The Pelton Turbine (Pelton water wheel): The Past and Future of Hydroelectric Power

The world’s supply of fossil fuels such as coal and oil is rapidly depleting. At the same time, we are become more aware of the large toll that the use of these fossil fuels is taking on our environment. Not only do they contribute to increased pollution and carbon dioxide levels but mining practices required to tap these sources are often devastating.As a result, the need for environmentally friendly, renewable power sources becomes more evident every day. One of the most exciting and widely used forms of alternate energy is hydroelectric power. Hydroelectric power is known to be a clean and renewable resource with many benefits.

From nearly the dawn of recorded time, mankind has sought to find ways to utilize the power of water. We have used it for travel, for processing our grain, and for sanitation.  The use of water wheels to generate primitive forms of hydroelectric power dates back to ancient civilizations in Greece and Rome. Since its inception, hydroelectric power has proven to be very valuable and modifications and improvements h

What Is Industrial Chemistry?

Before we define industrial chemistry, it may be helpful to know that the development of industrial chemistry started when a need to know how various chemicals are produced in much more than the laboratory scale, arose.  Chemistry knowledge was applied to furnish the rapidly expanding chemical industries with ''recipes'' which we now call chemical processes. Industrial chemistry keeps up with the progress in science and technology. It incorporates other emerging disciplines such as biotechnology, microelectronics, pharmacology and material science. The discipline is also concerned with economics and the need to protect the environment.

We define industrial chemistry as the branch of chemistry which applies physical and chemical procedures towards the transformation of natural raw materials and their derivatives to products that are of benefit to humanity.

Classical chemistry (organic, inorganic and physical chemistry) is very essential for advancing the science of chemistry by discovering and reporting new products, routes and techniques. On the other hand industrial chemistry helps us to close the gap between classical chemistry as it is taught in colleges and universities, and chemistry as it is practiced commercially. The scope of industrial chemistry therefore includes:

·     The exploitation of materials and energy in appropriate scale

·     Application of science and technology to enable humanity experiences the benefits of chemistry in areas such as food production, health and hygiene, shelter, protection, decoration, recreation and entertainment.

787 Dreamliner vs A380 : cockpit comparison

Airbus and Boeing have gone toe-to-toe in the battle of the giant airliners, but how do the respective cockpits compare? Aerospace-technology.com delves into the flight decks on-board both the 787 A380 and Dreamliner, to compare and contrast the technology implemented to redefine the future's airline pilots.

The rivalry between Airbus and Boeing, the chief competitors for the passenger airline market, has only been exacerbated by the launch of their comparatively-sized new age airliners. Despite Boeing's numerous problems in launching the Dreamliner, it has still gone toe-to-toe with Airbus' A380 airliner at every turn, competing for orders across the globe.

While this competition has led to both aircraft being compared to each other in terms of passenger comfort, environmental and economical efficiency, little attention has been paid to the design features included by Boeing and Airbus for the benefit of those tasked with flying the aircraft.

With new technology, innovative designs and the return of favoured features, the cockpits and flight decks of the Dreamliner and A380 have been produced to make piloting passengers to their destinations as pain-free as possible.

A380 flight displays

The Airbus A380 cockpit has eight 15x20cm LCD displays

Perhaps the most noticeable innovation in the Airbus A380 cockpit has been the introduction of a total of eight 15x20cm interchangeable LCD displays. The system consists of two primary flight displays, two navigation displays, an engine parameter display, one system display and two multifunction displays which can be customised to cater for the pilot's preference.

Solid Edge

Solid Edge is a 3D CAD parametric feature solid modeling software. It runs on Microsoft Windows and provides solid modeling, assembly modelling and drafting functionality for mechanical engineers, designers and drafters. Through third party applications it has links to many other Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) technologies.

Originally developed and released by Intergraph in 1996 using the ACIS geometric modeling kernel it later changed to using the Parasolid kernel. In 1998 it was purchased and further developed by UGS Corp (the purchase date corresponds to the kernel swap).

In 2007, UGS was acquired by the Automation & Drives Division of Siemens AG. UGS company was renamed Siemens PLM Software on October 1, 2007. Since Sep 2006 Siemens also offers a free 2D version called Solid Edge 2D Drafting.

Solid Edge is a direct competitor to SolidWorks and Autodesk Inventor.

        

New Bridge Can Be Built In Two Weeks

ScienceDaily (June 4, 2008) — With new bridge-building materials, industrial production methods, and an efficient construction process, it will be possible to start using a bridge only two weeks after construction starts on the site. This is shown in a new dissertation from Chalmers University of Technology.

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A pilot study of the new bridge concept, the i-bridge, is included in Peter Harryson’s doctoral dissertation in concrete construction at Chalmers. The bridge consists of extremely light sections that are assembled on site. The load-bearing parts consist of v-shaped fiberglass beams that are reinforced with carbon fibers on the underside. The beams interact with a thin bridge deck that is prefabricated out of steel-fiber-reinforced cement with extremely high strength. Since these materials are very durable, they are advantageous in a life-cycle perspective, and they are highly suitable for industrial construction. However, these materials are not in use in the new construction of bridges today.

Electronics and Electrical

CIRS is committed to the analysis and testing of hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment in compliance with various relevant global directives on electrical, electronic, communications devices, cables and cords, and packaging materials. CIRS offers professional technical support and one-stop tailored services to help enterprises deal with international technical barriers to trade and ensure product safety.

We provide one-stop testing services for electronics and electrical industry:

Global RoHS Directive
RoHS Directive covers a wide range of products, including not only integrated electrical and electronic products but also individual parts, raw materials and packing cases, thus impacting the whole production chain. Since the European Union RoHS directive came into force, many countries have formulated their own national RoHS regulations or directives in succession.

REACH SVHC and REACH Restricted Substances
REACH is the Regulation (EC) No 1907/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 December 2006 concerning the Registration,Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals. It came into force on 1 June 2007. The purpose of this regulation is to protect human health and the environment. The enforcement of REACH has a great impact on the electrical and electronic industry.

To comply with REACH, manufacturers or suppliers of electrical and electronic products shall identify and control hazardous substances in their products, especially substances of very high concern (SVHC) and REACH restricted substances.

Boeing 787 Dreamliner: Inside The New Aircraft

The Boeing 787 Dreamliner wooed its audience on Wednesday when it landed at the Boeing Manufacturing Plant in Long Beach, Calif.

Boeing employees, aerospace executives and state and local politicians all got a firsthand look at the popular aircraft, which can carry up to 250 passengers.

Although US carriers have yet to receive the aircraft, which costs between $185 million and $218 million to build -- depending on the version -- airlines have been eager to get their hands on the plane, mainly because of its technologically advanced specs.

Optimizing Routes for Underwater Vehicles: Sometimes the Quickest Path Is Not a Straight Line

ScienceDaily (Mar. 8, 2012) — Sometimes the fastest pathway from point A to point B is not a straight line: for example, if you're underwater and contending with strong and shifting currents. But figuring out the best route in such settings is a monumentally complex problem -- especially if you're trying to do it not just for one underwater vehicle, but for a swarm of them moving all at once toward separate destinations.

But that's just what a team of engineers at MIT has figured out how to do, in research results to be presented in May at the annual IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation. The team, led by Pierre Lermusiaux, the Doherty Associate Professor in Ocean Utilization, developed a mathematical procedure that can optimize path planning for automated underwater vehicles (AUVs), even in regions with complex shorelines and strong shifting currents. The system can provide paths optimized either for the shortest travel time or for the minimum use of energy, or to maximize the collection of data that is considered most important.

Stop-And-Go Traffic: An Accident? Construction Work? No, Just Too Much Traffic

ScienceDaily (Mar. 4, 2008) — A new study from a Japanese research group explains why we're occasionally caught in traffic jams for no visible reason. The real origin of traffic jams often has nothing to do with obvious obstructions such as accidents or construction work but is simply the result of there being too many cars on the road.

The research, published March 4 in the New Journal of Physics, shows how model patterns, normally used to understand the movement of many-particle systems, have been applied to real-life moving traffic. The research shows that even tiny fluctuations in car-road density cause a chain reaction which can lead to a jam.

The research found that tiny fluctuations in speed, always existing when drivers want to keep appropriate headway space, have a cumulative effect. Once traffic reaches a critical density, the cumulative effect of gentle braking rushes back over drivers like a wave and leads to a standstill.

The researchers in Japan used a circular track with a circumference of 230m. They put 22 cars on the road and asked the drivers to go steadily at 30km/h around the track. While the flow was initially free, the effect of a driver altering his speed reverberated around the track and led to brief standstills.

Yuki Sugiyama, physicist from Nagoya University, said, "Although the emerging jam in our experiment is small, its behavior is not different from large ones on highways. When a large number of vehicles, beyond the road capacity, are successively injected into the road, the density exceeds the critical value and the free flow state becomes unstable."

The researchers will be advancing their research by using larger roads and more vehicles to further test their findings.

The research suggests that it might be possible to estimate critical density of roads, making it possible to build roads fit for the number of drivers needing use of it or, on for example toll roads, only allowing the right number of cars access to the road to stop mid-flow traffic jams.

Introducing the X-56A MUTT: Who Let the Dog Out?

Artist's rendering of X-56A MUTT aircraft.

NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center soon will have a new dog in the yard, and it's a real MUTT. That's short for the Multi-Use Technology Testbed, a small unmanned aircraft being developed by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory to test technologies that will be needed for new kinds of lightweight, flexible aircraft.

MUTT is one of the Air Force's newest X-planes, designated X-56A. The 7.5-foot-long aircraft has a 28-foot wingspan and will be powered by two 52-pound thrust JetCat P200-SX turbine engines. It is being built in California under contract to Lockheed Martin Corp., which will conduct the flight experiments for the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL).

ADVANCES IN INTEGRATED CIRCUITS

An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit (also referred to as IC, chip, or microchip) is an electronic circuit manufactured by the patterned diffusion of trace elements into the surface of a thin substrates of semiconductor material. Additional materials are deposited and patterned to form interconnections between semiconductor devices.

    Integrated circuits are used in virtually all electronic equipment today and have revolutionized the world of electronics. Computers, mobile phones and other digital appliances are now inextricable parts of the structure of modern societies, made possible by the low cost of production of integrated circuits.

Advanced Mechanical Horse Built For Therapy

ScienceDaily (May 7, 2009) — While hippotherapy works to improve the quality of life for children and adults with physical and mental impairments through riding a horse, just getting some patients onto the horse can be a major obstacle. But now, Baylor University researchers have built a custom mechanical horse to help those with physical and mental impairments get the same benefit from hippotherapy without having to actually get on to a horse.

Helping Future Engineers Use Today's Design Plans

ScienceDaily (Feb. 13, 2005) — Digital design software has virtually replaced blueprints across all manufacturing sectors. STEP (the Standard for the Exchange of Product Data), a universal format for product data that allows industrial partners with different proprietary software to understand and share engineering data, has accelerated this change. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and PDES, Inc., an industry consortium, have just introduced a new STEP standard that should help ensure that tomorrow's engineers will be able to understand today's complex designs.

Introduction to Aerospace Engineering

Aerospace engineering is the branch of engineering that deals with the design, construction and science of aircrafts and space crafts. As aircrafts are subject to severe conditions such as fluctuating atmospheric pressure, and temperature, structural loads applied upon components, earth’s thrust etc. Aerospace engineering is the convergence of several disciplines such as aerodynamics, propulsion, avionics, materials science, structural analysis and manufacturing.
These technologies are collectively known as aerospace engineering. The complexity of aerospace engineering is addressed by a team of engineers, each specializing in their own branches of science and collectively working on the challenges this field has to offer.