Well Read

Why Is There a Tiny Hole in Airplane Windows?

Posted by Ketton (Team UV) on June 30, 2015

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: Aerospace, Airplane Windows, Airplanes, Engineering, Innovation, Material Science, Mechanical Engineering, Structures, Technology, Travel, Well Read. 4 Comments

Breather hole in an airplane window. Photo Credit: interestingengineering.com

As many of you are aware, we are in the transitioning phase of this website as we close out TeamUV.org and transition to EngineeringAFuture.com over the next two months, so this will be Ketton’s last Well Read post here at Team UV, but not to fear, there are still two months of posts left here and the same types of articles will be carried over onto EAF (Engineering A Future), so without further ado, please enjoy the following:

Before we go any further into the purpose of the “breather hole”, we will first check out how a window in a pressurized passenger cabin is set up. As shown in the Boeing 737 maintenance manual (the most widely produced jet airliner in aviation history), the window structure consists of three layers of acrylic – a tough, transparent and flexible resin – although only two of them have an actual structural function.

Airplane window configuration. Photo Credit: interestingengineering.com

These structural layers are the intermediate and outer ones – while the inner layer (called “scratch pane”) only serves as a buffer between the passengers and the structure of the window itself. These layers prevent the cabin from reaching the external pressures that, depending on altitude, are too low for the vital functions of the human body.

Basically, the primary structural window guarantees the cabin remains at a constant pressure equivalent to an altitude of 7,000 feet, which is still quite acceptable for the body. However, in most cases, only the last acrylic layer is responsible for ensuring such conditions; the intermediate layer is just there for extra safety. Having said that, let us get back to the mysterious little hole.

As can be noted in the diagram shown above, the breather hole is located in the middle layer of the window. This little puncture acts as a bleed valve ensuring that the pressure between the last two layers and the cabin always remains the same. This is necessary as a way of preserving the middle layer (the extra safety one) so it is only exposed to severe pressure differences in cases of emergency – that is, if the last layer the window is fractured in some way.

The breather hole also serves to prevent freezing and fogging between the outer layers of the window. Of course, that doesn’t always work since it is not rare to find photographs showing some frost on the windows.

Glass in now 3D Printable!

Posted by Abraham (Team UV) on June 23, 2015

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: 3D Printing, Additive Manufacturing, Create, Engineering, Innovation, Materials Science, Mechanical Engineering, Science, Technology, Thermal Fluids, Well Read.

3D printed glass. Photo Credit: 3DPrint.com

As many of you are aware, we are in the transitioning phase of this website as we close out TeamUV.org and transition to EngineeringAFuture.com over the next two months, so this will be Abraham’s last Well Read post here at Team UV, but not to fear, there are still two months of posts left here and the same types of articles will be carried over onto EAF (Engineering A Future), so without further ado, please enjoy the following:

Over the last few years 3D printing has gone from a obscure manufacturing process into a mainstream solution for everyday problems. The reason for this transition is mainly due to the types of materials that are able to be extruded out of a hot-end of a 3D printer. PLS was first used because of low melting point but with advances in hotend technology, materials such as ABS, nylon, polycarbonate, PEEK and more can be used in additive manufacturing. The more materials you have to work with, the more applications your product can have and that’s exactly the beauty of 3D printing. It is amazing for prototyping and making unique parts that you cannot find anywhere else.

The average 3D printer’s extruders have a temperature range of about 180-325°C, however, this limits the types of materials that can be used. A small Israeli company called Micron3DP has been experimenting with glass as a medium for 3D printers and (as of today) has announced that it has had a successful test using molten glass! Now if you know a little about materials, you know that glass and ceramics have extremely high melting points which means using them as a medium for a 3D printer requires an extremely hot extruder. And that’s exactly what they did.

Micron3DP’s tests were done using “soft” glass at a melting point of 850 °C and borosilicate glass at a melting point of 1640 °C using an innovative way of 3D printing in an extremely hot extruder. The process is analogous to that of printing with molten thermoplastics on a Cartesian based machine, one layer is laid down and cooled rapidly before the next layer is set down.

3D printed glass shapes. Photo Credit: 3DPrintingIndustry.com

If you have ever 3D printed anything, you know how empowering it feels when you are able to create exactly what you want and use it immediately. Soon you can add glass to your arsenal and you will be an unstoppable creative force. Glass has very unique optical, corrosion resistant, and temperature resistant properties and this new technology and process will hopefully harness the power of glass for use in the medical industry, aerospace industry, and even the art industry. Now this breakthrough is so recent that as of June 22, 2015 (yesterday) the company is still seeking investors to help them further the technology. If you want to get started on the 3D printing game, here’s how you can make your own 3D printer for cheap:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Chimera-60-DLP-resin-3d-printer/?ALLSTEPS

For more updates on glass 3D printers, visit Micron3DP’s website here: http://micron3dp.com/

Finding Friction

Posted by Ben (Team UV) on June 16, 2015

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: Automotive, Cars, Dynamics, Engineering, Friction, Materials Science, Mechanical Engineering, Optics, Research, Science, Well Read. 1 Comment

2012 ROUSH Stage 3 Mustang. Photo Credit:premiumphotoshop.com

Friction is one of the most important and unappreciated forces in nature. It is the reason cars’ tires grip the road and handle turns while remaining in control. It is also one of the major reasons your car’s gas millage isn’t what it could be. What if there was a way to keep the helpful aspects of friction while removing the bad ones.

The oil in your car serves as a lubrication system which reduces friction quite a lot by coming between two surfaces that are rubbing together. This system allows cars to have long lives without wearing out, and gives pretty good gas millage. But what if there was a way to totally eliminate friction so that cars could travel much farther on a single gallon of gas and would last much longer without costly maintenance.

To create a system with almost no friction the fundamental mechanics behind friction must be understood. On a large scale friction is caused by tiny ridges in the surface of one material grabbing on to ridges in the other. This has been known for a while but researchers have just found a way to understand what’s happening at an atomic level.

They created a surface of charged ions then shot a laser over the surface. The charge in the ions refracted the laser in ways that allowed the researchers to measure the forces involved in friction on an atom by atom basis. This system was only conceived a few years ago and it give researchers a powerful tool in the hunt for practically friction free surfaces.

A more technical and in depth discussion of this research can be found here: http://www.nature.com/news/friction-of-a-single-atom-measured-with-light-1.17698

Performing Surgery on a Grape with the da Vinci Surgical System

Posted by Andrew (Team UV) on June 9, 2015

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: Biomedical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Electromechanical Engineering, Engineering, Machine Design, Mechanical Engineering, Robotics, Robots, Surgery, Technology, Well Read.

The da Vinci Surgical System in action. Photo Credit: medicaldaily.com

As many of you are aware, we are in the transitioning phase of this website as we close out TeamUV.org and transition to EngineeringAFuture.com over the next two months, so this will be Andrew’s last Well Read post here at Team UV, but not to fear, there are still two months of posts left here and the same types of articles will be carried over onto EAF (Engineering A Future), so without further ado, please enjoy the following:

The tiny toothed pincers above are part of a non-robotic system called the da Vinci Surgical System. The design is called non robotic as the operating doctor is in full control of the system. It basically translates the movements of a surgeon into micro-movements in the da Vinci’s intruments.

The idea behind this system is to give surgeons expanding capabilities and a minimally invasive option for major surgery. Here is a video of it in action:

Now that is some cool engineering!

Until next time…

Adapting Biosensing of Bats for Better SONAR

Posted by Brian (Team UV) on June 2, 2015

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: Acoustics, Animals, Biomimicry, Engineering, Flight, Materials Science, Mechanical Engineering, Research, Science, Vibration, Well Read. Leave a comment

Different ear configurations on different species of bats. Photo Credit: Rolf Mueller (research.vt.edu)

As many of you are aware, we are in the transitioning phase of this website as we close out TeamUV.org and transition to EngineeringAFuture.com over the next two months, so this will be my last Well Read post here at Team UV, but not to fear, there are still two months of posts left here and the same types of articles will be carried over onto EAF (Engineering A Future), so without further ado, please enjoy the following:

Have you ever heard the expression that someone is “as blind as a bat”? Well this expression is not entirely accurate as no species of bats are actually blind; having said this, bats do have horrible eyesight, forcing them to rely on a different way to get around and navigate obstacles. More specifically, bats use SONAR (SOund Navigation And Ranging) in order to navigate the skies. SONAR is essentially exactly what it sounds like; that is, it consists of the use of sound waves to both navigate and to determine the range (distance) to something. As we have discussed before here on Team UV, SONAR consists of both passive and active SONAR, with the former being simply listening to the sound emitted from an object in the environment and the latter being the emitting of sound and then listening for the return echos. Well, as it turns out, bats are kings of both worlds because of the intricate design of their ears and noses.

As seen in the photos above, different species of bats have different configurations of ears in order to navigate the different types of environments that they inhabit, but there are some key features of the ears that are common across almost all bats: grooves, ridges, flaps, and other kinds of ear baffles. All of these features allow the bats to effectively filter out or attenuate some signals while selecting and encoding other signals to make them more easily understandable. All of this is accomplished by the refraction of the signals on the basis of how the sound waves physically interact with the geometry of the ear or by the resonance introduced within the ear due to how the various features of the ear affect the vibrations introduced by the sound wave-ear interaction. In essence these bats are able to reject or suppress all of the irrelevant information stored in the way of sound waves, while selectively highlighting all of the relevant information that they require to be able to acrobatically maneuver through their environment with ease. But wait, there’s more! Bats can actively adjust their ear configuration by deforming their ears in order to constantly change how they filter information and what information they filter. To take this a step further, bats can do this up to ten times per second, or about three times faster than a human can blink their eyes, allowing these bats to adapt at far less than a moment’s notice!

Bat displaying highly intricate ear design and noseleaves. Photo Credit: Rolf Mueller (research.vt.edu)

Everything discussed so far has focused on passive SONAR abilities, but bats also excel with active SONAR. Why is this the case? Because not only can they deform their ears, they can also deform their noseleaves (leaf-like flaps on their noses) to produce a highly focused SONAR beam and to alter the properties of that beam. This translates to the bats being capable of being selective both on the emitting and receiving ends, making them extremely efficient at utilizing their SONAR (not to mention the fact that bats are capable of using far fewer SONAR pulses/beams to navigate than man-made SONAR devices due to this increased efficiency). When you combine this with the fact that they manage to pack all of these biosonar capabilities into such a small package, it is no wonder engineers are studying them to come up with smaller, less power-hungry, more cost-effective, and more efficient SONAR.

To sum up the merits of adapting this biosonar for man-made devices, I will quote Rolf Mueller, the mechanical engineer behind this research:

“The split-second decisions that bats on the wing have to make will often be based only on a very small number of echoes. Based on these few input signals, the bat’s brain is able to make the quick and reliable decisions that swift flight in confined spaces requires,”

You can find more info on this research here: Bat’s biosonar inspires sensing technology research

So there you have it, just another example of how biomimicry or biomimetics is helping to greatly advance the state of science and technology. Please come back Thursday for my last Presentation post on TeamUV.org!

Personal Plane for Two, Please!

Posted by Abraham (Team UV) on May 26, 2015

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: Aerospace, Drones, Engineering, Fluid Mechanics, Innovation, Machine Design, Mechanical Engineering, Research, Technology, Travel, Well Read.

S2 concept. Photo Credit: dailymail.co.uk

Imagine it’s Valentine’s Day again and this year you want to take your significant other somewhere special but you don’t want to drive for hours is congested traffic just to get there. Enter Joby Aviation with their S2 and S4 personal air transportation vehicles. Joby CEO and founder JoeBen Bevirt has been working and developing the S2 two-seat electric aircraft for the last 10 years.

The S2 uses twelve different propellers and sensors which allow it to perform vertical take off and landings. The S2 can achieve speeds of up to 200 miles per hour and has a battery life of one hour. So in ideal conditions, the S2 can travel up to 200 miles on a single battery charge which puts it in the weekend-getaway or even the commuter vehicle range. Currently the S2 and S4 are piloted crafts but essentially the goal of Joby Aviation is to create drones for people for short haul air travel, however, there are many obstacles to this goal.

First and foremost is the legal aspect. Drones are not looked upon well yet in the light of the law. The Federal Aviation Administration is currently reluctant to allow trials for drones to deliver packages like with Amazon’s Prime service. There is no chance that they will allow for super-drones to deliver people. New legislature needed to grow almost ahead of the technology and because it did not, the legal issues will take an estimated seven to ten years to resolve.

Technologically speaking there are some hurdles as well. Bevirt wants to build a quiet, safe, and efficient aircraft that will get you to your destination five times faster than just ground transportation. However, if the aircraft is too loud, then the product is dead before it hits the market. Bevirt has a goal to make his aircraft 100 times quieter than a helicopter putting it roughly at 65 decibels at 240 feet altitude.

There are also infrastructure issues as this technology will make use of heliports for landing and taking off. Even big cities like San Fransisco only have six in the entire city which makes it unlikely to be a commuter mode of transportation at least for now. Bevirt quotes the S2 price tag at $200k which is comparable to, yet is much cheaper than the Robinson R22 helicopter. The dream is big and that’s what we’re all about here at TeamUV. For more information here is the technical paper to the S2 aircraft: http://www.jobyaviation.com/S2ConceptualDesign(AIAA).pdf

S2 concept in vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) mode. Photo Credit: dailymail.co.uk

Medical Device That Can Deliver Medicine One Molecule at a Time

Posted by Ketton (Team UV) on May 19, 2015

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: Biochemistry, Biomedical Engineering, Engineering, Health, Innovation, Mechanical Engineering, Medicine, Research, Science, Technology, Well Read. Leave a comment

Implantable ion drug pump. Photo Credit: http://www.popularmechanics.com

The device shown above is smaller than your finger and it might be the future of devices to treat a fractured spine, pinched nerve, or neurological disorder like epilepsy. Oh…did I mention that it was implantable!?

A team of engineers and medical researchers in Sweden has just designed a pinpoint-accurate implantable drug pump. It delivers medicine with such precision that it requires only 1 percent of the drugs doctors would otherwise need to deploy. As it demonstrated in tests on seven rats, the tiny pump can attach directly to the spine (at the root of a nerve) and inject its medicine molecule by molecule.

The technology is based on a compact but complicated piece of laboratory equipment called an ion pump. To put it simply, as electric current enters the ion pump one electron at a time, medicine is flung out the other end one molecule at a time. One caveat: Because of this setup, only medicines that can be electrically charged can be used with the pump. But that includes more pain medicines than you might think, including morphine and other opiates. In their study, Jonsson and her colleagues experimented with gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA). This chemical essentially puts the brakes on nerves, reducing pain, but it stops being produced where the nerves are broken. Jonsson’s approach was to use her new drug pump to simply put more GABA back into the broken part of the spine.

With any other drug pump this would be ineffective if not insane—the GABA would simply travel throughout the spine at leisure, wreaking widespread havoc and disrupting the nervous system. But, with the ion pump’s pinpoint precision, Jonsson could inject incredibly small amount of GABA right where they needed it, without the risk of major damage. And it worked. When the scientists gave the test rats a common pain-response test (essentially poking their paws, and seeing how much force was needed for them to retract their arms) the rats with drug-pumps could on average withstand 5 times more force.

Jonsson is emphatic that her medical device is still in the research phase, and a real ion drug pump may be years away. Scaling up the pump to the size required for human needs might not be too big of an issue, but for this experiment, the researchers had their rats implanted with the pumps for three days only. The shell of the pump would likely need to be changed for longer-term use, she says. Regardless, drug pumps like Jonsson’s may hold the promise of future biomedical devices designed to assuage nerve pain and treat neurological diseases.

DARPA Has Delivered Self-Steering Bullets

Posted by Andrew (Team UV) on May 12, 2015

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: Aerodynamics, Blog, Control Systems, Defense, Design, Dynamics, Electromechanical Engineering, Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Military, Well Read.

Yours Truly Shooting a MP5!

Trying to hit a moving, accelerating, and evasive target at long range? No problem, America’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has you covered. That’s right…a project named Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance (EXACTO) now allows the military to hit targets that move and evade with high accuracy. The video below shows an experienced marksman using the remarkable technology along with a novice shooter completing the same task.

The EXACTO program is understandably secretive about the technology but we know that they have stuffed a “real-time optical guidance system” into a .50 caliber size round. The system accounts for the rough terrain, environments (weather, wind, etc), and other factors soldiers are exposed to that can hinder successful hits. Future work can now be done on other caliber rounds and other applications.

More information here!

Until next time…

‘Dead Water’ Phenomenon

Posted by Brian (Team UV) on May 5, 2015

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: Engineering, Flow, Fluid Mechanics, Mechanical Engineering, Naval Engineering, Ocean, Science, Thermodynamics, Turbulence, Waves, Well Read. Leave a comment

‘Dead Water’ flow visualization experiment. Photo Credit: Youtube.com (Leo Maas)

Although ‘Dead Water’ may sound like the title of a movie that will make you steer clear from swimming in the ocean for a year, it is actually the name for an interesting fluid-dynamic phenomena experienced by nautical vessels (and, as it turns out, a detective novel by Ngaio Marsh). Right then…back on track.

Dead Water describes an effect wherein a vessel (i.e. a ship) that is moving by way of thrust produced below the water line (i.e. a propeller) begins to slow, sometimes even to a complete stall due to a mysterious force that seems to be dragging the vessel backwards. How does this happen? Well, there are things called internal waves; essentially, these are waves that appear much as the usual surface waves that you might think about when you picture ships at sea, but that exist below the surface at the interface of fluids existing at different densities. It is important to note, however, that an argument can easily be made to refer to internal waves as a type of mechanical (as opposed to electromagnetic or seismic) surface waves, as surface waves are waves that exist at an interface between differing media…just like internal waves, the usual distinction being that surface waves are generally referred to as those at an interface between a liquid and gas (i.e. the ocean’s surface and the air above the surface), while internal waves would be between a liquid and a liquid.

Stratified fluid interface in a kid’s science experiment. Photo Credit: fieldnotesfromfatherhood.com

You may recall doing an experiment growing up where you took water (dyed blue or red, etc.) and put it in a 2L bottle with some sort of cooking oil; because the two fluids were of different densities, they did not readily mix, but rather remained stratified. If you slowly rocked the bottle side to side (to avoid mixing the fluids), you created an internal wave! This is the kind of wave we are talking about right here, but rather than being produced by your hand moving a bottle, it is being produced by a ship’s propeller beneath the water.

In essence, the ship’s propeller is inserting energy into the fluid (the ocean), and this energy is being used to create an internal wave at the internal interface. As the ship continues to input energy into the fluid, the wave grows in amplitude, until eventually (much like waves at the beach), the wave breaks. When the wave breaks, it crashes against the boat; the reason you do not see direct contact between boat and wave in the above video is that the boundary layer between the boat’s hull and the far removed water is keeping them separated, but (rest assured) the energy of the breaking wave is transmitted through the boundary layer into the boat’s hull. This wave breaking creates local turbulence around the propeller, which further draws energy from the boat’s thrust (in addition to the thrust energy still being taken up by the waves forming down the line). The next part is a simple logical progression: if a boat uses a propeller to introduce energy into a fluid to produce thrust, then if an external force (i.e. internal waves) is taking up energy from the propeller, then it is also taking up energy from the production of thrust, then this translates to the boat not producing as much thrust as before and thus slowing down, perhaps even to a standstill (if the boat no longer has enough thrust to defeat the drag forces).

With the ship slowing down and possibly even stopping, even though its propeller(s) is(are) rotating at a constant speed, it is understandable how nautical travellers might have coined the term ‘Dead Water’ for something that they likely first perceived as being due to some crazy, mysterious sea monster that wouldn’t let them go, making them dead in the water…get it?

One last word on this topic…why is there these fluid interfaces in the ocean to begin with? Well, this stratification in ocean waters is caused by many factors, but mainly the difference in temperature, salinity (salt content), and thus density. For this reason, nautical goers are more likely to encounter Dead Water in regions with large salt inlets or largely varying water temperatures, such as near sources of inland fresh-water runoff into the ocean, or near glaciers.

Temperature & salinity profiles demonstrating density structure in the upper 1,200 m (3,900 ft) of some critical regions in the Artic Ocean. Photo Credit: wikiwand.com

3D Printed Organs

Posted by Ben (Team UV) on April 28, 2015

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: 3D Printing, Biomedical Engineering, Engineering, Innovation, Manufacturing, Materials Science, Mechanical Engineering, Prosthetics, Research, Science, Well Read.

3D Bioprinter printing a Kidney. Photo Credit: on3dprinting.com

3D Printing is coming up in the news and research more and more these days. But that just goes to show the versatility of this additive manufacturing technique. The majority of manufacturing up to this point has focused on taking a block of material and removing the parts of it that do not belong, like Michelangelo sculpting the David. New techniques based on adding material have opened a new venue for the creation of products and allowed engineers and scientists to create designs that would have previously been limited by old manufacturing techniques.

One of the cool new applications of the 3D printer idea is for organ creation. Scientists at Princeton University and John Hopkins University have created a 3D printer that can print a human ear. The device first creates a scaffold, something for cells to grow on and maintain shape, out of hydro gel, then it adds cells that will grow and form cartilage that will be the final structure of the ear. Read more about it here.

Body Armor Made from a Liquid That Hardens When Hit by a Bullet

Posted by Ketton (Team UV) on April 14, 2015

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: Body Armor, Chemical Engineering, Engineering, Innovative, Liquid Filled Body Armor, Materials Science, Mechanical Engineering, Research, Shear Thickening Fluid, Technology, Well Read. 2 Comments

Shear Thickening Fluid (STF) body armor. Photo Credit: ep.yimg.com

A Polish company, Mortax Institute, is in the business of producing body armor systems and is currently working on a liquid based armor that is capable of hardening upon impact. This liquid in question is known as Shear-Thickening Fluid (STF) and can harden at any temperature instantaneously when impacted with a bullet. The liquid armor is capable of providing protection from high-speed projectiles and can also disperse the energy over a larger area. Test performers of the STF for Moratex said “This viscosity increases thanks to the subordination of the particles in the liquid structure, therefore they form a barrier against an external penetrating factor.” The ballistic tests that were carried out have proven that it is resistant to a large and diverse range of projectiles.

The liquid armor’s capability of stopping inbound projectile when combined with the low indentation of its surface creates a safety level that is far higher when compared with the conventional solutions that rely on Kevlar. If a protective vest is fitted to the body, then a four centimeter deep deflection may cause injury to the sternum, sternum fracture, myocardial infarction, or lethal damage to the spleen. Thanks to the properties of the liquid, and to the proper formation of the insert, it’s possible to eliminate near one hundred percent of this threat because of the reduced the deflection from four centimeters to one centimeter.

The team working on this innovative approach to body armor is hopeful that this technology will find applications other than in body armor. I fully agree that this STF, if fully developed, can have a huge impact in the world we live in today.

Medical Device That Makes You Cry…for a Good Reason!

Posted by Andrew (Team UV) on April 7, 2015

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: Biology, Biomedical Engineering, Electromechanical Engineering, Engineering, Innovation, Mechanical Engineering, Medical Device, Research, Science, Technology, Well Read.

Photo Credit: factrange.com

I used to love wearing contacts. The first time I put them on was like seeing the world in full HD! The only problem is that I have very dry eyes which makes wearing contacts for extended amounts of time very difficult. Scientists at Oculeve have set out to solve this medical problem that affects more than 20 million Americans. The only catch? The very small device jolts you right in the lacrimal!

Tear Generating Device. Photo Credit: ExtremeTech.com

The implantable neurostimulator is injected or placed via a small incision below the eyebrow or in the nasal cavity. From here, the device sends small electrical pulses to the lacrimal glands to stimulate tear production. This process is controlled by remote and can generate tears as the user needs them. A major design challenge is in the recharging of the device’s battery. Getting to the device to charge every so often is impossible for obvious reasons so a form of inductive charging has to be used. This still leaves the user with placing a charger very near their face to charge the small battery; less painful but very awkward.

Do I see myself using this technology? Not for a very long time! For now, I’ll stay away from zapping my tear glands and use trusty eye drops instead.

More information about tears and the device here.

Until next time…

A Typing Test to Diagnose Parkinson’s?

Posted by Ketton (Team UV) on April 5, 2015

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: Biomedical Engineering, Computer, Engineering, Health, Mechanical Engineering, Parkinson's Disease, Parkinson's Typing Test, Research, Science, Software Engineering, Well Read. 1 Comment

Typing. Photo Credit: wikipdeia.org

People spend a lot a their day typing whether it be on a keyboard, smartphone, or a card reader. Researchers at MIT noticed the value of this daily habit, and are putting it to a secondary use; they’ve developed software that can gauge the speed at which a typist is tapping the keyboard to help diagnose Parkinson’s disease. In order to type a word, your brain has to send signals down through your spinal cord to the nerves that operate your fingers. If your central nervous system is functioning perfectly, then you should be able to tap most of the keys at a fairly constant rate. But a number of conditions might slow the signal from the brain to the fingers, such as sleep deprivation (which slows all motor skills) and diseases that affect the central nervous system, including Parkinson’s.

For the first version of this study, the researchers were looking at typing patterns that indicated whether a person was sleep-deprived or well rested. They created a browser plug-in that detected the timing at which the volunteers hit the keys and found that the people who were sleepy had a much wider variation in their typing speed. They found similar results in their preliminary test with Parkinson’s patients; the 21 typists with Parkinson’s tapped the keys at much more variable rates than the 15 healthy volunteers. The researchers called it a “window into the brain”.

Right now, the algorithm they’ve developed is not refined enough to distinguish Parkinson’s patients from people who are sleep deprived, though the results might be clearer after a number of trials. The researchers plan to conduct a study with a larger group of subjects, but they hope that this type test could eventually lead to earlier diagnoses of Parkinson’s. Today most people are diagnosed after they have had symptoms for 5-10 years and to distinguish Parkinson’s from other conditions that might affect a person’s motor skills, like rheumatoid arthritis. They are currently developing a smartphone app that can test participants even more easily.

Liquid Metal in Motion

Posted by Ben (Team UV) on March 24, 2015

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: Engineering, Flow, Innovation, Liquid Metal, Materials Science, Mechanical Engineering, Metal, Nature, Research, Science, Well Read. Leave a comment

Liquid metal motor in action. Photo Credit: Gizmodo.com

A recent article published in Nature describes experiments that involve a special alloy of metal that is liquid at close to room temperatures. This alloy interacts with a surrounding fluid, usually water allowing it to propel itself. It is a huge feat, motion before has come from some form of external manipulations of magnetic fields, as in electric motors, or forced changes in pressure, as in hydraulics. This self moving metal can create motion on a much smaller scale leading to even smaller devices. Imagine a small camera that can zip through your bloodstream and sweep up any bad cholesterol lying around or guide a surgeon’s knife in a life saving procedure.

The Journal of Nature is one of the largest scientific journals in the world, many groundbreaking advances in science are published through it. While subscribing to the journal itself is not cost effective for most individuals they do offer an RSS feed that provides brief summaries of the articles published in their recent issues. Check it out here: http://www.nature.com/nature/newsfeeds.html

Coming Soon: Inflatable Space Homes!

Posted by Abraham (Team UV) on March 17, 2015

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: Aerospace, Engineering, Innovation, Machine Design, Materials Science, Mechanical Engineering, Research, Science, Space, Technology, Well Read.

Bigelow Expandable Activity Module. Photo Credit: smugsmug.com

The newest addition to the International Space Station (ISS) could be launching as early as September 2015! Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) is a combined effort of Bigelow Aerospace with NASA and SpaceX and it is exactly what it sounds like, an expandable space habitat that will find residence at the ISS for the next two years. In those two years, astronauts will be inspecting and gathering performance data to see if it really is a viable habitat that can resist the rigors of orbit including radiation, loads from accelerations, and even micrometeorites. When it is not being inspected, it will possibly serve as a lounge area for astronauts or as an additional laboratory and that’s really the beauty of it. It can be anything you want it to be, it’s more space in space! The keyword in its description is “expandable” as astronauts will activate a pressurization system and expand the BEAM to roughly the size of a 10×12 foot bedroom using air stored within the packed module. What is so inspiring about the launch of the BEAM is that it could one day replace the ISS altogether. The inflatable segments can be connected together to make larger and larger habitats. If it’s performance is promising, it could mean a future where space hotels on the moon are possible or even full-fledged factories in orbit! There is just so much more room for activities! It’s making my head spin…

Robotic Glove Designed To Teach You To Draw!

Posted by Ketton (Team UV) on March 10, 2015

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: Art, Controls, Electrical Engineering, Engineering, Engineering Drawing, Mechanical Engineering, Research, Robotics, Team UV, Technology, Well Read. Leave a comment

Robotic glove. Photo Credit: interestingengineering.com

This robotic glove, the “Teacher”, is designed to help you improve your drawing skills. It attaches to your hand and the machine coaches you to draw by forcing your hand to perform certain motions. The idea is that your hand will eventually develop the proper muscle memory and be able to draw free-handed.

Saurabh Datta, an engineering student from the Institute of Interaction Design Copenhagen, developed the glove for his graduation thesis. Initially, the equipment was designed to teach him how to play the piano. In it’s latest version however, the Teacher can help anyone without a natural born talent to draw through simple repetition. The robot forces your hand to repeatedly execute a series of basic drawing movements. The repetition of these movements end up being transferred to the muscle memory of your fingers, causing you to be able to repeat the movements naturally without the use of the glove. The idea of the glove is basically to “program” you so your lines become aesthetically better. The glove has no ability to interfere in the creative process so it’s still up to you whether or not to be able to put on paper something visually attractive.

I am not an artistic person but once I obtain one of these gloves who knows. You might see one of my drawings in a museum near you! 🙂

GuardBot is Here to Protect You, Citizen!

Posted by Andrew (Team UV) on March 3, 2015

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: Control Systems, Design, Electrical Engineering, Engineering, Marine, Mechanical Engineering, Research, Robots, Technology, Water, Well Read.

Friendly neighborhood GuardBot. Photo Credit: cdr.cz

Connecticut-based company, GuardBot has recently released their take on an autonomous broadcasting, reconnaissance, and security robot. What began as a bot aimed for use on Mars, is now a potential patrolling robot for the US military. Guardbot, also the name of the bot, is capable of tackling various terrains from sand, grass, mud, and snow to even water. In solid to slightly wet environments, it can achieve a top speed of 6 mph and can even climb hills up to 30 degrees in slope. In water, Guardbot can achieve a top speed of 4 mph, still perfect enough for guard duties.

Going for a swim. Photo Credit: cdn.ft.rs

Guardbots can be ordered in a range of sizes from 4 inches to 9 feet in diameter but the standard size is 2 feet. Inside the bot, a number of electronic controls are housed to achieve various tasks. These tasks are set by the client and anything from night vision to laser scanners can be installed. It also features live streaming, high definition cameras and a pendulum-stabilized electronics tray to keep everything oriented upright.

Tiny GuardBot for home use. Photo Credit: soocurious.com

Although very different from our project, the goals of these two devices are the same. Both can be used for reconnaissance and security missions but can also be customized to meet other needs. Our project is capable of being used in tracking, exploratory, and guarding scenarios (in addition to our primary application of ISR). GuardBot can also be used to patrol parking lots and in emergencies where explosives or chemicals are present.

Combating Icing

Posted by Brian (Team UV) on February 24, 2015

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: Aerospace, Engineering, Flow, Fluid Mechanics, Ice, Innovation, Materials Science, Mechanical Engineering, Research, Science, Well Read. Leave a comment

F/A-18F Super Hornet at high angle of attack over a snowy mountain range. Photo Credit: navy-pictures.blogspot.com

Let’s start off with a scenario: You’re flying a sortie for the Navy in a reconnaissance-configured F/A-18F Super Hornet to fly in high over some mountain range in Afghanistan, take some pictures, and come home. You’re flying at 40,000 ft in order to both stay clear of the immensely tall mountain ranges and to remain undetectable and stay out of reach of small arms fire. Unfortunately, at 40,000 ft in this region, icing conditions are very common. Due to the low temperatures in this region (and especially at this elevation) combined with the all-too-often rainy or snowy conditions, you end up having to fly through falling snow or rain (which would be either already ice due to the low temperatures, or supercooled, meaning that the water drops are far below the freezing point, but have not frozen yet due to the absence of a nucleation site – which is essentially a solid surface on which the water can freeze…i.e. dust, other particulate matter, or the wing of an aircraft).

As you begin to fly into the poor weather, the water droplets begin to freeze on impact with the wing, building up a layer of ice on the wing of your aircraft. This ice quickly changes the surface roughness of your aircraft wings, changing the aerodynamics and lowering the speed or angle of attack that you can travel at without stalling (flow separation that leads to loss of lift). Furthermore, say due to the angle of incidence between your flight path and the direction the water droplets are coming from, the ice is forming more heavily on one side/wing of your aircraft than the other (and probably unevenly on each side). You start to feel the aircraft wobbling around in flight and find it much more difficult to control your roll, pitch, and yaw. You are now having issues flying the aircraft at the required speed, are having to fly at a lower angle of attack, and are having trouble controlling the aircraft. You have a decision to make: continue to put yourself, your Radar Intercept Officer (RIO), and your $60,000,000 aircraft in danger or abort the mission. Unfortunately, this situation is not too uncommon when icing presents a real problem to pilots.

F-35 undergoing icing tests.
Photo Credit: AF.mil (Left), globalaviationreport.com (Middle, Right)

With the development of unmanned drones for reconnaissance missions, we are able to push the envelope a little more, but still are wary of putting a very expensive aircraft into poor weather conditions (for both financial losses and the possibility of having a high-tech aircraft downed in enemy territory). This problem also exists for civilian air travel, and in many cases, general aviation pilots are not certified for flight into known icing conditions due to the clear and present danger. So what do we do to reduce the threat posed by icing conditions?

Aircraft wing icing and an expandable rubber boot used to break up the ice. Photo Credit: cloudman23.files.wordpress.com

There are a few traditional ways of dealing with aircraft icing. One is shown above, in which a rubber “boot” is expanded in order to break up the ice on the leading edge of the aircraft; obviously, this is not an optimal solution, as it temporarily changes the profile of the wing, and also does not get rid of all of the ice. Other methods include bleeding hot engine exhaust air over the wing and using “weeping” wings that release antifreeze over the surface of the wing, to name a few. These methods are all quite complex, require a lot of power, can alter the airflow significantly, and may even present environmental dangers (as in the case of the weeping wing).

In order to fill this void of optimal solutions, a company called Batelle has employed its researchers to develop a solution that consists of a carbon nano-tube coating that can be included beneath the topcoat of the aircraft wing and then act as a resistance heater of sorts to warm the wing from inside the wing to prevent or get rid of ice on the wings. This solution employs advanced materials science concepts in order to introduce a more elegant, non-invasive means of dealing with aircraft icing. Furthermore, the coating is controlled through an “intelligent controller [that] monitors the heater performance and applies only the power levels required for the flight conditions”, making it less power-hungry and more adaptable to any given situation! These benefits are realized even further on military Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) (their principal application), where large sensor (or other) payload power requirements and desired lightweight dictate that a smaller than ordinary amount of power can be dedicated to de-icing. This solution has the capability to revolutionize the way we go about preventing or dealing with aircraft icing; now only if they could further development this solution for use in the de-icing of pitot tubes (devices used to measure airspeed – to figure out how fast you are flying; pitot tubes are notorious for encountering problems in icing conditions, where a false airspeed reading can lead to disaster).

When Old Things are Made New Again

Posted by Ben (Team UV) on February 17, 2015

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: Aerospace, Automotive, Engineering, Materials Engineering, Materials Science, Mechanical Engineering, Research, Science, Steel, Technology, Well Read. Leave a comment

Stainless Steel I-Beams. Photo Credit: stainlessshapes.net

Steel is the foundation of the modern structure, be it buildings, airplanes, or ships. Plain carbon steel is a simple mixture of carbon and iron in just the right proportion to provide excellent strength. As humans have taken to the sky lighter materials have been required. This has led to dominance of aluminum, titanium, and composite materials for weight savings. These materials are stronger per unit weight than steel but more expensive and less plentiful. Scientists have just recently discovered a new steel alloy that provides the strength to weight ratio of titanium using much more available materials. This could lead to a revolution in the structural steel world, but for now they need to find a way to manufacture it outside of a lab setting. Read more here: http://www.gizmag.com/steel-alloy-strong-light-titanium/35996/

Well Read: Chemists Discover How to Unboil Eggs in Minutes!

Posted by Abraham (Team UV) on February 10, 2015

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: Biochemistry, Biotechnology, Breakfast, Education, Engineering, Fluid Mechanics, Machine Design, Mechanical Engineering, Research, Science, Technology. Leave a comment

Cracked egg. Photo Credit: WashingtonPost.com

Boiled eggs are delicious, I’m pretty sure no one will object to that, but have you ever thought of unboiling eggs? A group of chemists out of UC Irvine and Australia have made this discovery which has the potential to change the biotechnology industry and dramatically reduce the time and cost for production of cancer treatments among other applications!

Now this wasn’t done simply for the sake of unboiling eggs, it was used to demonstrate how powerful this new technique of returning tangled proteins to their original form really is. Proteins are made of chains of amino acids that are folded and arranged in a specific way. Changes in pH and/or temperature disrupt the bonds holding the proteins in their original shape causing it to deform and tangle. So when you cook an egg you are actually tangling proteins which causes them to change from clear to white. The process is known as denaturation and is problematic for scientists who are trying to recycle valuable proteins after use. Previous methods of solving this issue exist but they are time consuming and expensive. This new process, however, gives results in minutes.

Professor Colin Raston’s vortex fluid device. Photo Credit: WashingtonPost.com

In the findings published in ChemBioChem, egg-whites were first boiled for 20 minutes at 90 degrees Celsius (194 deg. F) (plenty of time to tangle the delicious proteins). To revert a protein in the cooked eggs called lysozyme, urea was added to liquefy the solid whites. The resulting substance was then placed in a vortex fluid device which is a high powered machine designed by Professor Colin Raston’s laboratory at South Australia’s Flinders University. This machine applied shear stress to the proteins which encouraged them to untangle and re-fold to their original form.

There is huge potential for this discovery that can streamline protein manufacturing and make cancer treatments more affordable. Think about this next time you’re making omelets. For more information on the findings please visit http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cbic.201402427/abstract

Purify Water Using Sunlight!

Posted by Ketton (Team UV) on February 5, 2015

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: Chemical Engineering, Engineering, Innovation, Mechanical Engineering, Panasonic, Photocatalyst, Research, Science, Technology, Water Purification, Well Read. Leave a comment

Panasonic’s photocatalytic water purification system. Photo Credit: wonderfulengineering.com

Note: Our apologizes for the missed post on Tuesday; we had some technical difficulties and so have posted the original Tuesday post (this post) for today and will be posting the original Thursday post tomorrow (Friday 1000 hours) instead. Regular scheduling will resume on Sunday.

In some parts of the world clean drinking water is quite rare as the water sources are polluted and purification methods are not available. Panasonic is developing a new technology to address this problem. This technology uses the sunlight for purification of the water extracted from the ground. Recently, a system was presented by the company that uses photocatalysts and sunlight to purify water at a high reaction speed. This readily improves access to clean water, in areas where needed.

The recent breakthrough that led to the discovery of this technology is the system’s ability to bind titanium dioxide (TiO2), a photocatalyst capable to react under ultraviolet light. TiO2 comes in super fine particles and is hard to collect once it has dispersed in the water. Previously, other larger materials were used to bind the TiO2 to them, but it was a loss of active site surface area. The way this technology by Panasonic differs from those found before, is the discovery of Zeolite particles’ (a commercial adsorbent and catalyst) ability to bind the TiO2 particles. This solves the problem by enabling photocatalysts to maintain their active site. As the two particles are bound together by electrostatic force, there is no need for the binder chemicals. As the new photocatalytic particles are stirred, the Zeolite releases the TiO2, which then disperses throughout the water. The resultant reaction speed is much faster as compared to other methods and the processing of large amounts of water is supported. The TiO2 binds to the Zeolite again if the water is still left, which makes it easy to separate and recover the photocatalysts from the water for later use.

The main idea of this project is to develop a small-scale version of this purification system, which may then be deployed at different places where purification of water is needed. See how the system works below!

Panasonic’s photocatalytic water purification system process diagram. Photo Credit: wonderfulengineering.com

Autonomous Navy Swarmboats

Posted by Andrew (Team UV) on January 27, 2015

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: Computer, Control Systems, Electromechanical Engineering, Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Navy, Research, Swarm, Technology, USN, Well Read. Leave a comment

Swarmboats testing. Photo Credit: DefenseTech.org

The US Navy, specifically the Office of Naval Research, recently released information about their latest protection technology for their own fleet. They have employed smaller autonomous boats, called Swarmboats, that swarm and intercept threats in order to protect the larger Navy ships. Smaller, faster, and more nimble boats are fitted with a system called CARACas which stands for Control Architecture for Robotic Agent Command and Sensing. To make this system as modular as possible, engineers have designed their control systems to be as “plug and play” as possible, allowing any boat to be retrofitted. Initial testing showed that up to 13 Swarmboats can be linked up to protect a “mother” ship. Right now the protection boats are used to detect and deter but have the capabilities to destroy upon command!

13 of our senior project vehicles all synced up under water? Drool…

The motivation behind such a project was the terrible attack on USS Cole in 2000. A small enemy boat filled with explosives simply approached the ship and killed 17 sailors and injured many others. Swarmboats could have easily intercepted the enemy boat and prevented it from coming within deadly range.

More information can be accessed here.

Until next time…

Fish Locomotion and the Future of Undersea Warfare

Posted by Brian (Team UV) on January 20, 2015

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: Engineering, Fish, Flow, Fluid Mechanics, Marine Biology, Mechanical Engineering, Research, Science, Senior Project, Team UV, Well Read. Leave a comment

Initial conceptual rendering for our UV done in April 2014.

Initial conceptual model for our UV done in April 2014.

First and foremost I apologize for the overall lateness of the content of this post, as I originally intended to publish this post in my previous round of posts, but due to time constraints decided to publish a post on a snake-proof full-body suit (equally interesting!) and invest a little more time into making this post a little easier to understand before publishing…hopefully it worked out, haha. So as I noted a while back (while discussing the future of undersea warfare), with growing challenges in the undersea and technological domains, innovation is becoming more and more important within the realm of defense engineering (as well as all other fields of engineering). One promising direction engineers are looking to in all fields of engineering is towards the application of advanced biomimetics (a.k.a. biomimicry) in their designs. Why might engineers and scientists want to study how we can mimic fish, or other animals or nature in general? Because nature truly is the ultimate engineer. Animals have been optimized to perform the tasks that they need to and to do so efficiently and thus have been nearly perfected for their environments and their lifestyles.

Considering the facts just presented, it becomes a little more evident why undersea warfare (as well as other undersea activities and applications) may benefit from the implementation of biomimcry. Take the Shortfin Mako Shark for example; this is the fastest species of shark in the world and it utilizes its large caudal fin (as will be defined later), slim, streamlined, torpedo-like body, and its stronger, faster-acting muscles (as enabled by its endothermic abilities, through which it generates additional heat through its unique metabolism, keeping the muscles warm and agile, thus defining the Mako as a “warm-bodied shark”) to reach cruise speeds of 25 mph and burst speeds up to 50 mph and leap 30 ft high! Another example of the awe-inspiring abilities of marine creatures and how scientists and engineers have attempted to mimic them is that of the color- and texture-changing abilities of the octopus, as Andrew talked about a while back.

Shortfin Mako Shark. Photo Credit: Sam Cahir via dmarron.com

To better understand more specifically how engineers can utilize biomimicry in order to advance undersea vehicle technology, we will now discuss how exactly fish swim. Fish generate forward motion, or swim, through what is termed locomotion. Locomotion is simply a fancy word for describing movement from one location to another; animal locomotion may take many forms and can be seen in all types of environments, whether terrestial (on land), aerial (through the air), or aquatic (through the water). There is a myriad of other qualifiers that can be used to further divide up the different kinds of locomotion (if you are interested, you can learn more about animal locomotion at this link), but we are going to solely focus on fish locomotion, that is, how fish get from one place to another.

Fish locomotion can be divided up into two main modes of motion: Body-Caudal Fin (BCF) and Median-Paired Fin (MPF). The BCF mode accounts for about 85% of fish families’ main mode of propulsion, whereas MPF makes up for about 15%. Now before diving into the swimming mechanisms associated with these two modes, we will make one more distinction: undulatory motion (also referred to as undulation) vs. oscillatory motion (also referred to as oscillation). Undulation is by far the most common type of motion (both within the BCF & MPF modes) and can be thought of as a lateral wavelike movement; picture a fish seemingly weaving its way through the water or a rope with waves travelling down its length…this is in essence what undulation manifests itself as: undulation in fish movement appears as lateral waves travelling down the length of the fish’s body. In short, undulation is lateral wave motion along the length of the body, relative to the body, as if the body was stationary but experiencing waves along its length. In contrast, oscillation focuses more on the body being essentially rigid and moving the tail side to side…picture your dog wagging its tail, or a pendulum oscillating about the line connecting the pivot point to the base. Now that we’ve got that covered, we can move on to quickly listing the common types of fish motion and listing a few examples!

Eel anguilliform lateral undulation. Media Credit: lyle.smu.edu

Time-lapse picture showing positions of a dog’s tail throughout its oscillation. Photo Credit: mediaorchard.com

Body-Caudal Fin (BCF)
This type of movement depends on the fish effectively wiggling its body in order to move its caudal fin sided to side, thus producing thrust which has components in the forward, backward, and transverse directions. The largest component of this thrust is that in the rearward direction, thus the movement of the caudal fin propels the fish through the water.

Undulatory:
1. Anguilliform: With this kind of motion the undulatory waves are passed throughout the entire length of the body (except perhaps the head); because the entire body is extremely flexible, both forward and backward motion are possible. The most typical application in which you would see this kind of motion would be in eel locomotion.
2. Subcarangiform: This motion is similar to anguilliform, but the forward 1/3-1/2 of the fish does not move, while the rest of the body still generates transverse undulations. It is now significantly harder for the fish to swim backwards as it is not longer symmetric front to back and the forward portion of the fish is much more stiff than the rear. Common examples of fish with this kind of motion would be most trout and salmon.
3. Carangiform: Also similar to anguilliform, but only the last 1/3 of the body acts to produce thrust and the caudal fin itself is usually more stiff to produce greater thrust with the reduced active length of the body. Fish that swim like this are usually fairly narrow transversely, likely to increase the surface area used for thrust generation by increasing the height to width ratio; these fish also tend to be stiffer overall and faster moving.
4. Thunniform: In this group, all undulation is restricted to the caudal fin/tail and the region connecting the main body to the caudal fin (called the peduncle); these types of fish usually have very large, stiff caudal fins, have been optimized for high speeds and long distance travel, and are capable of generating hydrodynamic lift in order to compensate for the fact that many of them are not neutrally buoyant and thus need to move (and in doing so, generate lift) in order to keep from sinking. Examples are most species of tuna and sharks.

Oscillatory:
1. Ostraciiform: These types utilize slow pendulum-like movement of large caudal fins and are similar to Thunniform, but operate much more slowly. As a result, this type of swimming is usually either simply an auxiliary, low-energy style of swimming used by some MPF fish or, if used by fish as their main style of propulsion, those fish would generally have internal countermeasures such as poisons since they are incapable of fleeing predators.

Various physical characteristics of a generic shark, nearly all of which appear on most fish.
Photo Credit: Wikipedia.org

Median-Paired Fin (MPF)
This type of movement depends on synchronization of various combinations of usage of the pectoral, dorsal, pelvic, and/or anal fins.

Undulatory:
1. Rajiform: Characterized by vertical undulations along large pectoral fins…think sting rays and manta rays for example.
2. Diodontiform: Characterized by undulations that travel along large pectoral fins…like a porcupine fish!

Porcupine fish with undulating pectoral fins; Diodontiform motion. Media Credit: Tumblr.com

3. Amiiform: Utilize long undulatory waves along large dorsal fins, such as a Seahorse.
4. Gymnotiform: Uses undulations of a long anal fin; much like the Amiiform, but using the anal fin on the underside of the fish rather than the dorsal fin on the top side of the fish. An example is the American Knifefish.
5. Balistiform: Anal and dorsal fins undulate; while rare, this can be seen in the Triggerfish.

Oscillatory:
1. Tetradontiform: Dorsal and anal fins oscillate either in phase (together) or opposite of each other; an example would be the Sunfish.
2. Labriform: Pectoral fins osciallate in a way in which they produce both lift and drag, which can be resolved into components, one of which would be rewards, thus producing thrust. In essence, the fish flaps and rows its pectoral fins, producing thrust. An example of a fish using this kind of motion would be the California Sheephead.

So there you have it, an organized view of the many sorts of propulsion mechanics associated with fish, each having its own advantages and disadvantages. By studying these kinds of characteristics of fish, scientists and engineers can come up with innovative solutions by looking to the sea for the answers for the one constant truth for scientists and engineers alike is that we never stop learning and so when you can’t find a sufficient answer in your textbooks and theories, you need to be able to conduct experiments and analyze the world around you in order to come up with new ideas.

Personal sketch of a conceptual UV following a submarine in the distance(April 2014).

This is exactly what engineers within the defense industry are doing currently as they conduct research and begin designs of new cutting-edge, innovative undersea vehicles that utilize biomimicry to provide for increased performance, better power efficiency, and increased stealth through the minimization of flow signature. While we here at Team UV are not utilizing biomimicry in the design of our propulsor (for which we use something else all together), we absolutely have biomimetic influence within our design and as can be seen in the picture at the top of this article, have looked to adapt a streamlined shape and fin-like control surfaces in addition to a number of other biomimetic schemes (i.e. stability, maneuvering, buoyancy control, drag reduction, etc.) to produce a truly innovative solution that is currently in the manufacturing/assembly stage. And so we again ask for your increased support through our fundraising campaign at GoFundMe.com/TeamUV as we near the end of our project in the coming months.

As promised, in another week or two, we will release some pictures of the current vehicle design/model.

Origami Engineers

Posted by Ben (Team UV) on January 13, 2015

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: ASME, Engineering, Fun, Innovation, Materials Science, Mechanical Engineering, NSF, Origami, Paper, Research, Well Read.

Origami crane. Photo Credit: Wikipedia.org

Most of us can remember the days in elementary school where we learned to make paper cranes, flowers, boxes and all manner of things just by folding paper. I was never one to master the art of origami but I can make a pretty nice paper air plane! This technique of folding paper has generated a lot of interest in the engineering world. The National Science Foundation has provided a grant to a few top universities to research this. The goal is the creation of materials that can fold up into very small places and then unfold when needed. Imagine a solar collector that could unfold like a flower in sunshine then collapse again at night or when power is not needed. Read a full article about it on the American Society of Mechanical Engineers’ website here: https://www.asme.org/engineering-topics/articles/design/engineering-meets-art

One Small Step to Breathing Underwater!

Posted by Abraham (Team UV) on January 6, 2015

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: Electrochemistry, Engineering, Exploration, Materials Science, Mechanical Engineering, Ocean, Oxygen, Research, Science, Water, Well Read. Leave a comment

Oxygen-absorbent crystals before (left) and after (right) becoming saturated with oxygen. Photo Credit: TheHigherLearning.com

71% of the Earth’s surface is covered with water and, for the most part, it is unexplored by humans…until now! Scientists from the University of Southern Denmark in conjunction with the University of Sydney, Austrailia have discovered a crystalline material that is capable of absorbing oxygen from both air and water! This revolutionary material can bind and store oxygen in high concentrations then control the release time of that oxygen depending on what the user needs. The benefits to this are unquantifiable but could be especially beneficial to deep sea divers and to those suffering from respiratory ailments.

A study led by professor Christine McKenzie alongside Jonas Sundberg of the University of Southern Denmark involved about 10 liters of microscopic grains of the material and found them to be enough to suck the oxygen out of a room. Even just a few grains contain enough oxygen for a single breath and that material can even absorb and supply oxygen from water surrounding deep sea divers. The oxygen saturated material is so effective that it is comparable to 3 full pure oxygen tanks under pressure! One of the key ingredients is the metal cobalt in the material which controls the process of absorption which gives it the molecular and electrical structure to be capable of absorbing oxygen from air and water. Remarkably the absorption and releasing process can be done many times without losing the ability much like a sponge in water. The impact that this discovery will have on the medical field as well as exploration will be monumental and I look forward to it. For more information please visit: http://www.collective-evolution.com/2014/10/10/absorbing-crystal-can-steal-oxygen-from-air/

NASA Sent a Wrench to the ISS….By Email!

Posted by Ketton (Team UV) on December 30, 2014

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: 3D Printed Wrench, 3D Printing, Astronaut, Engineering, Innovation, ISS, Materials Science, Mechanical Engineering, Space, Technology, Well Read. Leave a comment

ISS Commander USN Captain Barry Wilmore holding a 3D printed wrench. Photo Credit: InterestingEngineering.com

Barry Wilmore, International Space Station (ISS) Commander, recently needed a wrench that they didn’t have at hand on-board the ISS…so NASA emailed him one. For the first time ever, an object has been designed on Earth and manufactured in space. In earlier years if a situation arose similar to this then the people on the ISS would have to wait for the next resupply mission which could take months! “Made in Space”, a California company designed a micro gravity printer that sits aboard the ISS. Now astronauts can simply print the desired tool they need.

Now whenever something is needed on the ISS, they can now send the requirements to Made in Space, who then mocks up the part in CAD software before sending the data back to be printed in space. However, this is not the first 3D printed part in space, back in November the printer printed a spare part for itself. This means that they can take less tools with them when they travel to the ISS. 3D printing filament is much lighter than tools! In total, 21 objects have been 3D printed in space, all of which have been brought back to Earth for examination and testing. This can only help to improve the printing process in micro gravity. Now only imagine if we can 3D print a spacecraft…Hey…..It could happen!

Engineering, Science, and…Ballerina Shoes?

Posted by Andrew (Team UV) on December 23, 2014

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: Apparel, Ballet, Dance, Education, Engineering, Materials Science, Mechanical Engineering, Research, Technology, Textiles, Well Read.

Ballerina in ballet shoes. Photo Credit: rebloggy.com

Now more than ever, kids are being introduced to the possibilities of a career in engineering and the sciences. There are commercials encouraging young scholars to study engineering and plenty of programs to help underrepresented demographics obtain a scientific/technical degree. Even other fields of study such as business and apparel merchandising management (AMM) are offering classes to become better versed in solving technical problems.

Esthella Gonzalez, a recent apparel merchandising and management graduate, researched which materials were most durable for ballet shoes as her senior project.

CPP Bronco Esthella Gonzalez. Photo Credit: Cal Poly Pomona PolyCentric

A few weeks back, I stumbled upon an article written by Carly Owens about a fellow CPP Bronco named Esthella Gonzalez. Esthella is a recent AMM graduate who took a more technical approach to her senior project. She was tasked with tackling a sports related apparel problem commonly found in ballet. Pointe shoes, the one’s used by ballerinas for dancing on the tips of their toes, have very high wear rates.

Ballerina shoes typically wear out after about 20 hours of normal use and can be completely worn down even after one performance. This has caused a major need for better materials and performers have been calling out for someone to help with this problem for years. Esthella started out her research by running 14 materials through common textile tests also used in the engineering field: tear strength, seam strength, and abrasion resistance. Similar tests also are used to determine mechanical properties of materials and for the classification of materials commonly used in engineering practice.

Seam Strength Test. Photo Credit: 4U2SEA.

Esthella at first dreaded her given task but, through hard work, has achieved great success in here findings. She found that a material called Gabardine, composed of mostly polyester, performed the best overall in all three tests. It outperforms the traditionally used Satin which can run into the thousands to repair. This cost is also compounded by the fact that ballerina shoes are all custom made. After finding success in her two-quarter long project, she was encouraged to continue research and even submitted an article to the academic journal Fibers and Polymers.

Introducing students to the world of science at an early age and encouraging those interested in it to continue their study is only a good thing. Aside from advancements in consumable technology we can expect to see advancements in fields not commonly tied to engineering. The medical field and agricultural economy for example always benefit from new breakthroughs in science and cutting edge equipment. Esthella’s unexpected blend of science, engineering, and apparel is just the tip of the iceberg!

Until next time!

To support the completion of our project, please check out our GoFundMe site and pass it along to your friends. We are nearing our first milestone of $1,000 and need your help! Thanks everyone!

Design of a Snake-Proof Full-Body Suit

Posted by Brian (Team UV) on December 16, 2014

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: Biomedical Engineering, Crazy, Design, Engineering, Heat Transfer, Materials Science, Mechanical Engineering, Nature, Snakes, Suit, Well Read. 1 Comment

Anaconda-proof suit. Photo Credit: Gizmodo.com

First off, contrary to what I stated in my previous post, today’s post will not discuss one way in which UUV technology is being optimized for the purpose of undersea warfare through the utilization of advanced biomimetics, as I ran out of time to prepare that post and thus will publish it in my next round of posts.

Today I will be sharing something a little bit different…the design of a full body suit that was recently worn by a man who was swallowed whole by a 25 ft. anaconda…on purpose. I’ll decline to comment on the validity of this kind of feat, as that is not what I am here to write about, but will rather focus on what is effectively a pretty interesting case study in engineering design.

Anytime something must be designed to be used by humans, the level of engineering required is almost immediately stepped up [for many reasons, including (but not limited to) the increased importance of safety], and this is no exception. In all product design, engineers must begin by determining the problem statement and the constraints imposed by that statement. Dr. Cynthia Bir (a biomedical engineer), one of the project leads for the suit design, would have begun by looking at the facts: there is a man, who will be ingested by an anaconda, and that man must then come back out of the anaconda without being harmed. As ridiculous as this must sound, it is actually quite reflective of the absurd nature of the design/operational constraints that engineers must often meet. Next, Dr. Bir would have had to conduct literary (or possibly even experimental) research into the aspects of the problem statement (the snake itself, and all aspects of the human-snake interaction to take place) and then determine/look at the consequences associated with this problem statement; that is, what are the specific risks posed to the user in this scenario (in this case: constriction, snake bite, and acid attack from the gastrointestinal acids). Next, she would have started in with generating concepts, selecting a few concepts to further develop, doing some base-line evaluation and analysis of those concepts in order to cut it down to one final design, and then starting in with the actual design/calculations/analysis/testing of her chosen design. I should note that engineering design is never this simple and is actually a very complex process, that generally sees many iterations and a great deal of looping back to earlier steps of the design process.

So, as we stated before, Dr. Bir had already deciphered the situation, conducted relevant research (how a snake attacks its prey, what kind of acids are present in the snake’s stomach, etc.), resolved the situation into the key parameters/constraints associated with the situation (ability to resist snake bite, constriction, and stomach acids), and now would have come up with a few concepts. Undoubtedly, one of the decisions that would have been made early on would revolve around what kind of material system to use in the design: one material for the entire suit or multiple materials used throughout the suit. In this case, it would have been very difficult to use one material for the entire suit, as the application calls for many different material properties (hardness, strength, and fracture toughness for the snake bite, stiffness and compressive strength for the constriction, and resistance to chemical attack for the acids, etc.) and thus it would be far more economical to use multiple materials (each one targeting a few key constraints) on the suit (as opposed to having to develop a whole new material to meet all of the specific needs of the suit). In fact, this is exactly what Dr. Bir and her team did.

The innermost layer of the suit actually served a different purpose: to monitor the vital signs of the man being swallowed (his heart rate, respiration rate, core body temperature, etc.), as if something began to go wrong, they would want to stop the experiment immediately. This layer consisted of a biometric vest that was paired through Bluetooth to the project team’s computers, giving them live updates of all of his vitals (it is interesting to note that these kinds of vests are also used by special operators, astronauts, some athletes during training, and many others).

Biometric vest. Photo Credit: Gizmodo.com

Next, came a thermal control layer in the way of a vest fitted with a pumped liquid cooling loop heat exchanger which essentially sends cold (colder than the man’s body temperature) water through small tubes that run across his body. The temperature difference between the man’s body and the water in the tubes drives heat transfer out of the man’s body into the tubes, thus cooling the man’s core temperature. This is important in order to make sure that the man does not overheat, because he will be wearing a number of thick layers of various materials and will be inside of the snake’s stomach so that he will be exposed to his own internal heat generation, the snake’s internal heat generation, and all of his insulating layers.

Water cooled vest. Photo Credit: Gizmodo.com

Next comes a chemical suit (not pictured) to provide the chemical resistance that we mentioned earlier. After this, a layer of chain mill (like that worn by Renaissance knights or people who dive with sharks) is added in order to block the snake bite.

Chain mill. Photo Credit: Gizmodo.com

On top of this comes a rigid carbon fiber shell that must be made custom to conform to the user’s torso and is used to resist damage to the ribs/chest cavity by constriction of the snake’s muscles. The torso shell was designed with a factor of safety of a little over 3 (meaning that the shell’s strength is over 3 times the stress that it will be subjected to during the event) and was tested by wrapping a thick rope around the shell and pulling the rope with tow trucks at either end.

Carbon fiber torso shell.
Photo Credit: Youtube.com

On top of all of this, the user donned a thick layer of neoprene (think a wetsuit) to keep all of the other layers together and cover any otherwise unprotected parts of his body; this layer was then dusted with pig’s blood in order to attract the snake and ensure that the snake would actually want to ingest the man. Other things (a few of the many other things) that had to be considered in the design of this suit would have included the weight of each component, thickness (to ensure mobility of appendages), range of motion (note the fact that the torso shell is sleeveless), thermal conductivities of all materials (for proper heat transfer calculations), possible interference with the Bluetooth signal, ability to put on/take off the suit, and of course ability to breathe! The ability to breath is vastly secured by a combination of three things: the carbon fiber torso shell, none of the layers being too restrictive, and a sealed face mask (which also serves as eye/face protection from any objects or acids, thus the mask must also be chemical-resistant) with an external air hose (which must also be resistant to chemical infiltration) fed by an air supply from the project crew.

Face mask with air supply. Photo Credit: Gizmodo.com

Presumably leak-testing of the suit and air-supply lines. Photo Credit: aol.com

So there you have it, an interesting look at some of the engineering considerations behind one of the strangest things I have ever heard of anyone wanting to do. This just goes to show that the possible applications of the world of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are truly limitless!

Please be sure to check back Thursday for a Presentation post by Andrew and please remember to help us to share our fundraising campaign at GoFundMe.com/TeamUV

Gears Gone Wild

Posted by Ben (Team UV) on December 9, 2014

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: Biomimetics, Biomimicry, Bugs, Engineering, Insects, Machine Design, Mechanical Engineering, Nature, Research, Science, Well Read.

Scanning Electron Micrograph (SEM) of the insect’s leg gears. Photo Credit: livescience.com

Nature is a great engineer. So many of the innovations that have propelled humankind through the ages can be found in nature. On average, a gear is one of the smallest components of almost anything that moves. These components handle everything from timing to power transfer. Humans have only been using these tools for maybe 1000 years. Scientists have discovered that nature has been using them for much much longer. The rear legs of a plant hopper are bound together using gears so that the legs spring at exactly the same time propelling the insect where it needs to go without requiring any more complicated thought. Pretty much all the great ideas can be found in nature and this is one of the reasons why biomimicry is becoming more and more popular. Read more about the discovery here

Well Read: Unlimited Power UAV!!

Posted by Abraham (Team UV) on December 2, 2014

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: Drone, Electrical Engineering, Electromechanical Engineering, Engineering, Fun, Innovation, Mechanical Engineering, Robots, Technology, UAV, Well Read. Leave a comment

CyPhy Work’s Pocket Flyer drone. Photo Credit: Discovery.com

A company called CyPhy Works has discovered a way to make UAVs that have “unlimited” run time! How is this possible you might ask?? Well it’s rather elementary.

If you think about it, all your household appliances use the same cutting-edge technology. A power cord. Or in this case, a microfilament that provides energy, direct communication, high definition video, and receives data from sensors quickly and reliably. But you might think that having this “tether” is a huge drawback as the microfilament could get snagged and that would be the end of the UAV. This problem has been carefully considered. The UAV actually dispenses the spool of microfilament as it moves so it will never be in tension to hold it down. And if worst comes to worst, if someone decides to cut the microfilament, the UAV can simply return to its point of origin on battery power.

Pocket Flyer’s microfilament tether. Photo Credit: spectrum.ieee.org

Helen Grainer, founder of CyPhy Works, says that this is a solution that solves the problem that most UV’s have and that is loss of communication when employed for duty. UVs go into bunkers, inside a building, around a corner. All lose communication and by the time communication is restored it’s already too late. Too late to recover the UV itself or any information it might have stumbled upon. The latest of CyPhy Works’ projects is the Pocket Flyer UAV that has a battery life of 2 hours or longer, with a microfilament cable that can spool up to 76 yards, and has replaceable spools for the drone to use after completion of each mission. The point of having a UAV so small is so soldiers always have a drone on their person no matter the situation and it can be run using an OS on a smart phone or other similar devices. These UVs are ready for production to get them into the hands of soldiers who need them the most. Here’s the incredible video of the prototype, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMdCnRg81qE

4-Dimensional Printed Wood?

Posted by Ketton (Team UV) on November 25, 2014

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: 3D Printing, 4D Printing, Engineering, Innovation, Materials Engineering, Materials Science, Mechanical Engineering, Research, Science, Technology, Well Read. Leave a comment

4-D printed wood. Photo Credit: news.discovery.com

Just as 3D printers create objects that have three-dimensional characteristics, 4D printers create objects that have four dimensional characteristics, in that they include a dynamic component that causes their structure to change over time; relying on water, heat, or light to activate them. By using a multi-material printer, it’s possible to generate objects with the properties all in one go. Such “programmable materials” may one day mean that you can buy flat-pack furniture at IKEA, take it home, spray it with a garden hose and then watch it assemble itself! MIT is currently working on this exact thing!

Let’s think about what happens to a thin strip of wood if you get it wet: it warps, as different parts of the wood swell in slightly different ways. Typically, this is bad, because warping is unpredictable and related to the type of wood, the patterns in the grain of that wood, how and where it gets wet, etc. So if we could somehow predict the warping, we could find a piece of wood that we could deliberately warp into a shape that you want just by adding water. With 3D printing it’s possible to manufacture pieces of wood with whatever composition, thickness, and grain characteristics that you want. With a great understanding of how the material behaves, along with computer models, you can 3D print a piece of artificial wood that’s been “pre-programmed” using carefully constructed layers of various thicknesses and grain directions. It will warp itself from flat into exactly the shape you want, just add water! The MIT Self-Assembly Lab has been developing a variety of programmable materials, not just wood. So we could see pre-programmed materials such as carbon fiber in the future as well! Technology just makes our life easier doesn’t it?

Black Dragons Live Deep Within the Ocean

Posted by Andrew (Team UV) on November 18, 2014

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: Creature, Engineering, Exploration, Explore, Fish, Marine, Mechanical Engineering, Nature, Science, Senior Project, Well Read.

The great thing about our senior project is that beside our principle goal of improving ISR capabilities, our vehicle can be used in many other applications. One potential area of use is in the exploration and discovery of deep ocean life. Seeing what other explorers are finding under water nowadays definitely motivates me to drive this project to completion.

Too Creepy! Photo Credit: Ventutter.com

I recently came across an article about Idiacanthus Atlanticus or, in other words, Black Dragonfish. These terrifying yet mesmerizing creatures can be found as deep as 6,500 ft below the subtropical and temperate waters of the Southern Hemisphere. As with many creatures on this planet, male and female Black Dragonfish look very different from each other. The females have barbels on their chin and fang-like teeth while the males lack these features and are much smaller. Because resources are in limited quantities deep below the ocean surface, males don’t have a functional digestive system. Since males don’t consume valuable resources, they only live long enough to mate.

Dragonfish Larvae. Photo Credit: thefeaturedcreature.com

Dragonfish larvae are also very strange. They have long stalks with eyes at the very end which protrude out from their small bodies. As they mature, these stalks retract back into their bodies where their eyes find their final position.

Although Black Dragonfish and similar species live most of their lives in the deep end of the ocean, they sometime swim up to the surface at night. This means that there is a possibility we can see this species within our vehicle’s operating range!

Until next time!

To support the completion of our project please check out our GoFundMe site and pass it along to your friends. We have already raised $500 and we couldn’t be more excited! Thanks everyone!

A Scientific Look at Fireworks, Part II

Posted by Brian (Team UV) on November 11, 2014

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: Engineering, Explosions, Fireworks, Flow, Fluid Mechanics, Fun, Mechanical Engineering, Science, Turbulence, Veterans Day, Well Read. Leave a comment

Photo Credit: Quotery.com

Welcome back to TeamUV.org and let me just start off by saying that we are going to have a busy next couple of days. We (of course) have this Well Read post today, will have a special Veterans day post at 1300 hours (1 p.m./in 3 hours), a post announcing the start of our fundraising campaign tomorrow (Wednesday 1000 hours/10 a.m.), and then we will be back to our regular schedule with a Presentation post by Andrew on Thursday. Whew!

Today, we are going to continue off of my last Well Read post with a discussion of the science behind fireworks. More specifically, today we are going to take a brief look at what determine the actual shape of the burst, whereas last time we took a look at the thrust created during the initial firing of the fireworks. Without getting too much into the chemistry of this subject, we can basically see the compounds within the firework’s shell as consisting of a mixture of liquids and solids (fuel, oxidizer, color-producing compounds, a binder, and possibly other additives) that are used for both the bursting charge and the aesthetic effects. When an aerial firework is initially fired, the reactants combust to produce thrust (as discussed last time), launching the actual firework shell into the air. At the same time as the shell is rocketing up into the air, a fuse (which was lit by the combustion) is burning. Eventually, that fuse will burn down to the firework’s charge, igniting the charge and thus producing the explosion, and triggering the reaction of all the other compounds within the shell. Upon explosion of the entire shell, a bunch of particulate jets are formed and are shot out in many directions. Generally speaking, these jets are what determine the form of the burst that we see when we watch fireworks. These jets are shown below; it is also interesting to note the Karman Vortex Streets visible in the turbulent wakes of the projected particulate, as caused by flow separation (and subsequent recirculation) along the blunt body of the projectiles.

Screenshot from the video in the last fireworks post showing particulate jets after explosion of the firework’s shell.
Photo Credit: Discovery Channel

So what governs the size, shape, and behavior of these jets? While a lot is unknown about the exact cause of the instabilities associated with the jets, the main factors that are commonly seen as governing the jet structure are: nature of the particles (composition; liquid, solid, etc.), geometry (shape) of the charge, and mass ratio of explosives to particles (amount of explosive vs. other compounds). These assumptions are reflected in the research video below (Video Credit: D. Frost, Y. Gregoire, S. Goroshin, F. Zhang) which shows different combinations of particle nature, charge geometry, and explosive-particle mass ratio and their effects on jet structure. A cool note is that you will be able to see the shock wave (a pressure discontinuity, or large change in pressure in a very small distance – across the shock wave) created by each blast in the video. The main conclusions of the video (and some possible reasons for these observations) are:

1. Wet mixtures produce more jets (possibly due to smaller molecule size), which disperse sooner (maybe due to liquid surface tension effects).
2. Dry mixtures produce less jets (possibly due to larger particulate), which disperse slower (possibly due to higher momentum due to larger particulate mass and more friction effects due to the generally larger particulate vs. the wetted particulate mixture).

So there you have it: a relatively brief look at what governs the shape of the burst of fireworks! Please remember to check back later today for our salute to the brave men and women who have served this great nation! I’ll leave you with another image of fireworks and the Statue of Liberty as today is a great day for patriotism!

The Statue of Liberty surrounded by fireworks. Photo Credit: crazywebsite.com

Well Read: 3D Printing Makeup

Posted by Abraham (Team UV) on October 28, 2014

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: 3D Printing, Color, Cosmetics, Creativity, Engineering, Innovation, Makeup, Materials Science, Mechanical Engineering, Technology, Well Read. 1 Comment

3D-Printed Make-up. Photo Credit: Time.com

Harvard Business School graduate, Grace Choi, has come up with an invention that allows users to print their own makeup within minutes. The user would simply find a hue they desire, use software to determine the exact color code, send the color code to the printer and the device prints this color onto blank materials that are used for powder, creams, or gel makeups. Printing one’s own makeup begin with a colorless makeup palette that is inserted into the 3D printer and ends with the desired color and amount of makeup one needs. The printer uses the ink solution to print only a top layer of color to the blank materials and voilà, instant makeup that is ready for application. There is the issue that the ink does not “seep” homogenously through the makeup but this is seen as a good thing by Choi saying that it would be added savings to the consumer. The printer does not print great quantities of makeup, only enough for the application. This printer is being called Mink and will be ready for retail next summer for about $300. This could be an enormous turn for the cosmetics industry as now this eliminates needs to go to high-end retail stores for brand name makeup for only a specific color. Cost will be significantly dropped as there is no need to buy unnecessary volumes of makeup one wears infrequently or for a single occasion. The costs added for brand recognition, labeling, and containers are also eliminated as it is made at home inside the printer. It is a very personalized way to present one’s self that is limited only to the creativity or imagination of the user, not by beauty standard setting corporations. Even as a man who does not wear makeup regularly, I am in full support of this innovating that gives creative control to individuals. Well done Choi. Watch the whole presentation here http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/05/mink-is-a-3d-printer-for-makeup/

XStat, Sponge-Filled Syringe to Treat Combat Wounds

Posted by Ketton (Team UV) on October 21, 2014

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: Biomedical Engineering, Engineering, Innovation, Materials Science, Mechanical Engineering, Medical, Military, Sponge Filled Syringe, Syringe, Technology, Well Read. 2 Comments

The XStat, a syringe filled with dozens of tiny sponges, is a new tool to treat gunshot wounds in combat that its creators hope will work faster and more effectively than current methods. Photo Credit: NYDailyNews.com

Being on the front lines during a war is extremely scary. There are bullets flying around left and right and fear is inevitable. One of the greater fears while on the battlefield is getting shot. How quickly someone can treat the wound (correctly) could mean life or death. In the past, soldiers who faced a gunshot wound would be treated with gauze to clog the hole until they could be transported to a hospital. Soldiers face tremendous difficulties when using gauze for treatment. For example, if the wound is deep it is hard to get the gauze deep enough (especially when it is a bullet sized hole) to clog the bleed. If the gauze method doesn’t work the first time then the entire process has to be done again. Also, using gauze heightens the risk of infection because medics would force gauze into the wound with their hand so particulates in the air, dirt, grass, etc. could easily penetrate the wound.

An ingenious new invention will save precious seconds in treating life-threatening gunshot wounds on the battlefield. The XStat looks like a syringe filled with pills, but the capsules it contains are actually tiny sponges that plug wounds and stop bleeding minutes faster than packing them with gauze. Treating wounds with the XStat takes only a matter of seconds. The syringe is inserted directly into the wound and the medic presses down to release the sponges. In about 15 seconds, the sponges expand, creating a pressure that stops the bleeding. The minutes saved allow medics to move on to the next patient more quickly, and increase a wounded soldier’s chances of survival. The product, which received $5 million in funding from the U.S. Military, is currently in the final stages of approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Once approved, it will head into battle to increase the treatment process of wounded soldiers.

For all of the soldiers out there I would like to thank each and every one of you for your dedication and service!

Camouflaging Abilities of Squid

Posted by Andrew (Team UV) on October 14, 2014

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: Animals, Biomimicry, Engineering, Flow, Marine, Materials Science, Mechanical Engineering, Research, Science, Stealth, Well Read.

Two researching teams from Rice University and MIT were tasked with developing a material which could replicate the camouflaging abilities of cephalopods. Cephalopods are a class of mollusks (like squid, octopus, and cuttlefish) that possess the ability to rapidly manipulate their skin in order to change color and texture. The Department of Defense’s Office of Naval Research funded the teams and their progress was recently published showing promising results.

Before I get into the details of their research, I want to show you a video demonstrating how effective cephalopods are at hiding!

As described in the video, Cephalopods are able to alter the layers of cells and reflectors in their skin to blend right into their environment. Rice University and MIT, tasked with the same end goal, approached the challenge from different directions. Rice developed an aluminum nanorod display panel which is capable of an intense color spectrum. The pixels are only a few microns wide and 40 times smaller than the best consumer display out there. Each pixel contains hundreds of nanorods that can change height and spacing from each other, yielding dozens of color options.

(Left) Rice University’s Nanorod Display. (Right) MIT’s electro-active elastomer skin. Photo Credit: J.Olson/Rice University and MIT

MIT’s approach was not in a display but in a flexible material that can change color and texture. Current passes through the electro-active elastomer material to generate a dimpled, raised texture. Minimal coloring can be generated but the spectrum is far less than that found in the Rice display. The ability to dimple also comes with the added bonus of anti-fouling characteristics. Anti-fouling measures are beneficial in removing microbial growth and debris from a surface which could have adverse effects on how well fluid flows along the surface.

The uses for this technology are endless but the most obvious is improving the stealth of our military fleet. Both projects come with benefits and drawbacks like Rice’s display having a wide color spectrum but low flexibility and MIT’s “skin” having the exact opposite. They claim revisions are in the works and that expansion in functionality is possible. If only they can merge the two together…

More info here!

A Scientific Look at Fireworks, Part I

Posted by Brian (Team UV) on October 7, 2014

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: Aerospace, Engineering, Fireworks, Flow, Fluid Mechanics, Fun, Mechanical Engineering, Rocket Science, Science, Turbulence, Well Read. 3 Comments

Fireworks.
Photo Credit: Office.co.uk

Fireworks seemingly have the capability to fascinate people everywhere, while trouncing any language, cultural, or religious differences. But the universality associated with the magnificence of these pyrotechnic displays is not the only aspect of their prominence that makes them so vastly interesting; they are scientifically remarkable!

While one could talk for hours (if not days) on end in the aim of exposing all scientific aspects of something as seemingly ephemeral as a firework display, we are going to look at just one consideration as it relates to the world of engineering: the baseline fluid mechanics that describe the interaction of fireworks with the atmosphere around them. We will begin this by watching a quick video (below) produced by The Discovery Slowdown, as was found through an article on FYFD (you can find the original article that inspired this one through the link; pardon the blog title, the content is excellent). For the record, I have no idea what the deal is with the baby sloth in the beginning of the video, haha.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6YbtD4Sc8M

From 0:14 to 0:30 in the video, you can see the uncontrolled combustion of the reactants used in the fireworks. This gives you a basic understanding of how this combustion takes place in the absence of any kind of container or packaging. When the reactants “burn” on the table out in the open atmosphere, the gaseous exhaust products (“smoke”) billow(s) upwards in a turbulent manner, with no real direction.

From about 0:31 to 0:58 in the video, the combustion of the reactants is repeated; however, this time the reaction take place in a cylinder with the top end open. Now you have controlled combustion (with regards to direction) and the result is effectively a jet of exhaust products (and some still-combusting reactants) that fires out the end of the cylinder in a way analogous to the exhaust kicking out the back end of a rocket, providing it with its thrust.

At 0:41, the video shows a closeup of the top of the tube, where the gases leave the confines of the tube and exit out to the air. As Nicole Sharp over on FYFD notes, this provides an excellent example of what we term an “under-expanded” nozzle.

Nozzle exit conditions.
Photo Credit: Wikipedia.org (modified)

An under-expanded nozzle is simply one where the static pressure associated with the flowing fluid at the nozzle exit is greater than that associated with the atmosphere (P>P_atm); in essence, the nozzle has not expanded enough to reduce the pressure in the flow to that of the atmospheric pressure, so when the exhaust gases exit the tube, they expand (or fan) outward rapidly in order to equalize their pressure to that of the atmosphere. There’s your first mini-lesson in rocket science!

It also interesting to note how (at about 0:35) the tube jumps upwards as the gases leave. This is more than likely due to the fact that as this combustion occurs and the exhaust gases blast out of the tube at high speeds, they form a near vacuum in the tube behind them (by taking the contents of the tube and forcing them upwards, thus leaving a region of relatively low pressure behind the escaping gases in the cylinder). This vacuum, however, is not representative of a natural state; in essence, the air in the cylinder wants to be at atmospheric pressure, but instead it is at a pressure far lower than the atmospheric pressure. Once the bulk of the exhaust gases have escaped, the low pressure region immediately begins to collapse upon itself (thus increasing the pressure in the tube), but since the contents of the tube are still moving upwards, the cylinder itself is tasked with collapsing the region and thus is pulled upwards to decrease the volume in the tube between the cylinder base and the escaping gases! And so the cylinder jumps upwards towards the sky before gravity goes to work pulling it back down.

So there you have it, there are some basic fundamentals of the way firework exhaust gases behave in different settings. During my next Well Read post, I will discuss how we can use science and engineering to analyze the behavior of the actual jets that shoot outwards from a firework and what charge parameters affect their behavior. Thank you for your support and please check back on Thursday for Andrew’s Presentation post!

Rich Fish And the Effect of Tom

Posted by Ben (Team UV) on September 30, 2014

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: Engineering, Fish, Flow, Fluid Mechanics, Marine, Materials Science, Mechanical Engineering, Polymer, Science, Turbulence, Well Read. 2 Comments

Fish! Photo Credit: Business.Membrane.com

Imagine if you will, you are a worker in a water pumping plant. The steady whrr of the massive pumps have become a constant melody in your day. Around lunch time you sit down next to an open low pressure access panel because you enjoy watching the water flow down the large steel river. It looks so peaceful before it gets to the pump, where chaos and turbulence reign. Lost in your thoughts some of your Chinese take out falls into the water. All of a sudden the roar of the pumps dies down a bit. They are not working nearly as hard as you are used to. You have just discovered Tom’s effect.

Tom’s effect occurs when a small amount of high molecular weight polymer is added to a fluid before it reaches a pump. The polymer aligns to the flow and keeps the flow laminar for a longer period of time thus reducing the amount of work required to pump the fluid. Ok, let’s break that down. A polymer is a string of atom combinations called monomers. High molecular weight means that there are a lot of atoms in the monomer and that there are a lot of monomers that make up the polymer. Think of a chain, monomers make up the individual links of the chain while the whole chain makes up the polymer. When you make the links longer and add more of them you get a really long chain. When you add a bunch of these chains to water they line up with the flow and stretch out. This makes it harder for the water to mix and keeps it flowing in a regular line for a longer time. It’s much easier to move a fluid that is flowing smoothly, like a calm river, then it is to move water that is turbulent, like rapids. That little bit of Chinese food contained a lot of Guar gum, a common thickening agent in foods that is also a high molecular weight polymer.

Tom’s effect can be seen in nature several places. One prime example is fish slime. Fish are covered in a film of mucus that is also a high molecular weight polymer. This allows them to slip through the water with ease. In a marine ecosystem where energy is the currency a slimy fish is a wealthy fish.

“Holy grail” of Battery Anodes

Posted by Abraham (Team UV) on September 23, 2014

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: Battery, Beach, Electrochemistry, Engineering, Innovation, Materials Science, Mechanical Engineering, Power Generation, Research, Science, Well Read. 5 Comments

Lithium ion battery made of sand. Photo Credit: UCRToday.UCR.edu

Researchers at the University of California, Riverside have created a battery using pure silicon as the anode which outperforms the current standard by more than 3 times! Graduate student Zachary Favors, and Mihrimah and Cengiz Ozkan, engineering professors at UC Riverside, are the team behind this discovery of using silicon to create these high performance batteries.

The idea for this came to Favors when he noticed that the sand on the beach of San Clemente, CA was made of primarily quartz, or silicon dioxide. Favors did some research to find where sand had a high percentage of quartz which brought him to the Cedar Creek Reservoir. The sand from this reservoir was milled down to the nanoscale and purified to a powdered sugar consistency. Ground salt and magnesium were added and the result was heated. Salt for heat absorption and magnesium to react out the oxygen to be left with only pure nanoscale silicon. This pure nanoscale silicon has a sponge-like consistency that has been proven to be the key to improving battery performance.

The purpose of this research is to create a better lithium ion battery for personal electronics and electric vehicles. Graphite is the current standard material used for the anode in batteries but electronics today require more energy than graphite can produce.

There are two problems with using silicon at the nanoscale: 1. It degrades quickly 2. It’s hard to produce in large quantities. Both of these problems are being looking into by the research team.

Think about what this means. Having to charge your phone every 3 days rather than every night. Electronic vehicles able to go out farther and for longer periods of time before coming back to be recharged. Personally I believe it’s about time some great leaps in the batteries were made. I am thankful for people like Favors and the Ozkan team that are trying to create new solutions to existing problems. For more information please visit here.

Venom May Hold the Cure to Cancer

Posted by Ketton (Team UV) on September 16, 2014

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: Biomedical Engineering, Cancer, Cancer Cure, Cure, Engineering, Hope, Mechanical Engineering, Research, Science, Venom, Well Read. Leave a comment

Venom from snakes, scorpions and bees may have an element that could stop cancer cell growth.

Black Mamba. Photo Credit: CNN.com

Many individuals in this world have lost loved ones due to this disastrous disease known as Cancer, myself included. They may be hope just yet! A scientist at the University of Illinois, Dipanjan Pan, and his team may have found a way to stop cancer cell growth according to a paper presented at the American Chemical Society Conference in August 2014. How do they do it you ask? Venom! In ancient times venom from bee stings, snake bites, and frog venom have been used to fight liver, lung, colon, and pancreatic cancers. Some properties of venom that destroy cancer can have the same effect on healthy cells. Pan’s lab has been able to take out the bad elements in venom from bees, snakes, and scorpions and keep the important proteins and peptides to be used to stop cancer cell growth. The venom is then delivered using nanotechnology. This has proved successful for breast cancer and melanoma cells! Currently they are in the early stages and will start trying the synthesized venom on rats. If successful we could have human trails in 3-5 years! So this is definitely something to keep an eye out for!

Vantablack: Staring Into a Dark Abyss

Posted by Andrew (Team UV) on September 9, 2014

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: Aerospace, Automotive, Engineering, Innovation, Materials Science, Mechanical Engineering, Science, Space, Stealth, Technology, Well Read.

Nothing is as sleek or cool as the color black on anything. Don’t agree? Ferrari’s are most popular in red but have you ever seen a black F40? AMAZING. The color black is associated with power, fear, and elegance but can also mean mystery. Created recently, a new ultra-dark material coating has given us a new level of black void of perspective and depth. Some have said it’s like looking into a black hole. Take a look for yourself:

Surrey NanoSystems Vantablack, super-black carbon nanotube material, absorbs light like a black hole

Vantablack on aluminum foil. Notice the absence of “wrinkling” where the coating has been applied. Photo credit: Surrey Nanosystems

The material is called Vantablack and it possesses the ability to absorb 99.965% of all incident light. In other words, light (photons) is allowed to enter the material, bounce around, and become trapped with only 0.035% ever leaving the material. With this low percentage of reflection, our eyes are unable to see the material coating, just the space around it. As you can see from the pictures, there is no detail or physical characteristics where the coating is applied.

A piece of Vantablack, which was grown on an aluminium foil

You know something is there but you can’t see it. Very eerie! Photo credit: Extreme Tech

Surrey NanoSystems, the creator of Vantablack, is very secretive about how this material is made; however, how it works is something we can figure out. Vanta in Vantablack stands for “vertically aligned carbon nanotube arrays”. Carbon nanotubes are known to be very absorbent across a wide variety of radiation including UV light, infrared radiation, and microwaves. These tiny vertical tubes are then densely packed on an aluminum substrate (aluminum foil) in a very controlled environment. This results in a material so absorbent that almost no form of radiation is allowed to escape.

As you may have already figured, Vantablack is only available for the defense and space sectors right now but its uses are endless. Seeing nothing but black void can be great for stealth applications in aircraft, ships, and especially in Team UV’s underwater vehicle. It can also be used in optics for telescopes and imaging. Most imaging systems, especially those used in space, are calibrated against the blackest available colors so it’s obvious Vantablack could lead to even more amazing discoveries.

If you would like more information about Vantablack, Extreme Tech’s article has a link to a technical article!

Stealth from Owl Silence

Posted by Brian (Team UV) on September 2, 2014

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: Acoustics, Engineering, Flow, Fluid Mechanics, Materials Science, Mechanical Engineering, Nature, Owl, Research, Turbulence, Well Read. 37 Comments

Great Grey Owl flying. Photo Credit: SheetsStudios.com

Owls have the uncanny ability to sneak up on their prey while remaining almost completely silent. This is partially accomplished through their immense wingspan (Great Grey Owls such as the one shown in the picture above can have a wingspan of over 5ft); their large wings provide for large amounts of lift, which translates to them being able to glide for much longer before needing to flap their wings again. Dr. Justin Jaworski and his fellow mechanical engineering researchers at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania have been looking at how the material properties associated with various parts of owls’ wings affect their silent aerodynamic characteristics.

Dr. Jaworski’s team has highlighted three distinct features of the owl wing that help to mask its aeroacoustic characteristics in flight, as seen in the picture below. The first feature is that of the trailing edge, which is typically the dominant source of noise on airfoils of all sorts (including aircraft wings, where turbulent eddies or vortices interact with the hard trailing edge, thus creating noise). On an owl wing, the trailing edge is made up of a flexible fringe that possesses a combination of specific porous and elastic properties that attenuate or diminish the sound frequencies that would otherwise be produced off the wing’s trailing edge. In the lab, these porous and elastic characteristics could be manipulated in order to block specific sound frequency ranges and thus provide a stealth solution that could be customized for different applications. With the noise from the trailing edge silenced, the dominant source of noise becomes that associated with the other two regions of the wing.

Owl wing stealth regions. Photo Credit: DailyMail.co.uk

The second wing feature/region is the mid-wing velvety down which is compliant, yet rough on the macro-scale (like a soft carpet). This section of the wing is the subject of the researchers’ current studies and thus is not very well understood yet, but they believe that somehow the “forest-like structure” of this section acts to absorb the sound that would typically be produced by the rough surface.

The last section of interest is that of the leading edge, which is made up of stiff feathers that add a serrated-like tip to the edge, producing geometry that is analogous to the tubercles that can be found on a whale’s fins. This serration divides up the flow over the wing into smaller, channeled flow streams which produce less wingtip vortex generation and thus less noise (in addition to decreasing parasitic drag).

Tubercles on a whale’s pectoral fin and a man-made wing. Photo Credit: EarthEasy.com

The combined effect of all of these wing features translate to the owl’s mastery of stealth and could in the future lead to quieter airplane flight, wind turbines that produce less noise, and submarines with greater stealth characteristics. For more information click here.

What Happens to Your Heart When You Dive?

Posted by Ben (Team UV) on August 26, 2014

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: Dive, Diving, Engineering, Exploration, Explore, Fishing, Marine, Mechanical Engineering, Science, Well Read. Leave a comment

Video Credit: YouTube.com

What happens to your heart when you dive? Some scientists in Pretoria, the capital of South Africa, had that same question. Naturally diving animals like seals or dolphins have a mammalian diving reflex; this causes their heart rate to significantly decrease allowing them to use up less oxygen and stay underwater for longer. What about humans though?

P.G. Landsbug and the University of Pretoria did a study and found that the human heart rate can drop down to around 20 beats per minute, that’s just one time every three seconds! This means that we have a natural ability to explore the underwater world for extended periods of time!

Well Read: Microscopes Go Mobile

Posted by Abraham (Team UV) on August 19, 2014

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: Engineering, Exploration, Explore, Mechanical Engineering, Optics, Research, Science, Smart Phone, Well Read. Leave a comment

Isopod as captured by a Micro Phone Lens. Photo Credit: MicroPhoneLens.com

In today’s world where smart phones can help us communicate, discover, and share information in faster and more innovative ways, there are still people who think we can do more with our mobile devices. Thomas Larson is one these people who thinks a phone’s functionality can extend from simply “insta-chatting” and “snap-gramming” pictures of your dog and dinner entrées.

15x Micro Phone Lens Photo Credit: MicroPhoneLens.com

Back in 2012, University of Washington mechanical engineering undergraduate student Thomas Larson began developing stick-on lenses for mobile phones which turns a smart phone into a field microscope. In 2013, with an incredibly successful Kickstarter campaign, he funded the manufacture of Micro Phone Lenses which allow a smart phone to capture images magnified by a factor of 15! Again this year he has made another successful Kickstarter campaign for the development of stick-on lenses that can magnify images by a factor of 150! Having a microscope in your pocket has incredible benefits as an educational tool, field research aid, and even a potential water quality tester. These 15x and 150x Micro Phone Lenses are currently available for both purchase and pre-order on his website. For more information please visit, www.microphonelens.com.

Self Regenerating Plastic (Ketton)

Posted by Ketton (Team UV) on August 12, 2014

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: Engineering, Fluid Mechanics, Materials Science, Mechanical Engineering, Research, Well Read. 17 Comments

Time lapse of polymer regeneration. Photo Credit: Engadget.com

Self-healing materials are known to be an out of this world idea, and several have been developed that can fix small cuts and hairline fractures. Researchers at University of Illinois have invented a type of plastic that not only heals fractures, but can regenerate over large cracks and holes. This could be extremely useful not just in day-to-day life, for example a self-healing car bumper (which would be amazing), but in areas where repairs are particularly difficult, like space.

The team used a process called “vascular delivery”, a technology it has been developing for some years that is based on veins. Liquid materials circulated within the material perform various tasks. In this case, the liquid materials are two chemicals that flow into the gaps created by damage via parallel capillaries. These chemicals, inspired by the way blood coagulates in the open air, mix in the spaces/voids to form a gel, which hardens into a strong polymer. This restores the plastic’s structural integrity.

The technology has been tested on both thermoplastics and thermosets, and has been demonstrated to regenerate a hole created by a 9mm bullet. In the experiments performed by the researchers, the chemicals were fed into the plastic, but the team envisions material pre-filled with the chemicals that can self-regenerate as needed. This is the first time it has been shown that you can regenerate lost material in a structural polymer. I can definitely see this being used in many defense applications!

Well Read: Electricity from Urine (Andrew)

Posted by Andrew (Team UV) on August 5, 2014

Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: Electrochemistry, Energy, Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Power Generation, Thermodynamics, Well Read. 1 Comment

Urine Powered Generator setup Source: MakerFaireAfrica.com

Urine Powered Generator setup Photo Credit: MakerFaireAfrica.com

A group of teenagers have brought attention to a fuel source you might not have expected. A group of four young women have designed and built a power production system that uses pee. The urine is placed in an electrolytic cell which separates the hydrogen and oxygen out of the water-containing fluid. Hydrogen is a powerful energy carrier that has shown great potential in being a future fuel but obtaining it in its purest form is difficult and expensive. The hydrogen then goes on to a water filtration phase for further purification. The next phase is a borax solution bath to remove any water vapor the hydrogen gas has picked up along the way. After this phase is complete, the hydrogen gas enters the combustion chamber which then powers the converted generator. Some electricity generated is pulled to start the process over again at the “water splitting” electrolytic cell. With this system, a liter of urine can provide up to six hours of electricity! This is a huge improvement over the 7 liters needed by gasoline to obtain the same run time.

An additional benefit to burning the cleaner hydrogen instead of traditional fuels is the zero emission of carbon monoxide. The only significant product of hydrogen combustion is water vapor and traces of nitrogen oxide (which is dangerous but still less dangerous than what is found in traditional fuel combustion.).

This kind of system can be useful in areas where traditional fuels are very expensive or hard to come by. Although a large percentage of the generated electricity is needed to separate a water molecule into hydrogen and oxygen, the reduction in harmful pollution offered by this alternative process is a great advantage.

More info at can be found here

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