its include Dr Ben Hargreaves of Northern lights wide portfolio of over 20 plastic and NetComposites who will be giving an metal 3D printers and rapid introduction to the world of Northern Manufacturing & Electronics manufacturing solutions. Also composites and Janaina Gianfelice exhibiting is 3D-printing specialist de Castro, from leading manufacturer returns to EventCity, Manchester, Tri-Tech 3D, which offers a complete SABIC, who will take an in-depth look package of services from initial at the firm’s ULTEM resin portfolio from 2-3 October specification and supply of hardware and how advanced materials can be and software, to onsite 3D printer used to deliver thinner, lighter, more The exhibition, which is the Northern debut, showcasing its installation, staff training and full energy-efficient products. Elsewhere, companion event to the Southern range of fibre and CO2 industrial product support. award-winning author, creator of the Manufacturing Show, presents a laser equipment, including laser Additional leading suppliers Lean Iceberg Model and partner at similarly inclusive approach, hosting engraving cutting and marking include Dynamic Machine Tools and SA Partners, Gary Griffiths, will share a broad range of around 250 machines. Closer to home, HPC Laser EDM specialists Makrep EDM how ‘excellent’ organisations have industrial products and service will show a sample of the 100 or so Solutions. This year’s show also delivered results for their business providers, ranging from component CE-Certified and HSE-inspected features a n excellent free technical by embedding and sustaining lean suppliers and subcontractors to machines it holds in its Yorkshire seminar programme. and continuous Improvement. advanced production systems. warehouse. Laser Lines UK returns to Highlights of the speaker line-up Andy Brunskill, author of TPM: A This year’s event will feature Foundation of Operational Excellence numerous well-known global brands, will discuss an 11-step model that including CNC giant Haas can be used to deploy an effective, Automation and XYZ Machine Tools, systematic TPM programme. Popular which will be showcasing its new presenter Tim Scurlock takes a robot-based automation cell detailed look at how Porsche Robo-Tend, designed to bring improved performance by the use of automation within the reach of lean techniques to reduced cost and traditional sub-contract engineering lead times. Made Smarter and the businesses. Manufacturing Growth Fund will Laser and additive manufacturing present an overview of how also figure prominently in the show’s companies across the region have line-up of live demonstrations. grown their businesses. Register China’s Bodor Laser makes its online at www.industrynorth.co.uk ■

surrounding powder metallurgy, metrology, and Additive showcase plastics manufacturing. Visitors are also invited to attend the #3DTalk panel session dedicated to software, hosted by Women in 3D TCT Show puts additive Printing and Cyant, featuring female leaders in the 3D printing and additive manufacturing industry. manufacturing centre stage With the rapid growth of 3D technologies, it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with the September sees the TCT Show opening its doors to almost recent innovations. TCT Introducing Stage will showcase 10,000 visitors from 80 different countries, for a three-day inspiring talks, live debates, and interactive sessions on 3D-printing and additive manufacturing showcase at the latest additive manufacturing product developments Birmingham’s NEC. and services across hardware, software, and ancillaries. As you’d expect, the event will celebrate the latest The three-day programme is led by TCT Show’s most additive manufacturing technology solutions and prominent exhibitors, including Formlabs, Protolabs, innovations from nearly 300 worldwide exhibitors, EOS, Materialise, Fraunhofer IWU, and many more. including HP, Ultimaker, Trumpf, BOC, Formlabs, In a new innovation for 2019, the TCT Insights Stage Siemens and Renishaw. will focus on the essential aspects required to The organisers are confident that visitors will be understand the entire spectrum of the current and inspired and gain insights from the event’s conference and emerging additive manufacturing technologies. The seminar programmes, which for this edition include TCT programme includes a workshop on the fundamentals of Summit, TCT Tech Stage, TCT Introducing Stage and TCT additive manufacturing, delivered by Graham Tromans, Insights Stage. which is ideal for attendees who are new to the 3D Debuting this year, TCT Summit is a user-led conference printing industry. bringing together industry experts and will feature Day two will be notable for the TCT Awards, which are presentations on leading technology, innovation and are set to showcase world-leading projects and market intelligence. The TCT Summit stage will also bring recognise the most influential and impactful members of together leading authorities, engineers, designers and the additive manufacturing industry in the TCT Hall of academics from aerospace, automotive, rail, healthcare Fame. and business sectors to share their insights. The TCT Show takes place on September 24 – 26. TCT Tech Stage hosts CPD-certified sessions on topics Register online: www.tctshow.com ■

SEPTEMBER 2019 | THE ENGINEER 49 product news Electronics

OLED tech promises improved screens Supplier: Nextgen Nano

Researchers from UK solar-cell groundwork for efficient high- allowing them to illuminate at tested blue OLED produced 1,000 company Nextgen Nano have performance OLED devices and may notably lower voltages than candela per square metre at 3.4V, discovered an OLED manufacturing change future approaches to organic phosphorescent OLEDs and to which was less than 50 per cent of method that demonstrates high semiconductor technology. produce a stable blue OLED with a the voltage required by other tested luminosity at lower voltages. Nextgen Nano’s New Fusion higher operating power efficiency blue OLEDs. Organic light-emitting diodes division team at North Carolina State compared to existing blue “The current challenge in the (OLED) underpin today’s most University (NCSU) found that certain phosphorescent OLEDs. OLED technology is blue,” said cutting-edge display technology and organic molecules were able to This means it will be possible for Nextgen Neo CTO and NCSU can be found in high-end achieve electroluminescence at display applications in the future to engineering Prof Franky SO. smartphones, as well as the latest lower driving voltages than is provide superior levels of luminosity “Our finding shows that it is televisions. The new research, typically required by current OLEDs. while using half the energy, which will possible for make a fluorescent OLED published in Nature The molecules exhibited fluorescent also extend the operational life of the with half of the voltage required for Communications, could lay the properties at lower energy values, device. The study found that the phosphorescent OLEDs.” n Heads up for next-gen driver info Supplier: Envisics The automotive industry is in the image (at 2m) displaying speed and middle of an innovation renaissance. warning symbols and a far image (at Many organisations are focusing greater than 10m) displaying their research efforts on electric and intuitive navigation guidance and autonomous vehicles. However, information about oncoming safety should remain a top priority hazards, into drivers’ field of vision, with research into reducing the addressing the universal challenge of cognitive load of interpreting improving drivers’ perception and in-vehicle navigation instructions awareness. Envisics’ AR HUDs and increasing drivers’ situational operate using holographic light awareness. manipulating technology with over Augmented reality (AR) head-up two million light speed modulators, Envisics’ AR HUDs displays (HUDs) help address each 15 times smaller than the project essential keeping drivers’ attention on the road thickness of human hair to create driving information at all times. Traditional dashboards multiple depth images and an positioned below the windscreen annotated view of the environment. autonomous vehicles (AVs). The RAC AR HUDs can be used to facilitate the force drivers to take their eyes off the These modulators are controlled by Foundation conducted the first study transaction of responsibility from the road for information, which can be an algorithm that calculates over 700 into handovers from control in AVs, vehicle to driver, alerting them to fatal considering at 30mph/50kph a holograms per second. which reveals motorists often had potential hazards in the process. car will travel 13.5m in one second. The safety applications of AR poor control when asked to take on Envisics is working with several Envisics’ AR HUDs project HUDs will be a key feature in the next driving duties mid-journey, veering manufacturers to introduce AR HUDs essential driving information, a near generation of vehicles, especially across lanes and picking up speed. into their vehicles. n Electric and autonomous Supplier: Nvidia Autonomous vehicle developer AutoX built on two NVIDIA Xavier processors Robotaxis must blend with traffic than a laptop computer. Backed by and Swedish electric vehicle and two next-generation TensorCore to operate efficiently, which is where this performance, the AutoX system manufacturer NEVS are partnering to GPUs. Combined, this AI computer AutoX software comes in. Running on can perceive busy urban deploy Robotaxis in Europe by the end runs deep neural networks the automotive-grade Drive AGX environments in real time, allowing of 2020. To this end, the partnership simultaneously and can tackle highly Pegasus, the autonomous driving the vehicle to react safely at all times. aims to bring self-driving and electric automated and fully autonomous algorithms can learn and quickly Rather than building vehicles vehicle technology to everyday urban driving. adapt to local driving conditions. The dedicated to specific cities, the transportation, which is expected to “The processing power and AI supercomputer platform is based flexibility of the AutoX system and lead to cleaner and more efficient efficiency of the NVIDIA Drive platform on the Xavier system-on-a-chip (SoC): Drive AGX Pegasus makes it possible mobility. is incredibly beneficial to this the first production-level SoC to deploy Robotaxis in diverse The vehicles are based on AutoX’s deployment,” said Jianxiong Xiao, dedicated to autonomous driving. environments, such as narrow city autonomous driving software and use founder and CEO of AutoX. “It’s an Drive AGX Pegasus also achieves streets, crowded tourist areas and NVIDIA’s Drive AGX Pegasus platform, excellent way to achieve scale and 320 trillion computing operations per residential blocks. The companies are which incorporates an architecture reliability.” second without taking up more space set to start testing in Europe. n

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WHATEVER YOUR MEASUREMENT NEED BOWERS IS YOUR PARTNER IN PRECISION automotive | car of the issue The Engineer drives: Hyundai Nexo – a glimpse into the hydrogen future? There have been hydrogen cars before, but the Hyundai Nexo is perhaps the most convincing example to date. writes Chris Pickering

hen asked to name the most technologically advanced car on sale, most people would probably hazard a guess at the current Mercedes S-Class (the latest in a long line of cars that has famously introduced such landmark innovations as ABS, active cruise control and crumple zones). But there’s another contender for that title, which comes not from Stuttgart or Silicon Valley, but from South Korea: the Hyundai Nexo. WThe most obvious feature that sets the Nexo apart is the fact it runs on hydrogen. Located in its nose, the fuel-cell stack silently strips electrons away from the most abundant molecule in the universe, creating a steady flow of electric current. This is used to charge a 1.56kWh lithium-ion battery, which provides power to a 120kW electric motor, also mounted under the bonnet. The only tailpipe emissions are purified air (passed through the fuel cell’s sophisticated filtration system) and droplets of water vapour. 01 The Nexo is the second hydrogen car to come from Hyundai, following on from the ix35 Fuel Cell. At its heart is an all-new 95 kW fuel cell stack that’s said to offer 50 per cent better power density at 3.1kW/litre, while the overall powertrain efficiency now climbs to 60.4 per cent. Internal differences include a new design for the bipolar “The Nexo will plates that separate out the individual cells, providing a more effective park itself dispersion of air and hydrogen. Careful automatically attention has also been applied to the humidity of the cells to ensure that at the touch of they can function over a broad temperature range. Hyundai claims a button” this has given the Nexo a class-leading cold-start capability, with the fuel cell capable of reaching working temperature in less than 30 seconds following an overnight soak at -29°C. Notably, the Nexo has also been designed as a fuel-cell vehicle from the 02 ground up, whereas ix35 was based on a combustion-engined platform. The 01 The cabin has a sci-fi new chassis uses a relatively conventional high-strength steel construction, appearance that’s more but it has been carefully designed to suit the fuel-cell system’s packaging space station than SUV needs. In place of two tanks that took up a significant portion of the boot space in the ix35 there are now three carbon-fibre tanks – two of which sit under the 02 The 95kW fuel cell stack is claimed to reaching rear seats. Not that you would guess from sitting in it, because the Nexo offers working temperarture in bags of rear-seat room and a generous 461-litre boot. less than 30sec. Things feel a little more radical from the front seats. The dashboard has been cleared entirely of buttons, which instead sit on a giant floating centre

52 THE ENGINEER | SEPTEMBER 2019 automotive car of the issue

From the outside, a convetional vehicle, but the Nexo might be the most advanced car on sale console. Meanwhile, the infotainment functions are handled by a vast choice of filling stations is curently limited, with only around 20 in the UK touchscreen display, while another large screen behind the steering wheel (mostly around London and the Midlands) but that number looks set to grow. provides a virtual instrument cluster. Combined, these features give the cabin So, it’s a thumbs up for the fuel cell, but that’s only half the story. The Nexo a distinctly sci-fi appearance that’s more space station than SUV. It feels also has one of the most comprehensive suites of driving-assistance functions entirely in keeping with the Nexo’s cutting-edge character and its £65,995 on the market. In addition to the usual autonomous emergency braking and price tag. lane keep assist there’s now a system that Hyundai dubs Blindspot View The materials are clever too. True, there’s the odd flimsy bit of plastic, but Monitoring (BVM). This uses a pair of wide-angle cameras mounted under the generally the quality is very good. All the major cabin surfaces, including the wing mirrors to capture a live video feed of the Nexo’s blindspots. As soon as bamboo-based headliner, plastics, trim, soft skin and floor mats all come from you indicate left or right, the blindspot view from that side is automatically UL-certified bio-materials. Hyundai says this represents the most extensive displayed in the instrument cluster. It sounds like something of a gimmick, but use of such materials on any vehicle to date. it works brilliantly, expanding your field of view while driving. Perhaps not surprisingly, the driving experience is much like a fully electric The Nexo also has a remote smart-parking function. This allows you to select SUV. The Nexo feels quicker than its 9.5-second 0-to-60mph time would imply, a parking space then step out of the car, whereupon the Nexo will park itself with a steady stream of smooth, silent torque fed through a single-speed automatically at the touch of a button. The practical application of this is that it transmission. Unlike other fuel-cell cars we’ve driven you never hear the allows you to guide the car into and out of very tight spaces, but it’s also a step compressor at work either. Wind and road noise often become more noticeable towards fully autonomous parking. With Hyundai talking about offering SAE in electric vehicles, but both are well suppressed here – aided in part by the Level 4 autonomy in smart cities by 2021, it’s possible that future models may be Nexo’s impressively low drag co-efficient of 0.329 (down from 0.35 on the ix35). able to drop you off in the city centre and find their own way to a car park. The feeling of serenity that comes from the Nexo’s powertrain refinement is The great thing about the Nexo, however, is that it still works here and now. bolstered by its soft, pillowy ride. There is a degree of body roll, but the It offers similar performance to its combustion-engined counterparts, with handling feels reasonably precise, aided by the Nexo’s comparatively trim refinement levels that even a lot of electric vehicles would struggle to match. 1,825kg kerb weight (battery electric SUVs, in contrast, are often over two Crucially, it feels like a finished product, with enough practicality to use every tonnes). This also helps to maximise the range, with 6.3kg of hydrogen (stored day and sufficient quality to justify its aspirational price tag. The scarcity of at 700 bar) good for a theoretical distance of 414 miles. That’s enough to take hydrogen filling stations remains a challenge, but in some respects that’s a you from London to Leeds and back again. chicken-and-egg situation because there are so few fuel-cell vehicles Refuelling the Nexo only takes around five minutes and the process is currently on our roads. The Nexo, however, demonstrates that there is clear barely more complicated than filling up a conventional car. Admittedly, the potential to tip that balance. n

SEPTEMBER 2019 | THE ENGINEER 53 feature | Late, great engineers #001 Nikola Tesla: current thinking In the first of a new series of articles Nick Smith surveys one of the founding fathers of modern electrical power, Nikola Tesla, whose career was a roller-coaster of breathtaking successes and monumental failures

t around midnight on 9-10 July 1856, while thunder and lightning raged, one of the greatest electrical engineers of 01 the early 20th century, Nikola Tesla, was born. The midwife said he’d be a ‘child of the storm’, while his mother thought he’d be a ‘child of light’. Looking back at Tesla’s career as an engineer, inventor and futurist – one defined by controversy and innovation – it’s tempting to think that both women present at his birth had a point. This is because Tesla, while playingA a robust scientific role in bringing electrical power to the modern world, also dabbled in death rays and interplanetary communication. Both eccentric recluse and shameless self-publicist, he was a godsend for journalists looking for sensational copy. But he was also a headache for more responsible newspaper editors who were never quite sure how seriously to take the archetypal mad professor’s claims. Tesla was born at a time when the world as we know it today was being invented. Rapid industrialisation was spreading across Europe and the US. The second Industrial Revolution of rail and telegraph networks, mass production his investors pulled the plug, leaving Tesla flat-broke and reduced to digging and machines, was ushering in the early dawn of globalisation. And ditches for a living at $2 a day. somewhere on the outskirts of the Austrian Empire, in the tiny village of He was to have better fortune with the similarly named Tesla Electric Smiljan (in what’s now Croatia), the son of an Eastern Orthodox priest was Company, established with entrepreneurs Alfred S Brown and Charles F Peck. embarking on a journey that would bring electricity to a world lit by gas and In a deal where each owned a third interest, Tesla was also provided with a powered by steam. Despite his fascination with his physics teacher’s Manhattan laboratory in which he developed his polyphase induction motor. demonstrations of electricity, and his ability to juggle differential calculus in The technology patented, a press release was circulated and, at the his head, the young Tesla was initally destined for a career in the church. But, arrangement of the editor of Electrical World, Tesla demonstrated it before the seeing his son dying of cholera at the age of seven, his father promised that if American Institute of Electrical Engineers. Word reached George Westinghouse the young Nikola could only recover, he’d be released from his obligation to the (of the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company), who had been clergy and sent to engineering school. Duly recovered, Tesla was to excel at the looking for such an invention to integrate into his AC power system. Austrian Polytechnic, before becoming chief electrician at the Budapest Westinghouse licensed Tesla’s motor for $60,000 in cash, plus stock and Telephone Exchange. royalties, as well as hiring him on a In 1882 Tesla moved to Paris, where he joined the Continental Edison colossal monthly stipend of $2,000 Company, eventually getting himself noticed for his work on designing and (about £50,000 in today’s money) “I do not think there is building dynamos and motors. By June 1884, he’d emigrated to the US – legend during a time when the so-called ‘War has it, with just four cents in his pocket and the calculations for a flying of the Currents’ was flaring up between any thrill that can go machine – to join the Edison Machine Works in New York, where he ended up proponents of AC and direct current trouble-shooting the company’s efforts to create an urban power utility. While (DC), with Edison Electric making through the human the young engineer only met the great Thomas Edison in person a few times, he claims for the superior safety of its DC heart like that felt by made a big impression, with the American saying: “This is a damned good man.” system over Westinghouse’s Tesla’s stay at the Edison Machine Works was not a happy one. He AC technology. the inventor as he competed for, and won, a $50,000 bonus, only to discover it had been a Two years later, during an economic practical joke and to be told that he didn’t understand American humour. panic created by the near collapse of sees some creation Understandably, Tesla felt no regret at leaving the cash-strapped organisation Barings Bank, investors in at the end of 1884, scribbling in his diary: “Good by to the Edison Machine Westinghouse started to call in their of the brain unfolding Works.” He then independently established the short-lived Tesla Electric Light loans, causing the company to reduce to success” & Manufacturing company, during which time he filed patents for new types of its commitment to research and alternating current (AC) motors and power transmission equipment. In 1886 development. Tesla was forced out of Nikola Tesla.”

54 THE ENGINEER | SEPTEMBER 2019 feature Late, great engineers #001

his royalty arrangement, but six years later 01 Nikola Tesla managed to sell his AC patents to 03 (Wellcome Images) Westinghouse for $216,000, leaving him enormously wealthy and, perhaps more 02 The famous Century importantly, free to follow his own interests, Magazine image of Tesla that included the invention of an electrical (Wellcome Images) resonant transformer circuit (the eponymous ‘Tesla coil’) that would 03 A leading EV company now revolutionise wireless telegraphy. Its first bears Tesla’s name public demonstration was in 1891, the year he both patented the technology and became an American citizen. During the last decade of the 19th century, Tesla would become essentially a freelance inventor, working initially on wireless lighting systems and the development of a steam-powered reciprocating electricity generator (known as ‘Tesla’s oscillator’) that was intended to simplify the steam engine. But in 1893 there was to be a cardinal event in the history of electricity supply, when Westinghouse Electric won the contract to illuminate the World’s Columbian stories (HG Wells’s The War of the Worlds had been published in 1898), and in Exposition using electric light generated by a fully integrated AC system, with June 1900 Century Magazine published a clever multiple exposure photograph Tesla in attendance, hired by Westinghouse to assist with demonstrating of Tesla in his lab, dwarfed by lightning discharges. Over the next few years Tesla the technology. attempted to raise the stakes by building an even bigger transmitter at his Later that year Tesla acted as a consultant to the Niagara Falls Cataract Wardenclyffe Tower facility 100 miles outside New York with backing from the US Construction Company advising on how to transmit power generated by its new banker JP Morgan. But with Wall Street now heavily backing Marconi, and the hydroelectric plant. The year 1895 saw the establishment of the Nikola Tesla once pro-Tesla media dismissing Wardenclyffe as a hoax, the by now debt- Company that, while attracting few investors, was to handle Tesla’s patents (of burdened Tesla was forced to call it a day. which there were some 300) for decades to come. Patents were a subject on Tesla’s career declined into self-parody, with the fallen engineer reduced to which Tesla appeared to have a resigned sense of humour. On being informed hosting bizarre annual press conferences, claiming in 1932 to have invented a that his rival inventor Guglielmo Marconi was transmitting wireless messages motor that could run on cosmic rays. In 1933 he announced his discovery of a across the Atlantic, he said: “Marconi is a good fellow. Let him continue. He is new form of energy altogether. In 1934, a death-ray superweapon, and in 1935 using 17 of my patents.” a mechanical oscillator that would earn him $100m in two years. On 7 January The next big challenge for Tesla was wireless power and communications 1943 the increasingly eccentric engineer died alone in his room at the New transfer. Neither had been done over any distance with any success, and by the Yorker Hotel, aged 86. Two thousand attended his funeral at New York’s mid-1890s he was working on experiments in his East Houston Street Cathedral of Saint John the Divine. The FBI ordered the confiscation of his laboratory to conduct electricity either through the earth or the atmosphere papers and his ashes are now kept in a golden orb at the Nikola Tesla Museum using a large resonance transformer magnifying transmitter. This was followed in Serbia’s capital Belgrade, where there is an airport named after him. by a laboratory at Colorado Springs, in which he conducted larger-scale If the last decades of Tesla’s career are overshadowed by pathos, his experiments than he could not safely perform in New York. rehabilitation has been spectacular. Today, the SI-derived unit of magnetic flux It was at this time that Tesla observed rogue signals that he took to be density is the tesla. On the silver screen he was played by David Bowie in the communications from another planet and wrote an article to that effect in one of movie The Prestige, while his name is now a globally recognised consumer the popular magazines of the day (he’d probably intercepted one of Marconi’s brand in the form of the world’s best-selling plug-in passenger car, produced test transmissions.) But, at the time, the press was running riot with space by the US company known by one word: Tesla. n

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Specialists in Design and Analysis Software

for Electromagnetics STAND Infologic Design (formerly Infolytica Europe) has provided advanced Electromagnetic design and analysis tools since 1978 F20 and provides both general purpose, and motor specific, electromagnetic design software. Applications include: electromechanical devices; non-destructive testing (NDT); power electronics; induction heating; sensors; and STAN industrial transformers. T: 01782 577929 D E: [email protected] Infologic Design STAND [email protected] +44 (0)1327 810383 www.infologicdesign.co.uk i n f o l o g i c d e s i g n D73 from the archive |Great Bell of Moscow For whom September 1939 the bell tolls A Moscow bell that captured the attention of Napoleon

he ill-fated Great commonly accompany great works, and Bell of Moscow (or especially such as be public,” Montferrand Tsar Bell) is now a recorded. “I would add that, ordinarily, tourist attraction in people are more prompt to speak ill when The Kremlin, but for things go evil, than to speak well and 103 years it sat esteem the labour should it be in all gathering dust in a perfection.” 33ft-deep pit into which it was cast in “The bell began to rise slowly, but not T1733 by order of the Empress Anna without the breaking of two cables and a Ivanovna.ar. sheave of one of the pulleys,” wrote Ivanovna envisioned the Great Bell of Nichols. “This caused the bell to assume Moscow as the successor to Tsar Alexis an oblique position, and two further cables Mikhailovich’s 100-ton bell, which was broke. The signal was given to stop, and destroyed by fi re at the Kremlin in 1701. operations were temporarily suspended. The new bell was to be taller at 20ft The cables, which had been in store some 7in, have a larger diameter (22ft 8in) and six months, were found to be defective, weigh in at 200 tons. By 1737 it was being and new cables were ordered; the decorated with reliefs and had been capstans were also increased to 20.” hoisted above the casting pit to cool down A second attempt was made at 5am when another fi re broke out in the on 23 July and by 6.05am the bell, Kremlin, causing blazing rafters to fall on “covered with its ancient dust” was seen the bell. In their haste to rescue it, to rise slowly from the pit. In under 45 onlookers poured water onto the inferno, minutes the bell was above ground and which caused the bell to crack and the pit was immediately covered with dislodge a piece that weighed 11 tons. The strong rafters and fl ooring, which bell fell to the bottom of the pit and, in received the carriage on to which the September 1939, The Engineer’s JR Nichols bell was lowered, and from where it was took a fresh look at the story. hauled up an inclined plane to its “Some time ago – 27 August 1937 – in a pedestal on 26 July. reference to the Great Bell of Moscow in the Nichols noted that the bell was then correspondence columns of The Engineer, surmounted by a ball and Greek cross the present author mentioned that the and was stood on an octagonal granite raising of so great a weight over a century pedestal bearing a marble slab ago no doubt presented some problems,” he inscribed with a dedication composed said. “As a result of this remark, an by Monsieur Montferrand. interesting translation of an account of this Unable to take the bell as a trophy, Napoleon feat has been received…The author of this account a date of 1 May was set for the fi rst attempt to ordered it to be blown up during the retreat from is Monsieur Auguste de Montferrand, who was raise the bell. Moscow in 1812, but only managed to infl ict responsible for raising the bell from the pit in At 10am, the Te Deum having been sung, and in damage on surrounding buildings. which it had been cast… and placing it on the the presence of an immense crowd, the signal was A more benign action was enacted upon the bell pedestal on which it still stands.” given for soldiers to operate the 12 capstans that in 2016 when a team from UC Berkeley, Stanford Work began on excavations when Montferrand had been arranged around the bell. University, and the University of Michigan made the reached Moscow on 25 March 1836, followed by a “I shrunk at fi rst when I considered that any Tsar Bell ring for the very fi rst time. To do so, they “strong coffer of carpentry” built around the giant mishap would bring many harms and much calculated the thickness, shape, movement and bell and a further six weeks erecting scaffolding revilements from the inhabitants of the city... For materials used to make the bell and created a and other preparations. Once everything was ready, blames and praises, honours and dishonours computational model that simulated the real thing.

SEPTEMBER 2019 | THE ENGINEER 57 digest

Word oftheissue

Anothony Poulton- Smith explores the origins of the word Bigpicture ‘drill’ Undoubtedly one of the earliest engineering processes developed by mankind. That the word is used in other senses – a small furrow in agriculture, a stout twilled cloth, a species of baboon, and in the military sense – is indicative of its simplicity and of its antiquity. In English, the word appears as a verb and as a noun, the verb not seen before the early 17th century while the noun is traceable to Proto-Indo-European of at least 8,000 years ago. That Proto-Indo-European root was tere, used to mean ‘to rub, turn’ and has untold numbers of derivatives with meanings referring to twisting, boring, piercing, rubbing, (as well as seemingly unrelated and diverse words such as ‘trout’, ‘attorney’, ‘detour’, and ‘tribulation’). This root has also produced other terms in many other languages, including Dutch, Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Lithuanian, Old Irish, Old Welsh, Slavonic, Proto-German, High German, French, and more – Aston Martin is introducing a service that will let owners create a bespoke garage for their car. Dubbed ‘Q by Aston Martin’, and all with the same sense of the service will see customers work with the Aston Martin design team and architects to fulfil a particular design brief. rubbing, wearing, and erosion. Photo: ©Aston Martin

Prizecrossword When completed rearrange the highlighted squares to spell out a term that refers to the quality of a material to retain it’s strength at high temperatures. The first correct answer received will win a £20 Amazon voucher. Email your answer to [email protected]

Across Down 1 Companies that provide a connection to the 1 Extremely stable (10) Internet (4) 2 Hit hard with a heavy instrument (7) 3 Cover tightly in plastic (10) 4 Robust east Asian clump-forming plant (5) 9 Rich, frothy creams (7) 5 Having made no legally valid will (9) 11 Thin metallic sheet (7) 6 Force exerted by a moving body (7,6) 12 Spool now taken over by DVD (13) 7 Craftsmen working on top of a buidling (7) 14 Areas of a concert hall where the audience 8 Collection of objects laid on top of each sits (9) other (4) 16 Not burdensome or demanding (5) 10 Without advance preparation (13) 17 Gain knowledge or skills (5) 13 Nonparticipant spectators (10) 19 Ring of rural land surrounding a town (9) 15 Feeling sorrow for an action (9) 21 Drape used in a bathroom (6,7) 18 Let off the hook (7) 24 Discusses or mentions (5,2) 20 Consider in detail (7) 25 Act so as to delay an event (3,4) 22 Having three dimensions (5) 26 All over (10) 23 Infection of the eyelid (4) 27 Lower in quantity (4)

June’s highlighted solution was: BUTTERFLY. The winner was: Chris Smith.

58 THE ENGINEER | SEPTEMBER 2019 This November: A new chapter in our 163 year history Our own story of innovation continues as

is relaunched Design for future mobility

Crossrail training mock up

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