Professional Engineering Issue 1 2024 by imeche

03 Welcome

IMechE chief executive

Alice Bunn reports on the Institution’s latest plans

42 The big interview

Airbus engineer Sian Cleaver explains Europe’s contribution to Nasa’s next manned moon mission

46 Decarbonising aviation

The biggest names in aviation say their industry will never achieve net zero without green hydrogen

52 Humanoid robots

Humanoid robots are finally stepping out of research and finding commercial uses. Experts expain how far they might go

58 Sports engineering

How engineers are developing shoes, clothing and equipment to boost athletes’ performances

64 Weird engineering

Biohybrid robotic jellyfish could be used to explore ocean depths that humans cannot reach

05 Opener

Burning a rocket’s fuselage as extra fuel could boost efficiency and tackle the space debris problem

09 Five for the future

Meet the engineers and researchers who are coming up with ground-breaking innovations

11 Blueprint IMechE report explains how to get the UK’s transition to electric cars back on track

12 Exploded view

One of the engines that will help take astronauts to the moon next year

15 In the spotlight

First in a series of articles on IMechE members who are having a big impact

profiles Holli Kimble

20 Institution news

An update on plans for the IMechE headquarters in Birdcage Walk

22 Competitions

Formula Student project manager Naomi Rolfe says this year’s event will be the most diverse yet

24 Your voice

Readers have their say on gender equality, HS2 and climate change

27 Heritage

Celebrating the racing car that brought Jack Brabham success in Formula One

29 STEM outreach

Young people, engineers and the wider society all benefit from STEM outreach work in schools

33 Decommissioning

As the experimental JET fusion reactor shuts down, we examine the big challenges ahead in nuclear decommissioning

35 Simulation

Meet the engineers using simulation and modelling to gain a competitive edge for their businesses

37 Vehicles

Automotive engineers adapt cooling systems for the electric age

39 Manage your energy IMechE training courses will tackle stress and burnout in engineers

‘

We want to celebrate your achievements’

IMechE chief executive Alice Bunn OBE reports on the Institution’s latest plans for 'improving the world through engineering'

ngineering is at the forefront of the solutions to so many global challenges we face, with our members leading the development of cuttingedge technologies to drive change. In this fast-moving environment, the Institution is evolving to ensure that we and our members remain at the heart of the engineering community.

Last yearwe launched our strategy IMechE 2030 with ourvision of creating a “global, inclusive and digitally enabled” engineering community to enable us to deliver on our mission of “improving the world through engineering”. It is exciting as we put the strategy into action, with our two central goals of supporting our members and the wider engineering community to do their best for the world and maximising the positive impact of engineers.

Fundamental to the strategy is the need to ensure the financial sustainability of the Institution. Our Birdcage Walk headquarters is a heritage building, with the need for constant investment which has a significant impact on our finances. In the past fewyears, we have underinvested in a building that is about twice as large as we need. To this end, we have carried out an extensive review of the options for the future of our HQ. We plan to hold a membervote later this year on a recommendation for the building's future.

In addition, we are seeking new owners for our two trading companies Argyll Ruane and Sonaspection, as a change in ownership could give the businesses greatest scope to take advantage of their strong market position.

To deliver the strategywe also need to make sure IMechE is easy and transparent to engage with and that staff and volunteers work as one team to maximise our

PROFESSIONAL ENGINEERING

is published by Think on behalf of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.

PE, 65 Riding House Street, London W1W 7EH 020 3771 7200

EDITORIAL profeng@thinkpublishing.co.uk

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effectiveness, whether it is launching new policy reports, promoting events or STEM activities in schools. We are going through a restructure to facilitate closerworking with members according to our ‘one team’ approach.

Our members do so much fantastic work and we want to celebrate their achievements, shining a spotlight on how engineering can be life-changing, indeed world-changing. Our prizes and awards showcase the best of our members and the wider community, and we hope help to attract the next generation of engineers.

Supporting engineers at the start of their careers continues to be a priority for IMechE. This yearwe are looking to increase the number of apprentices who we certify through our End Point Assessment service, which grew by more than 50% in 2023.

Looking ahead, we are aiming to extend our global and inclusive reach through international partnerships.

And finally, we are committed to digital transformation to allow us to deliver better services for our members. For all of us this can require a cultural change at IMechE, working together to challenge the status quo in many areas of our business operations and develop new practices and improved services for members.

‘The Institution is evolving to ensure that we and our members remain at the heart of the engineering community’

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ABOUT IMECHE

The Institution of Mechanical Engineers is the professional body overseeing the qualification and development of mechanical engineers. It has 115,000 members in 140 countries. Visit imeche.org for more information about membership and its benefits, or email membership@imeche.org.uk

Views expressed in Professional Engineering are not necessarily those of the Institution or its publishers.

Chief executive: Dr Alice Bunn OBE FIMechE

President: Giles Hartill FIMechE

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IMPACT

The forces shaping engineering

THE ROCKET THAT EATS ITSELF

Burning a rocket’s fuselage as extra fuel could boost efficiency and tackle the space debris problem. By

Joseph Flaig

Rocket engineering is a brutal and unsympathetic field. The so-called ‘tyranny of the rocket equation’ means that, if you want to increase the payload of a rocket, you need to add significantly more fuel – which in turn adds more weight, which requires yet more fuel. Based on the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation, the problem puts strict limits on payloads heading to space, and requires huge amounts of expensive fuel to do so.

But what if the structure of the rocket itself could be used as fuel? That is the unlikely aim of a project at the University of Glasgow, where engineers have built and fired an ‘autophage’ self-eating rocket.

Building on a research partnership with Dnipro National University in Ukraine, which tested a solid rocket motor in 2018, the Glasgow team – supported by Kingston University in London –has now demonstrated that more

energetic liquid propellants can be used. Autophage rockets could help the UK take a bigger bite of the space industry, and tackle the growing problem of space debris. Such a radical rethink will bring its own set of problems, however.

Infinite staging

Rocket engineers have long dreamed of reaching orbit using a single ‘stage,’ with just one engine and no additional fuel tanks that need to be jettisoned, says postgraduate researcher Krzysztof Bzdyk, corresponding author of the new work. Advantages of singlestage vehicles could include lower overall mass and cost.

So far, such vehicles have not been “realistically feasible,” says Bzdyk, because of the need for extremely efficient engines and rocket systems. Instead, the Glasgow design is more akin to ‘infinite staging,’ constantly

$1,500

the cost of sending a kilogram of payload into earth orbit on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket – this has dropped dramatically in recent years

consuming the usable structure as it is no longer needed.

“That allows you to actually scale your systems down to be smaller, because you now no longer need as large a fuselage, as large tanks, in order to get to orbit,” says Bzdyk. “That doesn’t mean that you couldn’t use it just as an upper stage… you could still stage it and make it more efficient in that way.”

Known as the Ouroborous-3, the

engine works by using waste heat from combustion of the two main propellants – gaseous oxygen and liquid propane – to sequentially melt the high-density polyethylene plastic fuselage as it fires. The molten plastic is fed into the engine’s combustion chamber as additional fuel.

Controlled ascent

Test fires at Machrihanish Airbase in Scotland produced 100N of thrust, while also demonstrating that the plastic fuselage could withstand the forces required to feed it into the engine without buckling.

A conventional rocket’s structure makes up 5-12% of its total mass. The self-eating rocket burned a similar amount of its own structural mass as propellant, with the plastic fuselage supplying up to 20% of the total propellant used.

The experiments also showed that the burn could be successfully controlled, with the team demonstrating its ability to be throttled, restarted and pulsed. These abilities could help future autophage rockets control

their ascent from the launchpad into orbit. The team is exploring several different options for the fuselage structure, one of which could find its way into a flight demonstrator planned to launch in five to eight years. Options include flexible or collapsible propellant tanks that are compressed as the fuselage is “eaten,” says Bzdyk, or even concentric tanks that are themselves used up.

Burning issue

The main challenge that conventional small launch vehicles face is reducing the cost of

20% of the total propellant used by the Ouroborous-3 rocket came from its own plastic fuselage

kilogram to orbit, says Bzdyk, with the proportion of structural to propellant mass growing as the vehicle becomes smaller.

“With autophage we’re literally burning these scaling problems,” says project leader Professor Patrick Harkness.

A self-eating rocket should require less propellant in onboard tanks. This in turn should give operators bigger payloads compared to conventional rockets of the same mass, and more flexible launch options for ‘nanosatellites’ or CubeSats than launching on larger rockets.

A SpaceX launch, for example, might provide a lower cost per kilogram, says Harkness. “But we can add value in that we can make CubeSat the prime payload, so they will be able to say they want to launch next week, to orbital parameters of such and such.”

Development of the self-eating rocket has been supported by the Ministry of Defence and the Science and Technology Facilities Council.

Below: The team behind the development of the self-eating rocket

FIVE FOR THE FUTURE

Meet the scientists and researchers improving the world through engineering. For more, head to imeche.org/news

WHERE’S YOUR HEAD AT?

Engineers at the University of Illinois have developed a nanoscale sensor a thousand times smaller than previous technology which can track subtle changes in brain chemistry. The nanodialysis device uses techniques developed for microelectronics and will allow a more detailed picture of biological tissue.

AI DISCOVERY

STEP CHANGE

A unique lightweight, modular motorised exoskeleton for the lower limbs has been developed by researchers in Italy. TWIN can assist patients with reduced lower limb movement with walking, or help support them during physiotherapy. Motors activate the knee and hip joints.

INSECT INSPIRATION

01 02 05

An AI system developed at MIT has discovered tough and durable new materials that could be used in diverse engineering applications. Integrating physical experiments, simulations and neural networks, researchers used the system to discover microstructured composites well-suited to use in cars and aeroplanes.

Sandbag structures inspired by termite ‘skyscrapers’ will help astronauts survive the Moon’s harsh environment before permanent buildings are erected, say engineers at the University of Arizona. The simple-looking structures actually contain sensors that aid in their robotic construction, then alert astronauts to changes in environmental conditions.

AFTER SUN

Giant reflectors placed in orbit could power solar farms before sunrise and after sunset, according to space engineers at the University of Glasgow. Designed to boost the output of future large-scale solar farms, the system would use kilometre-wide orbiting reflectors to reflect additional sunlight to the Earth’s surface at both dawn and dusk.

‘DRIVING PROGRESS:HIGHLIGHTS FROM ADVANCED ENGINEERING 2023 AND WHAT’S NEXT IN 2024’

What were some of the highlights from Advanced Engineering 2023?

Last year, almost 9,000 people attended Advanced Engineering at the NEC, including representatives from Airbus, Rolls-Royce, IBM, Boeing, McLaren, BAE Systems, Catapult HVM, Department for International Trade, Jaguar Land Rover and many more.

Advanced Engineering visitors were treated to a fresh look thanks to the recent rebrand. This was coupled with a new crossindustry floor layout, which allowed for a more diverse range of exhibitors from various industries including newly added sectors such as marine, motorsport, construction, medical, rail and sport.

For companies targeting the aerospace and defence sectors, ADS returned with its Meet the Buyer programme, during which 90 brands participated in 105 supplier engagements, which was a 132 per cent increase on last year and will no doubt go on to become partnerships that enable huge engineering breakthroughs in the sector.

Attendees also had access to over 150 industry-leading speakers across its forums. This year, Advanced Engineering introduced a main stage, which was sponsored by Lloyds Bank and supported by Make UK, where speakers such as Richard Noble OBE, former holder of the world land speed record and serial innovator at ThrustWSH, and Stephen Phipson CBE, Chief Executive of Make UK, took to the stage. There were also several panel discussions, including one on women in manufacturing, which was led by Dr Megan Ronayne and supported by some of the leading female figures in the industry.

Across the exhibition’s four other forums, automotive, aerospace, composites and advanced materials and technologies, visitors could hear from industry experts on topics ranging from supply chain management, digitalisation, and the skills gap.

How important are events like Advanced Engineering for the UK’s manufacturing and engineering sector?

One of our keynote speakers, Stephen Phipson CBE, Chief Executive of Make UK, summed this up perfectly when interviewed at last year’s exhibition. He said, “Shows like this are absolutely vital because it is an opportunity to network to learn from each other. It is an opportunity to think of something or see something you never thought would happen. It is the sense of community and collaboration that is very important for our industry.”

What can we expect from Advanced Engineering 2024?

In three words; inspiration, innovation and excitement. We want to showcase how much is happening in UK engineering and manufacturing, so once again we’ll be having dedicated areas for the nation’s most impressive products.

This year, we’ll be welcoming an even wider range of exhibitors by incorporating new sectors such as marine, rail and motorsports. This diversification will also be present across our four forums,

with talks from industry leaders across a wide range of industries. ADS’ Meet the Buyer scheme will be expanded and SAMPE will return with its design and build competition for students.

On top of this, the show will be co-located with Lab Innovations, giving visitors and exhibitors more opportunities for cross-industry collaboration.

If a company wants to exhibit, but is concerned about the environmental impact, what can they do to limit this?

We have lots of tips available on our website for ensuring that exhibitors are as sustainable as possible. This includes selecting a reusable all-in stand model, rather than a disposable stand created for just one event.

Avoid having any dates on signage so that it can be reused and use recyclable materials, eco-friendly ink and LED lighting where possible. Also, if you choose local suppliers and consolidate shipments, you can help reduce transport.

When travelling to the event, either as an exhibitor or visitor, we’d recommend using car sharing or using public transport

Advanced Engineering is taking place at the NEC, Birmingham on October 30 and 31, 2024.

For more information, visit the exhibition’s website here: www.advancedengineeringuk.com/

Top left: Simon Farnfield, event director for Advanced Engineering; Above: Some of the 9,000 visitors who attended last year's event

HOW THE UK AUTOMOTIVE SECTOR CAN SURVIVE THE NET-ZERO TRANSITION

The authors of a recent IMechE report outline the Institution’s recommendations to get the country’s electric vehicle transition back on track

Level the playing field

The EU and UK automotive sectors depend on and benefit from a close relationship. A technical fix in the short term has been implemented to allow frictionless trade with the EU beyond the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) Rules of Origin that came into force in January and that will specifically affect BEVs. In the longer term, work towards trade rules that align with achievable transition goals of both the UK and the EU industries. Increase support from government, but make funding conditional on a high percentage of domestic manufacturing and employment. Set up a new automotive task force to work on creating the right conditions for foreign direct investment that will maintain and build the UK’s manufacturing capacity and supply chains.

Roll out the green carpet

Introduce a holistic approach to incentivisation of BEV private purchase, whether users have access to domestic charging or have to rely on public charging. Private buyers making the transition to a BEV should not be economically disadvantaged when compared with petrol or diesel. On electric charge points, there need to be

Make it circular

mandated targets from central government and programmes for measuring what works at a local level so that this can be adopted nationally. To ensure charge point delivery continues apace in the light of the delay of the 2030 ban on petrol and diesel sales, the government should consider underwriting the investment risk of the charge point providers. A nationwide skills and retraining plan for the automotive industry is needed. A whole-sector approach is required, with increased focus on upskilling the entire supply chain and aftermarket to enable the transition to zero-emission vehicles.

Spark a homegrown battery boom

£10.8bn in EV & battery investment in the UK between 2010 and 2022

Increase consideration of recycling and the circular economy in the automotive industry. Develop, patent and exploit technologies that make recycling of batteries economically viable. Create a regulatory environment to make the UK a leader in this field so that the industry reduces its environmental footprint, and the country is less reliant on an increasingly challenging international market for critical materials. Expand government oversight of end-of-life recycling beyond Defra to join-up responsibility across departments and promote innovation.

Create the right conditions for volume battery production in the UK, including enabling funding, supply-chain development, and securing and processing of critical minerals. Incentivise local clusters around each factory to develop supply chains for other key parts of electric vehicles, not just batteries. More schemes and funding to expedite the scale-up of new battery technologies and other net-zero supportive technologies for commercial exploitation.

DESTINATION THE MOON

In September 2025, a Nasa rocket will launch from Cape Canaveral on a historic mission. For the first time since 1972 it will carry humans to the moon – and this is one of the engines that will get them there. It’s one of four RS-25 liquid-propellant rocket engines in Nasa’s Space Launch System, the heavy-duty capsule that will launch the Orion spacecraft towards the moon (for more on Orion, read our interview with one of its leading engineers on page 42). Here, RS-25 is being lowered onto the engine installer ready for installation at the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans.

Head to imeche.org/news for the latest news and features on space

Connecting engineers, recognising success

My mission is to make a difference’

In the first of a series of articles showing the tremendous impact made by IMechE members, we speak to award-winning defence engineer, disaster responder and sustainability consultant Holli Kimble ‘

‘I

nnovation’ has been at serious risk of becoming an empty buzzword for several years now. Stuck on every start-up and corporate strategy, it often signifies little more than a desire to appear forward thinking.

For IMechE fellow Holli Kimble, however, it means an earnest desire to consider all angles and swiftly identify solutions to a problem –even if they come from unlikely sources.

ENGINEERS INTHE SPOTLIGHT

It is the reason why, for example, she engaged with companies including Google, Amazon and Innocent Drinks while leading the innovation strategy at Defence Equipment & Support (DE&S), part of the Ministry of Defence. Willing to hear about “anything from productivity tools to bean bags,” she “learned a lot, and tried to push the boundaries of what we could accept in defence as different ways of working”.

Success rewarded

It is also part of the reason why, just 14 years into her career, she has received an impressive roster of awards and appointments, including the Women’s Engineering Society’s Top 50 Women in Engineering 2023, and a Churchill Fellowship in 2019 for her commitment to learning for positive change.

An early plan to join the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers drove two decisions –studying an MEng in mechanical engineering at the University of Exeter, and joining the Territorial Army. During her fourth year at university, however, she decided that she would rather work in engineering to support the military.

“I really want to be able to make an impact,” she says. “Applying my skills to design and develop systems, and to make sure that the right questions are asked.”

Focus on safety

She joined DE&S on the graduate scheme in 2010, taking part in MoD and industry placements developing explosive-related systems. That was followed by becoming a trials and technology manager in the DE&S project team, a “highpressure role” where she started leading a safety-focused team and taking on a large area of work. Her “steep” career trajectory

‘I really want to be able to make an impact. Applying my skills to design and develop systems, and to make sure that the right questions are asked’

continued with a brief stint as a safety adviser, allowing her to tackle some of the challenges she had identified in her previous role, followed by another promotion to innovation programme manager. Responsible for the innovation strategy and helping internal consultancy, she also had to take a global view, considering how the British armed forces could continue operating when faced with conflict or supply-chain disruptions.

‘Painting the sky’

From 2019 to 2023, Kimble held her most senior role at DE&S as team leader and chief engineer on directed energy weapons. Taking mature subsystems out of R&D, she led the development of radio frequency weapons demonstrators that could enable “painting the sky and watching drones fall out of it,” and laser weapons.

“The fact that you can engage the target at the speed of light brings with it its own challenges, but actually a completely different way of operating,” she says. “You can potentially use less conventional ammunition.”

Her innovation background influenced the way she set up that team, focused on asking the right questions and identifying challenges early on. Safety was paramount, she says, especially given the “sensationalised” representation of laser weapons in some parts of the media.

“There’s actually enormous opportunity to have control systems in these weapon systems that make them safer,” she says. “The rules that we’re using for photons are rather different than the conventional fragments flying through the air, being acted on by forces of gravity and friction. It’s a really different paradigm.

“My real passion was trying to develop the right tools and

‘The fact that you can engage the target at the speed

of light brings with it its own challenges, but

a completely different way of

actually

operating. You can

potentially use less conventional

ammunition’

the right approaches for safety management of these systems, understanding what the rules should look like, and how systems can be designed appropriately to manage some of those risks.”

Sustainability agenda

Since 2017, Kimble has worked as an operational leader for React Disaster Response, trained to respond to disasters in the UK and around the world. In 2019, she was deployed to Mozambique following the devastation of cyclone Idai. Her agile team of non-specialists was able to access areas that had not yet been visited, and to conduct a “full range of needs assessments,” reporting back to the UN.

“To go and figure out what things need to be put in place, who needs to speak to who, was absolutely the most rewarding

thing I’ve ever done. I definitely kicked into a gear that I didn’t even know I had, being able to operate on such a broad spectrum of different tasks,” she says.

Last year, she left DE&S and started consultancy Skadi Solutions, named after a Norse giantess associated with remote places, the wilderness and icy landscapes – all things that need to be protected, she says, hence a planned focus on the environment, alongside safety cases. “My mission is to make a difference that can be measured on the sustainability agenda,” she says.

NOMINATE

To nominate an IMechE member making a difference, email profeng@ thinkpublishing.co.uk

Below: Holli Kimble wants to help protect remote places

DATES ANNOUNCED FOR ADVANCED ENGINEERING 2024

There’s still a few exhibition spaces left at the UK’s leading engineering and manufacturing event

On October 30 and 31, 2024, Advanced Engineering UK will return to the NEC, Birmingham showcasing more innovation from the manufacturing and engineering industry. With six months to go, the halls are quickly filling up as businesses from across the entire supply chain race to secure a spot. Over 85% of space is already taken, so any companies wanting to exhibit should enquire now.

In 2023, over 400 companies exhibited at Advanced Engineering, along with a further 202 at its co-located show, Lab Innovations. Visitors, which included representatives from Airbus, Rolls-Royce, IBM, Boeing, McLaren, BAE Systems, Catapult HVM, Department for International Trade, Jaguar Land Rover and many more, had the opportunity to access both shows with one badge, meaning that they had the opportunity to explore an even wider range of products and services. The co-located attendee number of over 13,000 professionals translated to a successful event for exhibitors. This success is evident in their Net Promoter Score (NPS) soaring from 8.16 to an impressive 48.24 year on year.

Last year also saw Advanced Engineering welcome a fresh look thanks to the recent rebrand. This was coupled

with a new cross-industry floor layout, which allowed for a more diverse range of exhibitors from various industries including newly added sectors such as marine, motorsport, construction, medical, rail and sport. This change,

“Advanced Engineering prides itself on bringing together the UK’s engineering and manufacturing industry to share ideas, do business and move our industry forwards.”

Alison Willis, director at Easyfairs

which received positive feedback from exhibitors and visitors alike, will remain for 2024.

“Advanced Engineering prides itself on bringing together the UK’s engineering and manufacturing industry to share ideas, do business and move our industry forwards,” explained Alison Willis, director at Easyfairs, the organiser of Advanced

Engineering. “Its range of forums also keep the industry up to date on the latest topics and challenges within our industry, which are decided by our amazing advisory board and industry partners. This year, we want to expand by offering high quality content from an even wider range of industries.”

Advanced Engineering is supported by a range of industry partners, including the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), Composites UK, Make UK, UKRI, UK Space Agency, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, GAMBICA, BARA and the Department for International Trade. Partnerships such as these, and many more, help the show stay on top of the latest issues arising in the manufacturing and engineering industry, passing knowledge on these topics on to its visitors.

There is no place better to experience the innovation that the UK’s engineering and manufacturing industry has to offer.

To book your stand, visit www. advancedengineeringuk.com and make an enquiry — but don’t hesitate as space is selling out fast.

SECURING THE FUTURE OF OUR BIRDCAGE WALK HEADQUARTERS

By Clive Hickman OBE, IMechE deputy president

Determining the future of our Birdcage Walk headquarters in central London is the most significant decision the Institution has faced in years. Comprising approximately 300 rooms across eight floors, Birdcage Walk amalgamates four buildings spanning a floor area of 7,500 square metres. While our property is not listed, it is in a conservation area and holds significant heritage value.

Our HQ poses the greatest risk on our corporate register and has been highlighted in our annual reports for the past five years. There has been a tension over recent years between the amount of funding available for the general work of the Institution and that which needs to be spent on maintenance and periodic refurbishment of the building,

so addressing the financial risk associated with maintaining our property assets on Birdcage Walk is a priority.

Considerable analysis has been conducted in recent years to explore options for the HQ’s future, building upon the work of previous groups and considering our financial situation, operational requirements and long-term strategy.

The establishment of the Headquarters Programme Board in 2023 aimed to provide recommendations and resolutions to the trustees that would garner member support. I want to take this

opportunity to thank Peter Flinn, past president and chair of the Headquarters Programme Board, and members of the board, for all the work that has been done over the past year.

The programme board built on the valuable work of two earlier groups, the Headquarters Working Group and the Real Estate Strategy Group, and I would like to extend my thanks to the members of these as well.

‘Addressing the financial risk associated with maintaining our property assets on Birdcage Walk is a priority’

The programme board, comprising eight members and three employees of the Institution, covered various topics and engaged external experts to enhance our understanding of the risks and provide assurance to the trustees. Key findings from the board include:

l The building is oversized for our needs, particularly considering changes in work practices postCOVID-19.

l Demand for office space in central London has declined, with preference shifting towards highspec, low-carbon facilities.

l As a heritage building, substantial investment is needed for modernisation and refurbishment.

l Retaining the entire building would require allocating up to £3m annually for maintenance and creating a substantial sinking fund for future renovations.

The comprehensive information provided by the board has informed the trustees’ thinking, leading to a preferred option that balances the Institution’s priorities and heritage derived from operating at Birdcage Walk.

It is important to acknowledge

that members have differing views on how we should proceed, and there are strong feelings and differing opinions within the membership on what is the right thing to do for the Institution. That is why we have brought in external experts to provide assurance and advice to the trustee board and members more broadly on objective issues and help better understand subjective issues.

With the intention to hold a member vote later this year, the trustees are currently engaging with the council, who are responsible for considering the views of the Institution’s membership and advising the trustee board, to finalise the recommendation and resolution terms. While progress has been slower than anticipated, thorough analysis and consultation are essential for making the correct decision.

The Institution includes members in major decisions, reflecting our commitment to transparency and inclusivity. Under our by-laws, two-thirds of voting members must support a Special Meeting resolution regarding Birdcage Walk’s future. Thus, forming a strong consensus is crucial for the best outcome.

We aim to keep you updated on progress towards the member vote, with more communications to come in due time. However, if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact us at BirdcageWalk@imeche.org.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Dr Clive Hickman OBE

ENGINEERS 2030: HAVE YOUR SAY

NEWS IN BRIEF

The Royal Academy of Engineering is looking for responses to its consultation on its new Engineers 2030 project. What ideas do you have about how the face of engineering should change before 2030? The Royal Academy of Engineering invites engagement from a broad range of stakeholders across the UK to reflect views of engineering skills, their importance, and how we will safeguard engineering talent now and into the future. The IMechE will be providing a response on behalf of its members, and we would love to hear from you. We will be hosting online consultation sessions where you are welcome to come and share your thoughts.

l Find out more at raeng.org.uk/ engineers-2030 and look out for more information across IMechE comms platforms in the coming weeks. Any written responses can be sent to policy@imeche.org

CELEBRATING OUR FIRST WOMAN MEMBER

We proudly celebrated the 100th anniversary of Verena Holmes being elected our first woman member in February 1924, with an event at Birdcage Walk to champion women engineers and spotlight their impact on society. Elizabeth Donnelly, CEO of the Women’s Engineering Society of which Verena Holmes was a founding member, gave a lecture about her life and legacy, highlighting her work as an inventor but also the barriers she faced having joined the Institution as an associate member in 1924 but only becoming a full member in 1944. “This is a historic occasion,” she said. “Verena showed immense talent as a woman engineer and had a determination to succeed. She was determined to support women engineers partly as a result of her experience at the Institution where she had to wait 20 years to become a full member.”

TMMX AWARDS OPEN FOR ENTRIES

The Manufacturer MX Awards 2024 is open for entries! Delivered by The Manufacturer in partnership with IMechE, the programme exists to encourage, benchmark and celebrate manufacturing excellence. With categories ranging from recognition in innovation and sustainability, through to digitalisation, leadership and staff engagement, there are plenty of opportunities for UK industrial businesses of all sizes and sectors to be recognised. Manufacturers are achieving amazing things against a backdrop of challenging circumstances, so there’s never been a better time to shine a light on industry success. Entries are open until 8 July.

l Visit themanufacturermxawards.com for more information

GETTING DIVERSITY ON TRACK

We spoke to Formula Student project manager Naomi Rolfe about the upcoming edition of the student event (17-21 July), which promises to be the most diverse and sustainable yet

What’s new for Formula Student during 2024?

We’ve seen a real increase in our entries for FS AI, particularly for the dynamic driving task (DDT) class, which is where they design computer systems so the ADSDVs (autonomous driving systems – dedicated vehicles) can drive themselves autonomously. This year we have more entries for that, particularly from new teams, which is very exciting. Last year we had 20 on site, this year we’ll have 25. I’m really pleased to announce we have also secured sustainable fuels (95 Ron E10 and E85) for all of our internal combustion engine teams this year. Last year, a third of the teams took up the opportunity to use sustainable fuels, but this year all of them will. We secured that with support from Motorsport UK, who are funding it as part of their sustainability strategy, and Coryton Fuels, who are providing the fuels and services on site.

We’re seeing an increase in electric vehicle (EV) entries across the board, and there’s a big push from government for EV technology. However, by restricting the teams and saying ‘We’re only going to have electric vehicles, because they’re better for the environment,’ we would be turning away teams that don’t have the necessary finances to build an EV. We’re offering sustainable fuels so they can still participate.

Are you building more ADS-DV cars to expand FS AI?

We have received a grant from the Centre for Connected Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV), who helped create the initial FS AI competition in 2018 through their funding. We’re going to build two more ADS-DVs and re-engineer the two that we already

have, because there are some parts that are obsolete. We’ll also be building some simulators, so that the teams that don’t necessarily have access to the cars can access our ‘on the table’ box simulator.

With the CCAV funding we also want to grow the ADS category, where they’re not just building computer systems, they’re designing and building an autonomous car. We see a real importance in the interface between AI and mechanical engineering.

CCAV are passionate about equipping students with the skills to enable them to be part of the future CAM (connected autonomous mobility) sector in the UK. They see Formula Student as a big part of this.

We want to equip students with the skills that they’re going to need in the workplace. There’s no

‘There’s no point in having a competition that is testing you on something that you’re never going to use. We want to give them the opportunity to be as innovative as possible’

point in having a competition that is testing you on something that you’re never going to use. We want to give them the opportunity to be as innovative as possible.

How do you expect Formula Student to change over the next five to 10 years?

We’ll see continued steady growth in AI, particularly if we have these two extra vehicles. I think we’ll see more EV entries, because the teams are slowly getting to grips with the technology, and maybe a drop in internal combustion engines.

I’d also expect to see more overarching sustainability across the competition, not just what’s on track. We have a responsibility, as a motorsport competition, to show that motorsport and sustainability can go hand-in-hand, and that doesn’t just end with the fuel type. That is also what we’re using on site, how are people arriving, how are they getting about, the carbon footprint of our volunteers, materials used on site – so I think that will be quite significant.

I’m hoping that the diversity of the teams will change as well. We’re going to be offering support for teams from diverse backgrounds. Our aim would be really trying to work with more organisations to get more people from diverse backgrounds and involved in motorsport.

We normally have STEM events at Formula Student, and one of the aims is to invite children who wouldn’t normally be in a motorsport environment, so they can start thinking about their university choices and their career choices at a young age. My hope is that those people would come at 14, learn about it, and then five years later be participating.

Naomi Rolfe

Why is Formula Student such a valuable experience for young engineers?

I’m a language graduate, I spent years sitting in a classroom learning French and Italian. But it wasn’t until I moved out to Italy and had a year abroad that I got to practise, to live that out, to learn and absorb it.

Formula Student is a bit like that for engineers. They’re learning so much in the classroom, they’re gaining all these skills, but they don’t necessarily have that practical outlet.

At Formula Student, it’s almost like you’re abroad, using your skills in real life. We’re equipping them with the skills that they will need in the workplace, but not just engineering skills. We give them business skills, project management skills. It teaches you about resilience, the fact that, if something goes wrong and your car doesn’t get through scrutineering, you’ve got a few hours to solve it.

‘We’re equipping them with the skills that they will need in the workplace, but not just engineering skills’

I’ve spoken to companies and they say there’s something different about Formula Student graduates when they hire them, they know what they’re talking about. It’s not just the engineering – it’s the teamwork, the leadership, managing a budget. All of that comes together to give them a really well-rounded graduate. That’s what Formula Student offers.

Is it important that that opportunity is available to as diverse a group as possible? Absolutely. It’s so valuable for them, and that’s why we have so many Formula One teams and large companies in motorsport that want to be part of Formula Student, because they know these are the graduates they’re looking for. This is the standard that they’re expecting.

Apprentice Automation Challenge turns 10 Celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, the Apprentice Automation Challenge engages with apprentice teams to design and develop a prototype device that automates a common product or process.

Through a combination of engineering knowledge, practical skills and plenty of creativity, participants enjoy the chance to develop and apply their abilities by working on an engineering project that is as close to the real world as possible. The Apprentice Automation Challenge plays a key role in IMechE’s efforts to develop the skills of the next generation of engineers.

“It’s great to see that so many apprentices and organisations are engaging with the Challenge in our special anniversary year and that their values of developing apprentice talent align with ours,” says Toby Heagerty, the Challenge’s chief judge. Apprentice teams will design, manufacture and optimise their prototypes, with a variety of products from recycling devices to selfmeasuring cooking gadgets and physical Braille products among those announced so far. Apprentices will provide regular updates over the coming months ahead of the finals later in the year, which will return to the Manufacturing Technology Centre on 27 September 2024.

FIND OUT MORE

For more information, visit imeche.org/events/formulastudent and imeche.org/ events/challenges/aacchallenge

Above: More and more Formula Student teams are using ADS-DVs

YOUR VOICE

Got something to share with the IMechE community? Write to us at profeng@thinkpublishing.co.uk, using the subject line ‘Your Voice’

Capital aim for HS2

I would have continued with HS2 phase 2a to Crewe and terminated the current construction there rather than at Handsacre. However, my long-term plan would have been to continue the railway to Edinburgh via Preston and Carlisle.

I would agree with the Prime Minister that the Manchester and East Midlands Hub spur lines should not be built. I hope that HS2 will eventually reach Edinburgh and join the capitals of England and Scotland.

Kenneth Barnsley

When failure is inevitable

The statement within your article on curtailing HS2 that “as anyone involved in project management knows, redesigning a project as it is built is most likely to add costs” needs elaboration (Industry Pulse, Professional Engineering No 4, 2023).

When a project must be completed on time and on budget to deliver net positive value a design freeze is essential. Redesigning as it is built is a leading indicator of project management failure.

Eur Ing Brian Edmonds, Farnham, Surrey

Where the real blame lies

The biggest thing that went wrong with HS2 was Covid. It ruined government finances by requiring vast payments for furlough, and demolished the credibility of HS2 by raising expectations that everyone would work from home. However, the latest figures for London Overground, for example, show ridership at 96% of pre-pandemic levels.

The promoters of HS2 stressed

Abandon those outdated gender stereotypes

STAR LETTER

A few years ago I decided to take a career side-step, going parttime as a mechanical building services engineer while attempting to forge a career as a children’s author. My debut picture book, Pink Trucks, is due to be released in April. It has been beautifully illustrated by Cory Reid and is being published by Five Quills. I feel that both my part-time role, and the content of my picture book, closely align with the IMechE’s stance on gender equality in engineering. I have long thought that one of the key issues in engineering is the lack of people in senior roles, particularly men, working part-time. This, in my opinion, has the consequence of inferring that to get to senior positions you have to work full-time, which has obvious implications when engineers decide they want to start a family. I was lucky enough to take extensive periods of paternity leave with both my children which enabled my wife to return to progress her career earlier. My book, Pink Trucks, is aimed at dispelling gender stereotypes from a young age, in a fun, relatable, STEM-themed way for children. The story follows a young boy, who loves trucks but also the colour pink, and his journey to try to find a pink truck. The book concludes (spoiler alert!) with him making his own pink truck after being unable to find one otherwise. You can read more about it on www. fivequills.co.uk/product/pink-trucks/ Sam Clarke

the benefits of slightly reduced journey times for passengers, but a great deal of the potential benefit from the full line to Manchester was in modal shift of freight from road to rail, with consequent environmental benefits. This will now be impossible because of bottlenecks between Birmingham and Manchester – rail freight thrives on long-distance transport. Non-technical people tend to believe that wiring up motorways with overhead power lines for HGVs would be cheap and simple. Unfortunately, cost and timing overruns on rail electrification show that this is not true. Hydrogenpowered trains and trucks are

another idea which is unrealistic at scale in the short term.

It was a mistake to build the London end of HS2 first, especially to the out-of-town terminus at Old Oak Common. This was, however, inevitable, as MPs much prefer to invest in projects that they can see on a day trip from Westminster. Sadly, this south of England focus allowed Nimbys to demand hugely expensive tunnels under the Chilterns.

I strongly believe that engineers should not bear the brunt of the blame for this fiasco. They built what they were told to build.

Ken Strachan, Nuneaton, Warwickshire

Spellbound by steam

Pete Waterman is right: children are captivated by model railways. I spent a whole day talking engineering to all the children in every class in a primary school, ending by letting them all view and operate one of my exhibition model railways. They are indeed spellbound and so are their teachers.

It seems that knowledge of engineering and model railways is limited across the school. It’s not on the syllabus, said the teachers. “It’s so cool,” said the young. A golden opportunity for Hornby and others to market their products more widely to this age and for engineering bodies to reduce the age at which they approach schools. In my day on the IMechE council it was 16. Do any readers have similar experiences?

Roddy Mullin, London

Plan now for a warmer world

The challenges of energy transition to get net-zero greenhouse gases (GHG) by 2050 are enormous.

Using data from www. energyinst.org/statistical-review, in 2022, for the UK, fossil fuels provided 5.47 exajoules (EJ) of energy. To replace even 60% of current fossil-fuel use, the rest assumed to come from efficiency improvements and societal changes, the UK will need to build new continuous carbonfree power generation capacity of 104GW in the next 25 years. This is equivalent to 35 new nuclear power stations of the size of Hinkley Point C or 260,000 wind turbines of 1MW capacity, assuming a much-improved capacity factor, CF, of 0.4 (current value for CF is 0.32 for wind).

In addition, livestock farming, aviation, steel and cement industries need to be essentially shut down and an enormous new energy infrastructure built. However, the UK accounts for only 1.1% of global fossil-fuel use which shows no sign of reduction as energy demand increases in large countries like China and India and the rest of the developing economies. So there is little prospect of global GHG coming down sufficiently and we have no choice but to adapt to any future warming.

Humanity has coped very well with a warming of about 1.2ºC over the past century – every measure of human wellbeing has improved significantly in spite of a quadrupling of the population. So we should be optimistic that we can similarly adapt to future warming through technology and human ingenuity. In any case we will have to; there is no choice.

Professor Gautam Kalghatgi, Oxford

‘We should be optimistic that we can adapt to future warming through technology and human ingenuity’

Body of evidence

In having to explain what mechanical engineering is to laymen, I find the most effective way is to relate it to the human body.

The heart and associated arteries/veins are equivalent to one typical aspect of mechanical engineering in industrial processes, namely, fluid pumping and distribution system of piping. The mechanical engineer would design the system for a suitable pumping power to handle the required discharge rate/pressure for transmitting the fluid through a properly sized piping system, taking into consideration the frictional pressure losses involved. Also, in process piping systems, filtration of the working fluid, or injection of certain chemicals, are usually required. Similarly, in the human body, filtration of the blood is carried out by the kidneys and liver. The blood also receives injections of insulin and other hormones as required by the body to function properly.

Another aspect of mechanical engineering application in the human body is related to the joints, particularly the hip and knee joints, which function according to the requirements of tribology (friction, wear and lubrication). In practice, for situations of surface contact, the mechanical engineer would consider the loads and dynamics involved and design the required operational set-up for the most favourable tribological performance.

I find that such an explanation of mechanical engineering often eradicates the usually held image of a mechanical engineer as a person with a spanner in hand.

Dr K A Nuri

Above: We will need to build many more windfarms

THE REPCO BRABHAM BT19

The racing car that brought Jack Brabham F1 success was the recipient of an IMechE Heritage Award

Formula One drivers sometimes get criticised because their successes rely on the engineering team behind them. But in 1966, Australian driver Jack Brabham achieved a unique feat: he won his third F1 World Championship driving for a team he’d set up himself. After winning back-toback titles with Cooper in 1959 and 1960, Brabham set up his own team with engineer Ron Tauranac, who designed the chassis around a Cooper engine, while Brabham was team manager and mechanic. Then, in 1966, F1 doubled the maximum engine capacity, and Brabham sourced a new engine from their sponsor Repco and its chief engineer Frank Hallam.

“Jack began preparing for the 1966 season by engaging Repco

to build him a Tasman Series engine,” reports the website Car Throttle. “Deciding that it would be too difficult to design an engine from scratch, he acquired an Oldsmobile Jetfire V8 engine block for £11. Phil Irving, a Melbourneborn engineer who had worked as chief engineer for Vincent, HRD and Velocette, was hired by Repco and Brabham to turn the singlecam pushrod V8 into a racing engine. Irving replaced the original pushrods and cam-in-block with his own two-valve SOHC cylinder heads. The bore and stroke were

Sharing knowledge and experience

HELPING HANDS EXPERTISE

The benefits of STEM outreach are wide-ranging – for young people, engineers and society itself. By Joseph Flaig

rowing up, Tosin Shodeyi saw little interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects among his classmates.

“Specifically engineering, I didn’t really feel like it was talked about a lot at my school,” he says.

“If it wasn’t for the fact that my granddad was an engineer, I don’t think I would have even heard about engineering.”

Now 23, Shodeyi is determined to give today’s pupils a different experience. He does so as both a STEM ambassador and a school governor at Sheringham Primary School in Newham, London, not far

from where he grew up in Ilford.

“Students are the future of the community,” he says. “I wanted to be in a local school and be able to promote STEM… give my expertise where I’m able.”

Shodeyi is one of thousands of engineers who give up their time to nurture the next generation. The demand for new engineers is increasingly urgent – a 2022 survey by the Institution of Engineering and Technology found that half (49%) of engineering and technology businesses struggle to recruit skilled candidates. Combined

with an ageing workforce and the scale of challenges such as net zero, we need as many young people to consider engineering careers as possible.

‘It just takes one person’

Now working as a project engineer in the nuclear industry for AtkinsRéalis, Shodeyi’s determination to become a STEM ambassador was solidified at university, where – other than international students – there were only about three black students and five women out of 200 students on his mechanical engineering course.

“It wasn’t enough,” he says, so he set out to change things. Working with an organisation called With Insight, he mentored black A-level students to help them succeed in applications to Russell Group

Many engineers give up time to inspire school children. Below: Tosin Shodeyi

‘I want someone to feel like it doesn’t matter what background they are from – they can become an engineer’

universities. In schools, he explains what a career in engineering might be like, including the opportunities for career progression, the ability to make a difference on sustainability projects, and the fulfilling mix of teamwork and independence.

Speaking to a group of pupils in Hackney, many from ethnic minority backgrounds, Shodeyi says they were “surprised” to learn he was an engineer. “I hope that they realise how cool industry and engineering can be,” he says. “Sometimes it just takes one person, someone who looks like you to be in a position, for you to see yourself in it as well.”

‘What would you do?’

As well as addressing workforce imbalances in gender and race, STEM ambassadors should also consider the diversity of behaviours, attitudes and skillsets among pupils, says Susan Scurlock, chief executive of not-forprofit organisation Primary Engineer.

“We shouldn’t prescribe what we think children should or shouldn’t do in the sense of what their career pathways should be,” she says. “I think it’s important that they know what’s on our doorstep, industry-wise.”

Started in 2005, the IMechE strategic partner does STEM outreach work across the UK. It operates in three ways: training teachers to deliver practical activities in the classroom, as well as inviting engineers to those sessions and providing resources; running school competitions, such as “If you were an engineer, what would you do?”; and providing qualifications and research, helping teachers embed engineering into the curriculum and sharing findings from the activities.

Not all the school pupils Primary Engineer works with will become engineers, says Scurlock, but it is nonetheless important to explain what

they do and why they are important – especially when considering challenges such as net zero. “In industry, you need a lot of people to work alongside engineers,” she says. “We’re talking to everybody about what the opportunities are, and how they can get involved.”

Free resources and guidance are available

Asked what she would say to engineers who are not taking part in STEM outreach, Scurlock’s answer is simple: “Why are you not? What are you doing that is better than inspiring children with the things that you do?” It is easier than ever to help

WANT TO TAKE PART?

out, she says, thanks to the free resources and guidance provided by organisations such as Primary Engineer, which links engineers with schools and activities.

Employers also get “a great deal out of it,” she adds, thanks to the sense of pride instilled in engineers who take part. It can also make an important contribution to corporate social responsibility.

Shodeyi agrees. “You’re going out there and being able to present what you do for your work. That helps with your own development,” he says.

“It’s very rewarding knowing what I’m doing could encourage someone to become an engineer. I want someone to feel like it doesn’t matter what background they are from – they can become an engineer.”

Here are five ways you can get involved:

l Register as a STEM ambassador via STEM Learning: stem.org.uk/stem-ambassadors/become-a-stem-ambassador

l Contact your IMechE regional education officer: imeche.org/careers-education/regional-education-officers/

l Volunteer for Primary Engineer: primaryengineer.com/

l Join STEMazing to boost female representation in engineering: stemazing.co.uk

l Become a school governor or trustee: inspiringgovernance.org/imeche

Above: Children can be enthused by sustainability projects

POWERING DOWN

As the experimental JET fusion reactor shuts down, Stuart Nathan explores the challenges of nuclear decommissioning

The UK has been a major player in virtually all of the energy technologies humanity has used over the centuries. The very first nuclear power station to supply usable electricity was at Sellafield in Cumbia; other power stations using homedeveloped Magnox-fuelled advanced gas-cooled reactor (AGR) technology sit in their hulking buildings on the coast, along with newer pressurised water reactors.

Off the north-east coast in the North Sea stand the towering rigs that drilled for oil and gas. Many of these structures are at, near or beyond the lifetimes they were designed to last, giving the country a difficult choice: carry out engineering work to allow them to continue for longer, or take them out of service, dismantle them and find a safe way to dispose of their components. In the case of the nuclear technologies, a complicating factor is that they were not built with dismantling in mind.

Gaps in knowledge

In some cases in the nuclear sector, science when facilities were built had gaps. When the earliest reactors

were built, it was not known that the neutron radiation resulting from nuclear fission would harden and embrittle steel and make it swell. Some effects of neutron irradiation of graphite were known in the 1940s, but are still not well understood more than half a century later, which caused problems when the graphite core of the Windscale AGR at Sellafield was dismantled in the 1990s.

Design deficiencies

Other legacy issues from early reactors included removing the liquid-metal coolant – a mixture of sodium and potassium – from breeder reactors at Dounreay on Scotland’s north coast which had been used to transmute uranium into plutonium. The original engineers did not design in any system to drain the liquid: a valve system would have been useful, but no such tap existed.

One of the world’s most important sites for developing technology to decommission nuclear facilities is RACE (Robotic Applications in Challenging Environments), a centre operated by the UK Atomic Energy Authority at Culham in Oxfordshire.

RACE develops and tests robots, from enormous arms designed to grasp and move large and heavy components, to mobile crawling and walking robots that can work on and move smaller equipment.

RACE develops robots to work in the irradiated conditions of conventional nuclear fission reactors and handle the radioactive waste products, but in recent years much of its work has been concerned with nuclear fusion, as the largest experimental fusion reactor, JET (Joint European Torus), is also at the Culham site, and its work is informing the construction of ITER (International

RACE develops robots to work in the irradiated conditions of conventional nuclear fission reactors

Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor), a much larger reactor modelled closely on JET, being built near Marseilles. A great deal of the building of ITER uses robots, and RACE has been developing these.

JET operated for 40 years, mostly researching how to handle plasma compressed and accelerated by magnetic fields with no nuclear reactions, but late last year it ran its last set of reactions using a plasma of deuterium and tritium, achieving the longest-ever sustained fusion reaction of 5.2 seconds. Now JET is no longer in use, the first-ever decommissioning of a fusion reactor is about to start, a process that will take 12 years.

LEARN MORE

IMechE’s Managing Ageing Nuclear Assets and Decommissioning 2024 conference takes place on 22-23 May in Manchester. Find out more and book at imeche.org/events

Above: JET will blaze the trail for the decommissioning of a fusion reactor

SIMULATING SUCCESS

Stuart Nathan reports on the engineers using simulation and modelling for a competitive edge

Our worlds of work and daytime activities are becoming ever more digital. For engineers, the digital explosion has in the past couple of decades increasingly presented an opportunity. No longer is it always necessary to test the way their creations work under the circumstances they will meet in operation by going to the expense and effort of building a physical model or prototype and putting it through its paces: instead, they can be modelled and simulated in the virtual confines of a computer system.

Exciting advances

There is considerable crossover between the fields of modelling and simulation and thermal management: heat generation by chemical reactions and heat flow through materials all follow well-understood mathematical rules and, moreover, can be tricky to measure in physical models. At Williams Advanced Engineering (WAE) – one of the divisions of the Williams Formula 1 organisation concerned with developing motorsport technologies for use in other sectors – principal engineer for thermal simulation Jorge Martinez Lopez says that the past five years have been exciting for simulation engineers, particularly those working with electrified powertrains.

“We have seen the development of disruptive modelling techniques like Topology Optimization software and Reduced Order Models based on artificial intelligence and machine learning,” he says. “Another relevant advance is the growth of multiphysics tools to study the interaction of the thermal performance of Li-ion batteries, electric motors and power electronics with other disciplines, such as electromagnetism, electrical, fluid dynamics or stress analysis.” One way in which Lopez’s sector differs from others is that motorsport

Below: Simulation proved essential in developing batteries for use in Extreme E race cars

‘The focus in categories like Formula E, Extreme E, ETCR or LMDh is always on maximising performance’

is heavily circumscribed by the regulations imposed on it by governing bodies so, for example, the batteries used in electric racing series have a strict weight limit, and engineers have to work out how to extract the best possible energy storage and release performance while keeping to those constraints.

In-house software

“The focus in categories like Formula E, Extreme E, ETCR or LMDh (Le Mans Daytona hybrid) is always on maximising performance.” To meet these goals, WAE uses both commercially available simulation packages and develops its own inhouse software.

When developing the battery for the third-generation Formula E cars (all teams are supplied with the same battery; the gen 3 was introduced in the 2022-23 season), WAE had to reduce the mass by 101kg while increasing output power from 250 to 300kW and adding what Lopez describes as an “incredible” 600kW

fast-charge and regenerative braking capability. Formula E races take place all around the world in a variety of weathers, so in developing the battery Lopez’s team had to simulate all the operating conditions it might encounter.

A newer series, Extreme E, races modified SUVs off-road, and this presented an even bigger challenge. “The battery packs, developed also by WAE, have been designed to withstand extreme environments, conditions and terrains from the Arctic to the jungle and desert, producing a maximum power output of 470kW,” says Lopez. Simulation and modelling allow all these conditions to be created virtually in Oxfordshire at WAE.

LEARN MORE

IMechE’s Simulation and Modelling 2024 conference will take place in the Midlands on 25-26 September. Find out more and book at imeche.org/events

COOL IT!

Stuart

Nathan reports on how automotive engineers are adapting cooling systems for the electric age

anaging heat has always been important for road vehicles. When operation depends on a fuel burning there’s obviously a need to handle the heat generated by the combustion. For more than a century, the main method of dissipating that heat and preventing it from damaging the engine has been to transfer it into a cooling fluid circulating around the engine and allow it to escape to the outside world via the radiator.

Over the past decade, however, the increasing use of electric motors has begun to present a new set of challenges. While cooling is still needed, the demands of electric power are different: most notably, the performance and safe operation of the lithium-ion batteries that dominate automotive applications is critically dependent on thermal management. Batteries’ ability to store and release energy is at its best within a fairly narrow range of temperatures, but they become hotter in operation and require cooling to prevent fires.

Optimise use of energy

“A big part of thermal management development goes into the optimisation of energy usage to reduce battery consumption as range anxiety will continue to be an issue at least in the near future,” explain aerodynamicist Kevin Chow and electromobility manager Osoko Shonda, of automotive engineering and development consultancy Horiba Mira. They will be speaking at a conference on vehicle thermal management organised by IMechE at the British Motor Museum in Warwick in June. In an email exchange with this magazine they explain that thermal management is a critical factor in ensuring that batterypowered vehicles meet their users’ expectations. However, this isn’t the

only focus of thermal management research, they add. While people need to know that their vehicle will get them as far as they need to go, they also want to be comfortable. “There is a lot of research into the wider vehicle thermal systems that come under this umbrella of energy optimisation. For example, the cabin systems are large consumers of energy outside of spring/autumn due to heating or cooling demands, and research is ongoing into more energy-efficient methods of achieving the same

‘Thermal engineers have to anticipate the achievement of the system’s performance prior to physical testing’

level of perceived thermal ‘comfort’ without the current level of energy consumption,” Shonda and Chow explain. Some manufacturers are looking into using heat pumps to manage cabin conditions, but these add complexity and parts count, and, as electrical components are still relatively expensive compared to conventional vehicle systems, they also add cost.

The tools used for developing thermal management, in common with almost every technology, are increasingly becoming digital. Simulation and modelling increasingly

cross over with thermal management. “Thermal engineers have to anticipate the achievement of the system’s performance prior to physical testing.”

Predictive modelling

One important advance has been the ability to couple together a 3D model of the vehicle interior with a model of the thermal management system, allowing them to predict the temperature at any point in the cabin under a set of conditions combining exterior ambient temperature with available power from the batteries and settings selected by the vehicle occupants, they explain.

For some vehicles, manufacturers are considering combining battery power with fuel cells, giving the option of using hydrogen as an energy carrier for on-board electricity generation. This will create a new set of challenges.

FURTHER INFORMATION

The Vehicle Thermal Management Systems Conference and Exhibition will take place on 5-6 June at the British Motor Museum in Warwick. Find out more and book at imeche.org/events

Above: Cooling challenges have moved on from the days of internal combustion

HOW TO MANAGE YOUR ENERGY AND NOT YOUR TIME

n 2022, research by this magazine found that engineers were struggling – more than three-quarters said their work was stressful, and many reported feeling exhausted and burnt out. That’s a feeling shared by many across the workforce, and it’s something an IMechE training course running later this year seeks to help with. Here, course trainer Mary Guerdoux-Harries – an IMechE chartered engineer who has more than 20 years of experience with the likes of Jaguar Land Rover, Alstom and Thales – shares some useful advice from the course which focuses on the different types of energy and how to manage them.

Understand your energy rhythms

There are three natural cycles that govern your energy levels. Ultradian rhythms oscillate through the day depending on the effort you’re expending. After 90120 minutes of work, you need 20 minutes to recover. Circadian rhythms are governed by the time of day and affect hormone secretion, body temperature and blood pressure. As a result, we’re better at doing certain tasks at certain times of day: more alert and coordinated around midday, and more error-prone later at night. Infradian rhythms work over longer periods and include things such as the menstrual cycle, which can affect a woman’s concentration and stress tolerance.

Learn to sleep better

I 01 02 03

Sleep is our most fundamental energy renewal process – it allows our brains to store information and remove toxins, and our bodies to focus on hormone and protein production. A lack of sleep can lead to increased stress, a lack of energy and motivation, and emotional deregulation. To improve your sleep,

Right: Exercise is important in achieving a good work-life balance

Sleep is our most fundamental energy renewal process – it allows our brains to store information and remove toxins

Guerdoux-Harries recommends the 10-3-2-1-0 sleep rule. Ten hours before bed: no more caffeine. Three hours before bed: no more food or alcohol. Two hours before bed: stop working. One hour: no more screen time. And zero: the number of times you hit snooze in the morning.

Manage your mental energy

Mental energy means our capacity to be alert, present and focused, and to concentrate and move between tasks. Without it, we make judgement errors, get distracted or forgetful and struggle to come up with ideas. But there are some easy ways to fix it. Change your environment – getting outside or listening to music can help. Good physical and emotional health is important – sleep and exercise. You could also try the Pomodoro technique, which involves breaking

up your work into 25-minute bursts of concentration (no phone, no email, no messages) – with a five-minute break in between, and a 30-minute break every two hours.

Regulate your emotions

Emotional energy determines the quality of the energy we have. There are two emotional categories. Catabolic emotions are things such as fear, grief, sadness and anger – they deplete your energy and are associated with spikes in stress hormones. Anabolic emotions such as joy, calm and love are energy renewing – they’re associated with hormones like dopamine and oxytocin, and help to renew your energy. Some ways to boost emotional energy include exercise, meditation and yoga.

Shooting for the Moon

Airbus engineer Sian Cleaver on managing the European Service Module, Europe’s contribution to NASA’s Orion manned mission to the moon

By Stuart Nathan

Above: Sian Cleaver decided she wanted to work in the space industry when she was five years old

We’re going back to the moon. 52 years after Apollo 17’s lunar excursion module took Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmidt back to their command module, plans are well advanced for NASA’s Artemis missions which will see humans returning to Earth’s satellite, including the first woman. Artemis will use a new crew capsule called Orion, carrying four crew rather than Apollo’s three, and supporting the Orion capsule will be a service module supplied by the European Space Agency (ESA), with the catchy name of the European Service Module (ESM). The first Artemis mission, uncrewed, has already flown, with the second, taking humans outside Earth orbit for the first time since Apollo on a trip around the far side of the moon and back, scheduled to launch this year. Orion is also an important part of NASA’s plans beyond Artemis.

The ESM for Artemis 2 is at Cape Canaveral for integration onto the crew capsule and then onto its launcher, the Space Launch System (a hybrid of Apollo’s Saturn 5 rocket using engines and solid fuel boosters developed for the Space Shuttle programme) while the next four ESMs are in various stages of construction in the cleanrooms of ESA’s prime contractor for the programme, Airbus Space and Defence, in Bremen, Germany. The industrial manager for Airbus’s ESM programme is British engineer Sian Cleaver, who spoke to Professional Engineering about her work.

My degree was fun; I got to use big telescopes and I loved that, but I’d realised I wasn’t going to be an astronaut

Professional Engineering: Did you always want to build spacecraft? Was engineering an early goal of yours?

Sian: I decided when I was about five years old that I wanted to work in the space industry – at that time I wanted to be an astronaut – and my fascination with space evolved into an interest in astronomy. I didn’t really know what engineering was, even though Women into Science and Engineering came into my all-girls school. I didn’t really relate to the side of engineering they talked about, and I certainly had no idea what the UK was doing in space exploration. I was pretty typical in saying, “I want to work for NASA” and didn’t give ESA a second thought. I just thought I needed to be in America to work on space. I even went to the Space

School at Leicester University and visited Airbus at Stevenage [where many satellites and spacecraft are built] but I was adamant: NASA is where the cool stuff is! But I was told physics is a sensible choice, it’s a broad choice and if you’re a physicist you can become an engineer down the line, but if you study engineering it’s harder to go into physics. So I applied to study physics and space science – although the degree is called physics and astronomy – at Durham University.

PE: Physics and astronomy certainly says space, but not necessarily engineering. How did your career develop?

Sian: My degree was fun; I got to use big telescopes and I loved that, but I’d realised I wasn’t going to be an astronaut. My intention was to study and do a PhD in aeronautics and astronautics – by that time I’d realised what engineering was! – but I couldn’t get funding for that, and I ended up with my back-up choice of the graduate programme of EADS Astrium [later subsumed into Airbus, becoming its Space and Defence subsidiary].

PE: And that turned you from scientist into engineer?

Sian: They took in about 30 graduates straight from university, working at both their Portsmouth site and Stevenage, and that’s where I finally realised how much we were doing on space exploration in the UK. I was at Portsmouth for a year, then did a placement to Bremen for six months – it was great to be able to move between Airbus sites – then came back to Stevenage for about six years, when I managed to transfer back to Bremen to work on Orion. Apart from that initial first year, I’ve only ever worked on ESA exploration projects.

PE: Did the placement give you any formal engineering qualifications?

Sian: No! I was sent on a few Airbus courses. Most of the graduates were from engineering degree courses but, for the rest of us, you become an engineer by training. Even then, it took me a while to use the word engineer. Eventually I realised that anyone who’s involved in

Above: Artemis missions will use the Orion crew capsule

bringing something into physical being is an engineer and has a right to use the term.

PE: In detail,what’sAirbus’s role in Orion?

Sian: the spacecraft has three modules.The command module,where the crewsits.An adaptor,which is a ring joining the crewmodule to the service module. Both of those are manufactured byLockheed Martin in the US.Then ourESM has everything the crewneed to stay alive; it’s got the airand thewater, the solarpanels to generate the electricityforthe mission [Apollo had no solarpower, using on-board fuel cells instead]; it does the thermal control forthewhole spacecraft and most importantlyit has a massive engine – 33 engines actuallybut oneverylarge one,which propels the spacecraft towards the moon.We can’t get to the moon without ESM. It’s the first time that NASAhas trusted anotheragencyto provide such a crucial element of a human-rated mission.

PE: Canyou explainwhat an industrial managerdoes on this sort of programme?

Sian: It’s a bit of a funnytitle, even atAirbus, it doesn’t have a strict, formal definition. Iwork across all of the ESMswe’re building. I make sure all the subsystems from our60 orso contractors in 10 countries arrive on time, sowe can integrate them onto ourspacecraft module.

PE:To an untrained observer, it might sound like almost an admin role.Where does the engineering come in?

Sian: I used to be a cleanroom scheduler, planning tasks and doing more management activities, but now myrole is more about focusing onwhatwe deem to be critical items, the more challenging systems that make up ourspacecraft andworkingwith the subcontractors to problem-solve, mitigate anyissues that come up and accelerate the building process. Some of the systems are so complex thatwe orourcontractors are still doing development on them in some cases, and myrole is to find outwhat might be causing delays andwhatwe can do to help solve those problems.The engineering tends to be around that sort of troubleshooting and problem solving. I need to understandwhat the root causes of delays are, andworkwith the subcontractors’ engineers to come upwith a solution ormitigation.

Orion ESM-3 integration in a cleanroom

After Artemis 3, we’re hopefully delivering more crews to the moon and building up the infrastructure around the moon as well

PE: Doyou have to dealwith Lockheed Martin?

Sian: No,we have a four-partyworking relationship, which is unique.Wework forESA, the project comes underNASA, and Lockheed report directlyto them. All fourof us have meetings, butwe don’t reallywork directlywith Lockheed.

PE: What sort of mechanical issues doyou dealwith?

Sian: I dealwith development of the solararraydrive mechanism.We’ve had to adapt that from ESM-4 onwards because the profile of theArtemis missions is changing from that point and Orionwill have to be able to move elements of the Gatewayspace station in space as part of the effort to construct Gatewayin lunarorbit. That function – pushing the large mass of a module affects howthe solarpanels behave. It’s unusual fora mission to change so muchwhile it’s underway, and I’m quite involved in that change.The driverbehind this is that Orion is intended to be a multipurposevehicle, sowe’re trying to build something that’s as open and adaptable to different mission scenarios as possible. Artemis iswell-defined up to mission 4,with mission 3 taking crewto land on the moon, but beyond that it’s more open, sowe have to make thevehicle as robust as we possiblycan to copewith those mission changes. AfterArtemis 3,we’re hopefullydelivering more crews to the moon and building up the infrastructure around the moon aswell.We don’t reallyknowwhere Orionwill take us afterthat; it’s currentlypart of the plans to go to Mars,with a spacecraft to make the journeystarting from Gatewaystation and Orion ferrying the crewup to it.We don’t knowwhat mission profileswill look likeyet.

PE: Doyou think that depictions of engineers in mass media, sayentertainment, are important in attracting people into the profession?

Sian: I’m unusual among mycolleagues in that I’m not into science fiction,where a lot of them have found inspiration. But Iwas inspired more bytheApollo missions, and the peoplewho made them happen. I loved the film Apollo 13, and Gene Kranz [the flight directorof theApollo missions, portrayed in Apollo 13 byEd Harris] is myengineering hero, forhis decisionmaking capabilities. I love films that are a bit more factual about space travel, like The Martian

Left:

Decarbonising Aviation

The biggest names in aviation say their industry will never achieve net zero without green hydrogen. Here’s how they’re working to fix that

By Tom Austin-Morgan

The aviation industry predicts massive growth in the next few years.

Sustainable aviation fuels (SAF), biofuels and power-toliquid are being promoted as ways to decarbonise. But more attention should be given to hydrogen, especially for short-haul flights, according to a group of aviation companies.

“The first key point to note is that there is no silver bullet,” says Jenny Kavanagh (above), chief strategy officer at Cranfield Aerospace Solutions. “This means we’ve got a complex problem to solve, but it also means we have quite a lot of levers to pull. Another key point is that there is no viable way to decarbonise aviation that does not involve hydrogen.”

the marine and aviation industries, and it’s estimated that the total consumption of marine fuels accounts for 5% of global oil demand.

Whilst zero-emissions technologies are being matured and developed, aerospace companies continue to evolve their aircraft and engines. An aircraft coming off an Airbus production line today, for example, is 30% more efficient than it was 2030 years ago.

“Aerospace is not the worst carbon dioxide polluter on the planet,” she continues. “Far from it. But it is the only one that pollutes at altitude. Contrails have an effect on global warming over and above that of carbon dioxide, so it’s a good idea to try and manage those. There is technology appearing today that helps predict where those contrails are going to form and avoid them on a flight-by-flight basis, which is great.”

Questionmarks over batteries

Kerosene and heavy fuel oil currently meet the bulk of demand for

“They’re still fuelled by kerosene, but they’re burning less of it, which is only a good thing,” says Kavanagh. “We can also look at redesigning airspace. How can we make flights more direct? How can we mitigate holding patterns above airports? Again, it’s all about burning less fuel and being more efficient.

A lot has been written about electric and hybrid-electric aeroplanes over the past few years. But, simply put, these solutions won’t work for commercial and shipping airliners.

“Batteries are great, they produce zero emissions, but 1kg of battery produced a tenth of the energy density of 1kg of kerosene,” says Kavanagh.

“That’s not good for aviation where weight is king. Unfortunately, batteries are only really good enough for small aircraft, up to about five seats.”

SAF is seen as a short- to mediumterm solution as it can be used as a direct replacement for kerosene. Currently, it is certified to a 50% blend, but the industry aims to increase that to 100% by 2030. SAF isn’t perfect because it contains carbon, but this has recently been sucked from the air (either naturally or by technological means) before being released, therefore it’s seen as essentially offsetting itself.

There are two types of SAF: biofuels and synthetically produced SAF.

Biofuels have been around for a while and are used in demonstration flights and in non-commercial applications. Airbus uses 5% blend, for example, in its Beluga aircraft, which ship large parts from one place to another. The downside for biofuels is that you need a lot of it to replace kerosene and, according to Kavanagh, there just isn’t enough feedstock. This is where synthetic fuels come in. They are made by capturing CO2 from the air and combining it with green hydrogen.

Kavanagh says: “The great thing about SAF is that you don’t need new refuelling infrastructure, you can use the kerosene infrastructure. But scaling up the production is a challenge, it’s expensive, and the fuel itself is expensive because of the process used to make it.”

Per 1kg of each, hydrogen has three times the energy density of kerosene, which is why it makes such a tantalising fuel for aviation.

Potential of hydrogen

Jessica Kennedy (below), project executive for the hydrogen demonstrator project at Rolls-Royce, says: “That’s absolutely huge for us, it’s key that we can optimise and turn that into propulsive efficiency because the technologies we’re supporting and developing as part of our demonstrators, such as the UltraFan, build upon traditional gas turbine technologies with hydrogen as a fuel in the combustion system instead of kerosene.” There are two main ways that power can be created from hydrogen. One is fuel cells, which take hydrogen

Above: Airbus’s ZEROe project is assessing what’s needed to use hydrogen as a fuel

and convert it to electric power to drive an electric motor which in turn drives a propeller.

“This technology will be the first that you will see come into service,” Kavanagh explains. “Cranfield Aerospace is working on fuel-cell hydrogen propulsion systems that we want to get into commercial service in 2026. That’s this decade, and it will be here. We’re not quite at single-aisle (100-seat) aircraft yet, but that’s not to say that fuel-cell technology can’t be made to go that big.”

Storage challenge

The second technology is combusting hydrogen directly in an engine, in the same way kerosene is used. Unlike in fuel cells, where the only emissions are water and heat, when hydrogen is combusted, it produces nitrogen oxides (NOx).

“But that’s a hell of a lot better than kerosene,” adds Kavanagh. “Even if it’s slightly worse than fuel cells, it has the potential to be applied to larger aircraft right now.”

The next challenge is storage. Hydrogen can be stored in gaseous or liquid form. In gaseous form it must be stored in highly pressurised, heavy tanks, which suits it for use in small aircraft. However, it’s a relatively simple and mature technology that’s already used in other industries.

Airbus’s ZEROe development network is assessing the infrastructure challenges by learning from other sectors how they handle hydrogen in cryogenic form.

“It can get into service quickly, and proves that hydrogen is safe for use in aviation,” says Kavanagh. “It will require new infrastructure but, because the operations it will be applied to, and the aircraft, are fairly small, it’s not a huge undertaking. It’s still not easy, but it’s a lot easier than liquid, which is a long-term solution.”

Liquid hydrogen, on the other hand, doesn’t require large, heavy tanks, but it does require being cooled to -253°C, which is cryogenic. That has

‘This technology will be the first that will come into service. Cranfield Aerospace is working on fuel-cell hydrogen propulsion systems that we want to get into service in 2026’

significant challenges. It also takes up four times the volume of kerosene, so it will drive new aircraft design, which is another reason it is taking longer.

Like SAF, vast quantities of hydrogen will be required. It’s predicted that Heathrow airport alone will need 1,300 tonnes of liquid hydrogen by 2040 which presents a major infrastructure challenge to produce, transport and store all that hydrogen.

Airbus released four future concept aircraft designs in 2020 that can theoretically hold 100-200 passengers and travel 1,000-2,000 nautical miles either running on liquid hydrogen-powered gas turbines,

liquid hydrogen-powered turboprop, or a fully electric propulsion unit. The fourth is a ‘blended wing body’ design that gives designers a lot of options on the structure of the hydrogen system.

Developing aircraft concepts

Solange Baena-Zambrana (right), UK lead on the Airbus Aviation Environmental Roadmap, says: “These designs are progressing really well. We’re still not in a position to say which concept will go forward as we’re still looking into the technological breaks that are required to make these concept aircraft work and viable.

“The ambition is to announce which of these aircraft we’ll be working on by 2025, which means that we can then launch a new programme between 2026 and 2028 with the ambition to have these aircraft enter

Above: Rolls-Royce UltraFan could work with hydrogen as a fuel instead of kerosene

into service in 2035, aligning with many of the environmental roadmaps, UK or global.”

A critical issue for three of these concepts is the storage of the liquid hydrogen, so the key technology is the tank and how it can be pressurised and made safe to fly.

Baena-Zambrana says the company plans to use twin-walled vacuuminsulated tanks but is still looking at other options.

Combustion method

Similarly, Rolls-Royce sees three main challenges when replacing kerosene with hydrogen. The first is how to combust it as there is a significant difference between the two fuels. The second is how to deliver it from -250°C to room temperature gas and optimally meter it into the combustion system to give the required efficiency. Finally, how can all of this be integrated into existing gas-turbine housing designs, including thermal and power management?

Kennedy says: “We’ve got a range of testing that we’re doing across our hydrogen value stream from materials testing, thinking about things like hydrogen embrittlement through the gas turbine, building that up through components, subsystem, fuel system, and then culminating in ground test engines based on our modified Pearl 15 that we will be

EasyJet maps the future for fuels

ver the past three years, UK-based low-cost airline EasyJet has been mapping and modelling ways it can decarbonise. According to the company’s sustainability director, Jane Ashton, EasyJet is already just under 20% more carbon efficient than the global short-haul average.

the aircraft they’ll replace. Operational efficiencies are being pursued, including single-engine taxiing and more frequent engine washing, and more sophisticated software and AI applications. For instance, descent profile optimisation software has been retrofitted to 272 aircraft in EasyJet’s fleet over the past nine months which, Ashton says, has provided “over 1% improvement in carbon efficiency”.

Modernisation needed

“Throughout 2020 and 2021,” she says, “we worked with the Science-Based Targets initiative, NGOs such as WWF and the International Centre for Clean Transportation, and other experts and airlines, to map what the science-based decarbonisation trajectory should be for aviation and how that would align with other less-polluting sectors’ decarbonisation trajectories.”

That work was published at COP26, and that enabled EasyJet to map its own decarbonisation trajectory. Ashton says the company has set a target of 35% carbonintensity reduction by 2035. This is based on current technologies, such as replacing 80% of its fleet by the early 2030s with the latest Airbus Neo aircraft which are each at least 15% more efficient than

“Another lever between now and 2035 is airspace modernisation,” says Ashton. “That alone could be up to about 10% carbon-efficiency improvements across Europe. We’re implementing measures but also advocating governments and other airspace providers to implement that and sustainable aviation fuels which will be mandated to use.

“Across the EU 6% of all fuel uplifted from 2030 will need to be sustainable aviation fuel, and that could be up to 10% in the UK. So, a very meaningful lever to decarbonise, but not a silver bullet.”

looking to progress through from 2024 onwards.”

Rolls-Royce is working with more than 60 partners across industry and academia with the support of UK, EU and German funding agencies for the development of the various technologies. The company also has some key, novel partnerships, such as one with EasyJet which is helping it to think differently about approaching these challenges.

“It has to be done,” says Kavanagh. “This is not impossible; we have a track record of solving really complicated problems. This is not a technology challenge. This is

Below: Airbus ‘blended wing’ design opens up possibilities for hydrogen use

‘This is not impossible; we have a track record of solving really complicated problems. This is not a technology challenge. This is a funding and policy challenge’

a funding and policy challenge.”

Policy signals are supporting the uptake of hydrogen-derived fuels at both UK and EU level. However, these are not on the scale that’s required to meet the targets set out in the Paris agreements and are just one component that will drive the adoption of hydrogen-derived fuels.

Clear message required

Baena-Zambrana says: “We need to align our strategies and messages that we are giving to the public but also to government. We need to make sure we understand the issues, the challenges around these, how much hydrogen we need, how much energywe need to produce the hydrogen, the challenges in infrastructure.”

need to recognise that green hydrogen will continue to be in limited supply in the coming decades and should therefore be targeted towards sectors – such as aviation – that have no more efficient routes to decarbonisation.

aviation taxes rather than the blunter per-person taxes that we’re seeing. Also, a number of policy moves to incentivise aircraft and engine producers to produce low- and zerocarbon technology and to incentivise airlines to take those up.”

Note of optimism

Ashton adds that there are reasons to be optimistic about the future of hydrogen in aviation. For example, it wasn’t realistically being discussed five years ago as a prospective fuel used in short-haul and regional aviation, but now it’s “absolutely on the cards”. She points towards small operators and start-ups such as ZeroAvia, H2Fly and Universal Hydrogen conducting test flights.

All of them agree that policymakers

Jane Ashton (below), sustainability director at EasyJet, says: “That’s one of the reasons whywe have joined with a number of partners to create the Hydrogen in Aviation Alliance, which was launched at the House of Commons in September 2023. We will be working with government to highlight the milestones and the policy framework that will need to be put in place to enable hydrogen in aviation to become a reality. Policies such as making sure that hydrogen is equal to SAF in frameworks such as the emissions trading scheme, policies such as simply linking emissions to

Kavanagh agrees: “Zero-emissions flight is much, much closer than you think it is.”

IMechE will publish a green paper on aerospace in the summer – head to imeche.org to find out more FIND OUT MORE

Stepping out of the shadows

For years,

humanoid robots

were little more

than flashy technology

demonstrators. Now they are finally stepping out into commercial use. We spoke to experts and companies about how far they might go

By Joseph Flaig

When Honda’s Asimo robot first walked onto the stage, it was a futuristic vision for a new millennium. Walking, talking, and even conducting the Detroit Symphony Orchestra during one of its many public demonstrations between 2000 and 2022, the child-sized machine is still one of the most iconic humanoid robots.

Despite the programme’s significant achievements, Asimo itself had limited utility. Its ‘autonomous’ navigation relied on markers on the floor, its most complex actions were preprogrammed, and its onboard AI was rudimentary compared to the vast power of today’s large language models, which power chatbots such as ChatGPT.

Six years after Asimo’s development ended, a new generation of humanoid and bipedal robots is stepping out of the research lab. This time, however, their area of operations is the workplace, not the conference hall stage.

Last October, Amazon announced it was testing the Digit robot from Oregon firm Agility Robotics for ‘tote recycling’ – picking up and moving empty boxes – in its warehouses. Jeff Bezos also invested $100m in California start-up Figure AI in

February, Bloomberg reported, while fellow rich list-topper Elon Musk has his own Optimus humanoid robot project at Tesla.

Many other firms are also targeting commercial applications. Spurred on by progress in the US, China has announced plans to deploy humanoid robots by 2025. The machines could work in factories, farms and people’s homes, said the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

Such ambitious aims would have seemed impossible as little as five years ago. They are only feasible now thanks to some major engineering advances. The journey here has been far from easy –but now humanoid robots are getting somewhere, how far could they go?

South Korea at the age of seven, his parents took him to watch Star Wars After seeing R2-D2 and C-3PO on screen, his path was set.

“I was completely mesmerised. On my way back home in the car, I told my mom and dad: ‘I’m gonna grow up to be a robot scientist’,” he says.

These are the droids you’re looking for

For Dennis Hong (above), the journey started with a holiday trip to the cinema. Returning to the US from

Almost five decades later, Hong is one of the world’s foremost experts in robotics research and development. Professor of mechanical engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles and founding director of RoMeLa (Robotics & Mechanisms Laboratory) at the university, many of his lab’s inventive creations – from the amoeba-inspired ‘whole skin locomotion’ for mobile robots to the helium-filled Ballu (Buoyancy Assisted Lightweight Legged Unit) – would not look out of place in a galaxy far, far away.

He has also done extensive work on humanoid robots, which he describes as the “Swiss Army Knife” of robotics.

‘I was completely mesmerised. On my way back home in the car, I told my mom and dad: “I’m gonna grow up to be a robot scientist”’

Above: New humanoid robots, such as the Phoenix from Vancouver firm Sanctuary, are more capable than ever before

“The famous architect Louis Sullivan once said ‘Form follows function,’ so the shape of an object is decided by what it needs to do,” he says.

“I have a dream, in the future, to have robots living with us, doing the dishes, taking out the trash… Unless the robot has a human shape and size, it won’t be able to navigate this environment designed for humans.”

Hong is pursuing that dream as a lead developer on Artemis, a footballplaying humanoid that walks at 2.1m/s – the fastest walk in the world, according to Hong, who also claims it could clinch the running record if the team had enough room to test it.

Hyperdynamic movement

Speaking from his Star Wars memorabilia-decorated lab in California, Hong sets out the advances in mobility and manipulation that have allowed the Artemis team to explore extreme, ‘hyperdynamic’ athletic use cases – and enabled other humanoid robots to reach commercial application.

Bipedal locomotion has improved thanks to changes in control and actuation, Hong says. “All the oldschool humanoid robots that you probably remember – Honda Asimo, the Hubo from Korea, all these robots that ‘walk like a robot’ – those use a control called ZMP, or zero moment point control,” he says. “You keep your centre of gravity right above your foot, in a dynamic way.”

He continues: “Boston Dynamics’ Atlas, our robot Artemis, and many other robots, now are starting to use this new control method called MPC, model predictive control.” The technique allows more dynamic locomotion by predicting and reacting to future events.

Artemis and a growing number of commercial projects are also taking a new approach to mobility hardware. “Old-school robots use servo motors, or position-controlled actuators. These are electric motors with a huge gearbox. They only control

Above: The football-playing Artemis robot uses muscle-like actuators for fast and flexible movement

the position – not the force, not the compliance, but just the position. So these are very stiff,” Hong says.

Muscle-like actuators are needed for faster movement and to tackle uneven terrain and unstructured environments. For its back-flipping, free-running Atlas, Boston Dynamics uses powerful hydraulics, which are compliant and can be force controlled, meaning the robot can flexibly adjust its movements as it exerts force on objects and the environment.

Hydraulics are heavy, noisy and prone to leakage, however, so instead Hong has used proprioceptive actuators, also referred to as quasidirect drive (QDD), in Artemis.

Essentially servo motors without the gears, QDDs enable force control and springy, muscle-like actuation.

Now with a newly confident, stable gait, humanoid robots are also becoming more capable at picking up and moving objects. This is thanks to advanced new hands, Hong says, as

well as machine-learning techniques.

“Traditional robot arms tried to pick things up without knowing their shape, size, weight and friction coefficient. It is very difficult,” he says. “Machine-learning technology is enabling robots to handle objects that you don’t know all the information [for].”

Total compliance

Firm believers in form following function, Agility is perhaps the leading company in the race for commercial success with its ‘human-centric’ Digit. Designed to perform useful tasks in spaces intended for humans, rather than simply looking like a person, it is already working at Amazon’s robotics R&D facility near Seattle.

While warehouses are structured environments, areas used by people might have uneven floors or unexpected features, which Digit is designed to handle. It can also switch task depending on demand, something that other forms of robot cannot do.

This has been made possible by a strong focus on biomechanics, says

co-founder and chief robot officer Jonathan Hurst. “I was a professor before I was at Agility,” he says. “My research was all about biomechanics, understanding how animals move – both legged locomotion and manipulation – and then translating that understanding into example machines that can recreate that.”

People, for example, are “totally compliant” in how they physically interact with the world, says Hurst. When you pick up something, for example, you use the constraints of your environment to manipulate the object. You can walk without knowing exactly where the ground is, he says, and your arms can swing freely while doing so.

That is “totally different” from most conventional robots, says Hurst, but increased understanding of biomechanics and actuator dynamics is enabling more natural movement.

Reinforcement learning

Standing at 1.75m and weighing less than 65kg, Digit has seven pairs of stereo cameras and a lidar sensor on its ‘neck’ to build a depth map of the ground and the objects it grasps. It can operate for two hours before autonomously docking and charging for half an hour, then heading back to work.

Unlike some other bipedal robots, which have legs that closely match human limbs, the Digit has bird-like legs with inverse ‘knees’ that could actually be thought of as ankles. Designed to optimise stability and agility, they also allow the Digit to approach a shelving unit and squat down without the legs getting in the way.

Built in a factory that could eventually produce more than 10,000 units each year, the alpha-level Digit uses the MPC approach to mobility. Agility is going further by introducing reinforcement learning, which uses trial and error to work out the optimal movement for the environment, enabling stable locomotion and manipulation and pushing the hardware to its limits.

The robot’s digital twin is constantly improving through data collection and iteration, says Hurst, with the software team taking the customer use case, building a workflow, compiling the necessary skills, then deploying to the physical robots “within a day or two”.

The human touch

Some other companies are taking a different approach to training. Vancouver firm Sanctuary, for example, uses remote control to train its ‘general purpose’ Phoenix humanoid robot.

“We believe that to create something that can carry out useful work it needs to fully understand each task,” says co-founder and CEO Geordie Rose. “Our human robot pilots first carry out actions on Phoenix via teleoperation. This allows us to collect a rich bank of high-quality, high-fidelity human behavioural data, which consists of all kinds of elements, including one element not all competitors are focused on – touch.”

Unlike the Digit’s paddle-like end effectors, the Phoenix’s are designed to “rival human hands in their dexterity and fine manipulation”, including 19 degrees of freedom

‘We believe that to create something that can carry out useful work it needs to fully understand each task. Our human robot pilots first carry out actions on Phoenix via teleoperation’

Above: Sanctuary CEO Geordie Rose with the Phoenix.

Below: The Digit robot from Agility

and proprietary haptic technology. Patented tactile sensor technology allows the Carbon AI control system to understand the interaction between visual and haptic data, showing it the difference between picking up something fragile, like a glass, and something more robust with a similar appearance. It can then amend its actions accordingly.

“Without a person doing this first through the robot, we wouldn’t be able to collect all the data needed for a robot to manipulate objects in a changeable environment,” says Rose.

Beyond human

Honed over millions of years and perfectly suited to our purpose-built environments, the human form has many advantages. In future, however, bot manufacturers might augment biologically-inspired features such as arms and legs with purely mechanical enhancements, such as wheels. This could maximise efficiency, allowing machines to use different types of locomotion depending on the environment and application.

Dimitrios Kanoulas, associate professor in the department of computer science at University College London, says that humanoid robot developers will also need to integrate more sensory inputs to improve object manipulation. “We

have all this amazing sensing input to drive actions, and the truth is that this is underused in robotics,” he says. “For such a complex robot, just the visual information or the audio information is not enough to make it go from boxes to any object in the world.”

Additions could include torque, tactile and pressure sensors. Developers could surpass human capabilities by introducing features that we cannot replicate, he adds, such as thermal-imaging cameras.

From shelf stacking to space exploration

For the companies rolling out their indefatigable androids, the economic arguments are clear. There are 9.5m job openings in the US, Sanctuary’s Rose points out, but only 6.5m unemployed workers. “An increasingly ageing population means that there simplywon’t be enough people to allow our current way of life to continue flourishing,” he adds.

At first, robots will mostlywork in warehouses and farms. The ageing population means humanoid home and healthcare assistants are also likely, while increasing capabilities will enable robots to work in places that humans cannot. They could be well-suited to search and rescue in hazardous environments, for example, or even space exploration.

As with drones, Kanoulas suggests their use will explode as they become cheaper and more reliable. This comparison raises the uncomfortable idea of military uses. In 2022, Boston Dynamics, Agility and several other organisations pledged that theywould not weaponise their robots. Hopefully other developers will do the same. Wherever humanoid robots do find work, widespread deployment will bring seismic change to society. An automated workforce will make talking points such as universal basic income the pressing issues of the day. Whatever the future looks like, one thing is certain – engineers are already shaping it.

Above: Humanoid robots need to integrate more sensory inputs, says Dimitrios Kanoulas. Below: Artemis in full stride

Game changers

How engineers are reinventing sport by developing shoes, clothing and equipment that help athletes to achieve their very best

By Chris Stokel-Walker

Every four years, the world’s greatest athletes get together and demonstrate the best of human achievement. Nearly 15,000 athletes from around the world representing more than 200 national Olympic committees will gather this summer in Paris for the Olympics and Paralympic games. More than half the world’s population – upwards of five billion people – will watch on television, while hundreds of thousands will throng the French capital.

All will be focusing on the joy and despair etched on the athletes’ faces. They’ll see, in ultra-high definition, the blood, sweat and tears that combine to create Olympic dreams. They’ll marvel at sinews straining for every one-thousandth of a second –the difference between eternal glory and being lost to history.

But, behind the scenes, and away from the cameras, the peak of human performance is helped to reach a higher point by teams of mechanical engineers working to develop new shoes, clothing and equipment that helps eke out that extra millisecond’s gap between gold and going home. It’s often simply a case of engineering.

“Sport and technology have been intertwined for a long time,” says Thomas Allen, reader in mechanical engineering at Manchester Metropolitan University. From vulcanised rubber enabling racket sports to thrive to the adaptation of bicycles to become mountain bikes, giving birth to an entirely new sport, and recent advances in running shoe and swimsuit designs that have helped records tumble, engineering has played a role. The difference between first and fourth

Right: Engineers and athletes work together to reach peak performance at the Olympics and Paralympics

place is a fraction of a per cent, says Olga Kravchenko, head of design at Rheon Labs, an engineering company developing materials for sportswear.

And, when the world’s attention is focused on a single moment as it is with the Olympics and Paralympics, so the game changers helping to reinvent sport find themselves in the spotlight.

The big reveal

The four-year cycle that athletes put themselves through is often replicated with the engineers helping to harness their athletic prowess through the kit they use, says Allen – with hard work culminating in a grand Olympics cycle reveal by the companies behind it.

“The technology is released around that time, because what they don’t want anyone to do is showcase that technology in advance, or have someone else copy it,” he explains.

Take, for instance, the LZR Racer line of swimsuits developed by Speedo and Italian company Mectex and released in advance of the 2008 summer Olympics. The elastanenylon and polyurethane material used within the suit, which reduced skin friction drag by a quarter compared to previous generations of swimsuits, proved integral to athletes’ success at that games. In all, 98% of medals won in the swimming pool at that Olympiad, and 23 out of the 25 world records broken in the pool that games, were done by athletes wearing the LZR Racer suit.

Boost to efficiency

Nike’s Vaporfly running shoes, which feature a carbon-fibre plate and are bolstered by an energy-returning foam that improves running efficiency by a minimum of 4%, were equally transformative when released in 2016, just before the Olympic games that year. “Some people might think these so-called super shoes will automatically increase your performance by 4%,” says Allen. “That’s not necessarily true; different people will react in different ways.”

For that reason, a link between engineering and athletes is crucial – which is why most of the focus is devoted to billboard events such as the Olympics.

But, just because the end result is shown off once every four years, it doesn’t mean that engineers aren’t regularly working to improve athletes’ performance every day of the year.

“The mindset where we are today is very much how you make more of your own body,” says Kravchenko of Rheon Labs, which has developed an energyabsorbing super polymer that is used in sports company Adidas’s Techfit Control apparel range. Kravchenko is also a teaching fellow at the Dyson

‘Some people might think these so-called super shoes will automatically increase your performance by 4%... different people will react in different ways’

School of Design Engineering at Imperial College London. And companies such as Rheon Labs and countless others are working with athletes and para-athletes to try to help make the most of their bodies.

Rheon’s proprietary super polymer works by reacting differently depending on how hard and how quickly it’s stretched. “They’ll respond depending on the intensity of the activity you do,” says Kravchenko. The polymer remains supple and flexible by default, but tenses and tightens

when subjected to force. It’s designed to counteract the wasted energy that you can see while watching sprinters in slow motion as their muscles wobble as they contract and relax. “That is pure wasted energy,” says Kravchenko. “And, if you learn how to control it and contain it, then you can basically make the athletes make more out of their own body.”

The process of developing Rheon’s polymer took plenty of in-depth analysis of where unnecessary muscle motion occurs, alongside computer-

Left: LZR Racer swimsuits have proved to be medal winners. Right: Össur produces equipment to help Paralympians boost their performance

based, algorithm-driven designs, and testing on 20 different designs. “What I like about these kind of approaches is that you create a process where the design problem and the body generate their own solution,” says Kravchenko. “You have the data from the body feeding back into the design and cogenerating a solution.”

But it’s far from the only company in the space. Reykjavik-based orthopaedics company Össur works with the world’s leading Paralympians to help allow them to compete at the highest levels, wearing prosthetics – including running blades – that can match or exceed able-bodied human performance. At the 2020 Tokyo Paralympic Games, athletes wearing Össur’s prosthetics won 28 medals while setting new world and Paralympic records in competitions

across track and field. Had Össurwearing athletes been a single country, the company would have come 13th among the 162 participating nations at the games.

Tailor-made engineering

“It’s that link between engineering and the athlete which is crucial,” says Allen. And it’s that interaction between athlete and engineer that has become stronger as the field has advanced. In the early days of sports engineering, a mechanical engineer might take a tennis racket or pair of running shoes, put them in a lab full of mechanical test machines and put the equipment through its paces, finding better alternatives.

“As the field has progressed, we’ve gone beyond that,” says Allen. Now much more attention is paid to how

At the 2020 Tokyo Paralympic Games, athletes wearing Össur’s prosthetics won 28 medals while setting new world and Paralympic records in competitions across track and field.

98% of medals won in the swimming pool at the 2008 Olympics, and 23 out of the 25 world records broken in the pool that games, were done by athletes wearing the LZR Racer suit.

the equipment or clothing interacts with the athlete. “That’s the direction that the field is going: optimising for an athlete,” Allen explains. Of course, that comes with its own problems. “Every athlete is different, and they’ll have their equipment optimised for them.” Not everyone can afford that, meaning the gap between the top of the field and the pack is likely to widen.

Individuals vary

While recognising that, the engineers developing these performancebolstering technologies that can capitalise on an athlete’s natural abilities acknowledge that the personal connection is important – not least because the intricate differences between all of us that make us human can make or break engineering solutions designed to eke out extra performance. “It always comes from a relationship,” says Christophe Lecomte, vice-president of biomechanical solutions at Össur.

“There are a lot of things you might see on the computer screen or in simulation. You can speculate. And then you give it to someone, and it’s fantastic – or it’s really bad.

“I don’t want to diminish it,” says Lecomte, describing the engineering process that he and his colleagues at the company go through when designing running blades or other prosthetics. “We do calculations, we do stress testing, we do drawings, and all kinds of stuff,” he says. “But you manufacture a part that is functional for a human body. And there’s measurements for that, but there’s no school for it.”

“You can buy the blades off-theshelf,” continues Lecomte’s colleague, Aron Kristbjörn Albertsson. But it’s through repeated testing and real-world use that Össur can tweak and adapt the technology to the specifications of each athlete.

Because of the imminent Olympic and Paralympic cycle of events, Albertsson and his colleagues at Össur

Right: Rheon apparel supports muscles in highintensity movements. Far right: Nike’s Vaporfly running shoes

‘There are a lot of things you might see on the computer screen or in simulation. You can speculate. And then you give it to someone, and it’s fantastic – or it’s really bad’

are busier than normal. “Everyone is getting ready for the games,” he says. “They’re all dialling in their stuff, so they are in more contact with us now than they normally are.” A week before we spoke, Albertsson and Lecomte travelled to Sweden to support a Paralympic athlete in fine-tuning their equipment over the course of a week in advance of the international competition.

Feedback from athletes

That part of the job is a world away from what’s taught in engineering schools and on degree programmes in the field, admits Albertsson. “You listen to the people and what they’re saying, and take that and interpret

into technical things,” he says. “Often in school, you have the formulas, and you use the formulas. But it’s also about the personal interaction.”

Albertsson and others have to try to decipher feedback from athletes such as “It’s not pushing me at the right time” and understand what in the equipment needs to be changed – while also ensuring that a small tweak won’t unveil other problems. “You have to have a hard shell when you’re doing these things, because you’re always realising that what you thought isn’t exactly right.”

However, it’s not just at the elite level that these changes are felt –or that the engineers working in the space of athletics apparel and

equipment focus their time and attention. Not only do the innovations made for Olympic-level athletes end up trickling down to commercially available equipment and clothing, but large parts of their work are devoted to improving performance and comfort for amateur athletes and everyday people. The global sporting goods market is a £300bn industry, according to one estimate.

Through her work, Kravchenko aims to encourage more participants into sport by removing barriers, including developing more comfortable sports bras and generally improving the comfort of sporting apparel. And every positive portrayal of an athlete with a disability performing at the highest level at the Paralympics helps encourage others with disabilities to become active. Three in four disabled people would like to become more active, according to the Activity Alliance, but only one in five had taken part in an organised activity session in the previous 12 months.

Helping more people get into sport serves a number of purposes, says Kravchenko. One of them is improving health by making it easier for more people to feel comfortable in picking up physical activity as a regular thing – and allowing them to make lifestyle changes along the way.

“A lot of it is how we make sports more inclusive,” says Kravchenko.

Another key consideration that engineers have to make when developing their designs is that it’s not just about performance at all costs. “I understand that they’re trying to break records, but at the same time they have a responsibility towards sustainability,” says Allen.

Sustainability counts

Sporting bodies are also recognising the importance of sustainability and that it cannot be damaged by high performance. For instance, UK Sport’s environmental sustainability strategy is for high-performance sport to have a net positive environmental impact by 2040.

But, alongside sustainability, equality and equity, there’s a core goal: help athletes unlock their best performance, every time through precision mechanical engineering. And there’s still plenty to do when it comes to that. Professional Engineering asked each interviewee whether they thought we’d reached the ceiling of what engineering could do for athletes – or if we were close to it.

“No,” says Össur’s Lecomte, “totally not. Absolutely not. There are plenty of things to do, and plenty of ideas – and plenty of things we need to improve, that’s for sure.”

Maintaining momentum

rom athletics to tennis, engineers are helping to propel athletes to new highs. But how can engineering stay at the top of its game?

A recent report by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers made these recommendations:

Increased investment in facilities for research related to mechanical testing of sporting goods and testing technology in sporting scenarios.

More funding for schemes to transfer technologies developed for elite sport into the community for wider societal benefit.

Encouragement of sports technology providers by governing bodies to embrace independently audited ecolabels that will help transition to more sustainable materials and manufacturing.

Encouragement of open access, standardised data as the norm in the field of sports engineering.

01 02 03 04 05

A UK sports engineering network to support transdisciplinary collaborations needs to be established.

The report concluded: “Support and investment in collaborative research are required to ensure that the UK remains world-class in sports engineering.”

The biohybrid robotic jellyfish

These engineered cyborgs could explore the oceans, venturing to depths that humans cannot reach

Despite our technological prowess, humans are extremely limited in where we can go on more than 70% of the Earth. At sea, our reliance on oxygen means we can only dive a few hundred metres. Submarines allow us to go lower, but the crushing pressures of the deep ocean cause major engineering challenges, high costs and risk, as demonstrated by the Titan disaster in 2023.

Jellyfish, on the other hand, are more than capable of plumbing the deepest depths. With simple bodies made of 95% water, they can even swim in the Mariana Trench 11km below the surface, where the pressure is more than 1,000 times heavier than the atmosphere.

They are ideal candidates, therefore, to explore the parts of the ocean where humans cannot go – and they could get even better, thanks to a project adding artificial enhancements to the biological creatures at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

Cyborg sea creatures

Starting as a project to make swimming robots for underwater data collection, the research in John Dabiri’s lab turned to developing ‘biohybrid robotic jellyfish’ owing to the engineering challenges of withstanding high pressure.

The team implanted moon jellies with an electronic pacemaker that controls the speed at which they swim. A jellyfish swimming three times faster than it normally does uses only twice as much energy.

Recent work added a hat-like attachment called a ‘forebody,’ designed to make the cyborg creatures more streamlined while also providing a place for sensors and other electronics.

After a lot of prototyping, three forebodies were 3D printed out of PLA (polylactic acid) and waterproofed using a two-part epoxy resin. Tests showed that a jellyfish equipped with the pacemaker and forebody could swim up to four-and-a-half times faster than an all-natural jelly carrying a payload.

At the moment, the biohybrid creations can only swim in a straight line, but lead research author Simon Anuszczyk hopes they might be steerable in future using ‘asymmetrical stimulation’ – only stimulating one side of the body, or both sides with a slight time delay.

“We’ve seen this in the lab here, but carefully matching the centre of

buoyancy and the centre of gravity such that the animal is able to rotate reliably in any orientation is an engineering challenge for us now,” he says.

Evolutionary advantage

OTHER WEIRD THINGS

WE LEARNED WHILE MAKING THIS ISSUE:

Termite-inspired 'skyscrapers'couldbe firstlunarhomes(p9)

Teslaisbuildinga humanoidrobot(p53)

98%ofswimming medalistsatthe2008 Olympicshadthe samesuit(p60)

The goal of the research is to use the cyborg jellyfish as data gatherers, sending them into the oceans to collect information about temperature, salinity and oxygen levels. The total cost is just $20 per animal. Such unusual work brings considerations that are outside the remit of most engineering projects. The animals do not have brains or the ability to sense pain, but the team has nonetheless worked with bioethicists to ensure that the work is ethically principled. Feeding time is another challenge, says Anuszczyk, although the creatures’ stingers are not strong enough to pierce human skin.

He adds: “It’s superexciting thatwe’re able to take advantage of 500 million years of jellyfish evolution.The evolution of animals has created some reallycool engineering systems that are able to outperform ourown systems.”

Above: Moon jellyfish has a pacemaker and a 3D-printed forebody attached to it

Right: John Dabiri

Below right: Simon Anuszczyk

Professional Engineering Issue 1 2024

Contents

We want to celebrate your achievements’

IMPACT

The forces shaping engineering

THE ROCKET THAT EATS ITSELF

Infinite staging

Controlled ascent

Burning issue

FIVE FOR THE FUTURE

WHERE’S YOUR HEAD AT?

AI DISCOVERY

STEP CHANGE

INSECT INSPIRATION

AFTER SUN

‘DRIVING PROGRESS:HIGHLIGHTS FROM ADVANCED ENGINEERING 2023 AND WHAT’S NEXT IN 2024’

HOW THE UK AUTOMOTIVE SECTOR CAN SURVIVE THE NET-ZERO TRANSITION

FURTHER READING

DESTINATION THE MOON

Connecting engineers, recognising success

ENGINEERS INTHE SPOTLIGHT

Sustainability agenda

NOMINATE

DATES ANNOUNCED FOR ADVANCED ENGINEERING 2024

SECURING THE FUTURE OF OUR BIRDCAGE WALK HEADQUARTERS

ENGINEERS 2030: HAVE YOUR SAY

NEWS IN BRIEF

CELEBRATING OUR FIRST WOMAN MEMBER

TMMX AWARDS OPEN FOR ENTRIES

GETTING DIVERSITY ON TRACK

How do you expect Formula Student to change over the next five to 10 years?

FIND OUT MORE

YOUR VOICE

Abandon those outdated gender stereotypes

STAR LETTER

Spellbound by steam

Plan now for a warmer world

Body of evidence

THE REPCO BRABHAM BT19

FURTHER READING

Sharing knowledge and experience

HELPING HANDS EXPERTISE

Free resources and guidance are available

WANT TO TAKE PART?

POWERING DOWN

Gaps in knowledge

Design deficiencies

SIMULATING SUCCESS

Exciting advances

In-house software

LEARN MORE

COOL IT!

Nathan reports on how automotive engineers are adapting cooling systems for the electric age

Optimise use of energy

Predictive modelling

FURTHER INFORMATION

HOW TO MANAGE YOUR ENERGY AND NOT YOUR TIME

Understand your energy rhythms

Learn to sleep better

Manage your mental energy

Regulate your emotions

FURTHER READING

Shooting for the Moon

Decarbonising Aviation

Questionmarks over batteries

Potential of hydrogen

Storage challenge

Developing aircraft concepts

Combustion method

EasyJet maps the future for fuels

Modernisation needed

Stepping out of the shadows

Hyperdynamic movement

Total compliance

The human touch

Beyond human

From shelf stacking to space exploration

Game changers

Boost to efficiency

Tailor-made engineering