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April 27th, 2011

Supervised by Prof Guoxiu Wang, the researchers developed samples of the so-called Graphene Paper (GP), which they believe has the potential to revolutionise the automotive, aviation and electrical industries.

The GP itself comprises graphene nanosheet stacks of monolayer hexagonal carbon lattices that, when placed in perfectly arranged laminar structures, give them exceptional thermal, electrical and mechanical properties.

Compared with steel, the prepared GP is six times lighter, five to six times lower density, two times harder with 10 times higher tensile strength and 13 times higher bending rigidity.

Lead researcher Ali Reza Ranjbartoreh said GP could find use in the automotive and aviation industries, allowing the development of lighter and stronger cars and aircraft that use less fuel, generate less pollution and are cheaper to run.

He said large aerospace companies such as Boeing have already started to replace metals with carbon fibres and carbon-based materials, and GP, with its incomparable mechanical properties, would be the next material for them to explore.

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April 18th, 2011

The grant, from the East of England Development Agency and the European Regional Development Fund, will part-fund a £375,000 project that is intended to deliver a debugging platform for the electronic control systems needed to reduce the carbon emissions of car engines.

These control systems will become increasingly important in the future owing to European Union emissions legislation that requires new cars to emit no more than 130g/km by 2015.

The Cambridge-based company is developing UltraDebug to debug the application software in the multiple processor systems that deliver the functionality and performance in embedded electronic systems.

Dr Karl Heeks, chief executive officer at UltraSoC, said the funding will help the company to develop silicon intellectual property for application debugging in next-generation engine systems.

‘This project will enable us to build on our leading-edge debugging platform to address some very important issues at the heart of real-time electronic systems,’ added Prof Klaus D McDonald-Maier, UltraSoC’s chief technical officer.

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March 29th, 2011

The system was developed by musicians at Plymouth University and electronic engineers at Essex University and then tested on a patient with locked-in syndrome — a severe form of paralysis.

‘We’re talking about patients who are completely locked in,’ Ramaswamy Palaniappan of Essex University told The Engineer. ’The brain is active but the rest of the body is practically dead, so the only form of communication is by using their thoughts, and what we’re trying to do is tap into this.’

While BCI systems have in the past allowed patients to ‘play’ music, the current system is claimed to take it to new level by varying the amplitude of the signal to string together different combinations of notes. In addition, Palaniappan said this was the first time in the UK such a system was trialled on an actual patient rather than laboratory volunteers.

The research team used a method called steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP), which combines electroencephalography (EEG) analysis with what the team terms a music engine module.

Participants sit in front of a computer screen that displays several ‘buttons’ that flash at different frequencies (normally between 8Hz and 16Hz).

The participant is asked to focus his or her attention on a particular button and the EEG device he or she is wearing captures that frequency — a phenomenon known as the field frequency-following effect. This frequency-tagged EEG signal is then matched to pre-specified note, or series of notes, played by the computer.

But where the current system differs from previous offerings is that it builds in a secondary level of control, where participants can control the intensity of their focus on the button to vary the composition.

For example, a sequence of five musical notes was stored in an array, and the patient could play the notes in sequence going up or down the scale by varying their level of attention. There is also helpful feedback for the participant, so as he or she focuses harder the flashing buttons get larger and visa versa.

The researchers trialled their system on a female patient at the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability in London, who has locked-in syndrome, a form of almost total paralysis caused by brain lesions.

With practice, the patient was able to achieve quite a sophisticated level of musical control — and with a greater level of dexterity than the researchers themselves, according to Palaniappan.

‘The patient was able to use it for about two hours,’ he said. ’She was so excited and didn’t want to give it up. For me, it was like a lifetime achievement. To see an actual person using it and applying the technology that I’ve been trying for several years now was a real big thing.’

The team are now trying to improve the ergonomics and aesthetics of the system — for example, the EEG electrodes require a gel on the scalp to get a clear signal. It is also hoped the researchers will make the interface look more like a musical instrument.

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March 24th, 2011

A team from 11 of the Fraunhofer institutes is developing a system to dampen vibrations with piezoceramic electromechanical transducers that expand and contract as electric current is applied and removed.

The technology is designed to counter background noise generated from high-frequency (between 30 and 200Hz) vibrations in a car, rather than act as an additional suspension system softening bumps from uneven roads.

‘We want to decouple the chassis from the suspension,’ Dr Sven Herold, deputy head of the Fraunhofer Institute for Structural Durability and System Reliability LBF, told The Engineer.

‘The piezoceramics lie between them and are contracting and elongating in a way that the vibrations can be cancelled.

‘The vibration of the wheel is measured by acceleration sensors and processed in a control system that consists of adaptive control algorithms known as filters.’

The system was developed over the last three years in partnership with a consortium of eight industrial partners, including a car manufacturer.

So far, the team has tested a laboratory-scale demonstrator version of the technology but plans to fully integrate it into a working car and trial it using road simulations over the next six months.

The project is part of Fraunhofer’s ‘Adaptronics Alliance’, which is looking at a variety of ways of using so-called smart materials.

In a related project, researchers are using piezoceramics in the opposite way, developing components that convert the oscillations in a structure — such as a high-traffic bridge — to electrical energy.

This energy can be used to supply tiny sensors that can monitor the condition of the bridge and notify a control centre of any damage.

Another programme is studying magneto-rheological fluids, which solidify as a magnetic field is applied because they contain tiny particles that align to form fixed chains. These fluids are being used to develop a safety clutch for milling machines.

With the magnetic field activated, the substance creates a solid link between the drive shaft and cutter head. Removing the field by using an emergency shutoff returns the substance to a fluid state, breaking the connection to stop the machine.

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March 8th, 2011

Made from nylon, the Airbike technology demonstrator was assembled using Additive Layer Manufacturing (ALM) at a centre located next to Airbus’s site at Filton.

The process allows complete sections to be built as one piece; the wheels, bearings and axle being incorporated within the ‘growing’ process and built at the same time.

Similar in concept to 3D printing, the bike design is perfected using computer-aided design and then constructed using a laser-sintering process that adds successive, thin layers of the chosen structural material until a solid, fully formed bike emerges.

EADS said that it has developed the technology to the extent that it can manipulate metals, nylon and carbon-reinforced plastics at a molecular level, which allows it to be applied to high-stress, safety-critical aviation uses.

Compared with a traditional, machined part, those produced by ALM are said to be up to 65 per cent lighter but still as strong. The technology is likely to be employed eventually in industrial applications such as aerospace, the motor industry and engineering.

Studies show that for every 1kg reduction in weight, airlines can save around $3,500 (£2,200) worth of fuel over the lifespan of the aircraft, with corresponding reductions in CO₂ emissions.

According to EADS, the ALM process itself uses about one-tenth of the material required in traditional manufacturing and reduces waste. On a global scale, ALM offers potential for products to be produced quickly and cheaply on ‘printers’ located in non-manufacturing settings.

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March 7th, 2011

The technology could have direct and immediate applications for industries that have already started using this type of laser, such as large data centres run by Google, eBay and Amazon and some supercomputer manufacturers.

‘The market for this technology is gigantic,’ said project lead Prof Anders Larsson of Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. ’In the huge data centres that handle the internet there are today more than 100 million surface-emitting lasers. That figure is expected to increase 100-fold.’

The team was able to increase the speed of a surface-emitting laser around four-fold using a strained multi-quantum active region and multiple oxide layers.

Unlike a conventional laser, the light from a surface laser is emitted from the surface of the laser chip like in a light-emitting diode (LED).

The lasers can be fabricated and tested on the wafer before it is cut into individual chips for assembly — in contrast with conventional lasers that work only after partition. The ability to test up to 100,000 lasers on a wafer reduces the cost of production to one-tenth compared with conventional lasers.

There are also gains to be made in terms of efficiency. Surface lasers require less power without losing speed. Larsson predicts that with their technology the power consumption of a complete optical link, for example, between circuits in a computer, will be no more than 100 femtojoules per bit.

‘The laser’s unique design makes it cheap to produce, while it transmits data at high rates with low power consumption,’ Larsson said.

This combination could trigger a large-scale transition from electrical cables, which can handle up to a few gigabits per second, to optical cables for computer-to-peripheral equipment, as a substitute for USB cables.

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March 3rd, 2011

Researchers from the University of Central Florida in the US have developed an aerogel — the lightest form a solid substance can take — based on carbon nanotubes.

Aerogels are made by replacing the liquid component of a gel with a gas to create an extremely low-density solid, sometimes nicknamed ’frozen smoke’.

Associate professor Lei Zhai and post-doctoral associate Jianhua Zou replaced the silica used in traditional aerogels with carbon nanotubes.

Because of its low density, the multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) aerogel can be used to detect and track tiny changes in pressure.

Strips of the substance could be used in robotic fingers and hands to make them very sensitive and give them the ability to distinguish between holding a power saw or a scalpel — a distinction necessary for use in surgery.

Because the nanotubes have a large surface area, great amounts of energy could be stored in the aerogel. This means it could be used to increase the capacity of lithium batteries or supercapacitors used to store electricity.

Combining the larger surface area and improved electrical conductivity is also important in developing sensors that can detect toxins capable of invading the food or water supply.

The same technique can be used to develop equipment capable of detecting even trace amounts of explosives.

‘This has many potential applications and could really open up new areas to explore that we haven’t even imagined yet,’ said Zhai.

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