MechEngNews // Issue 9 // March 2016 by SheffMechEng

ISSUE 9: March 2016

MechEngNews MechEngNews

Contents.

Hello!

Can a 10 year old pull a 10 tonne truck?

We’ve got a party to plan!

Profile Dr Nikos Dervilis

Water, water everywhere Student research

Power to the people Matthew Cartmell

Where are they now Adam Lorimer

Mech thinks global Global Engineering Challenge

We’ve got a party to plan 100 years of Mech

Building a greener future Ben Hughes

Research focus Small scale irrigation

Summer school Student brings home prize

Winds of change Zayed Future Energy prize

Read all about it!

The Final Word.

Next year we’ll be celebrating a big birthday in the Department and we’re looking for volunteers to help in planning and organising events for our Centenary year. If you’d like to help, please contact me-centenary@sheffield.ac.uk. This issue focusses on green solutions to world problems. We talk to Dr Nikos Dervilis, our newest lecturer, about his work in offshore wind engery, PhD student Joseph Butterfield tells us about his research into accoustic sensors to detect leaks on pipes, Professor Matthew Cartmell shares an insight to his KTP with Ferranti Technologies Ltd looking at harvesting human motion to create useable and regenerative power. We also get an update from the team of student engineers who travelled to Malawi last summer after they teamed up with Mzuzu University on a project looking at small scale irrigation. We hope you enjoy the read!

Kat Kat Buck

Editor k.buck@sheffield.ac.uk

MechEngNewsThis publication is produced using 100% recycled FSC certified paper

Can a 10 year old pull a 10 tonne truck? Our engineers like a good challenge, so when Iffigenia Antoniadou our Departmental lead on Outreach was contacted by Screenhouse Productions, the team behind the BBC Bitesize series, with the question ‘Can a 10 year old pull a 10 tonne truck?’, our first thought was mini Iron Man suits and genetic modification, but then we got serious and set to work finding a pulley system that would allow just that. Normally truck pulls are left to the big guns one of the most famous events at strong-man competitions is the truck pull, where one man will attempt to pull the truck on his own. Competing against our 10 year olds was Britain’s biggest gun (and strongest man) Eddie Hall. Dr Matt Marshall, from the Leonardo Centre in Tribology, worked together with Olivia Manfredi, a student from the Intgrated Tribology CDT, to calculate the force needed to pull the truck and source an appropriate pulley system, which they would later restring with abseiling chord to allow a 10 metre pull. Matt and Olivia calculated that a force of 60 100kgf would be needed to pull the truck. they cross referenced this with a car and the force came out at 20kgf - which fits ergonomic data of the average person being able to push a weight of 25kgf. While they were at it they found that for a 10 year old, the push force is approx. 10 - 12 kgf, so with the two chosen pulleys (advantage 8:1 and 6:1), the force they needed to generate was in the range of 7.5 - 12.5kgf. This meant, when you consider a bit of slip and gripping of the rope, it should be achievable for 3-4 children with a little effort.

Top L-R: iT-CDT student Olivia Manfredi, presenter Steve Mould, Britain’s strongest man Eddie Hall and the 6 children who managed to puill the truck.

On the day of filming, Eddie pulled the truck with cheers from the students. Eddie can pull a maximum of 300kg but when the kids had a go, no chance, they were only pulling 30kg between them which meant they needed much more power. They went to see Olivia who was lifting a massive bag of bricks without breaking a sweat. No, Olivia isn’t Super Woman, she was using a crane with pulleys and went on to demonstrate to the children how, with 5 ropes, it’s 5 times easier to lift the bricks. Olivia explains, ‘It’s just like having a friend to help - if two of us are lifting, the weight is shared between us, we each lift half.’ After a bit of experimentation and adaptation, the pulley system was ready and the kids headed back outside to give it another go. This time, success! 6 students managed to pull the truck with no effort at all! Next time I break down on the motorway, forget the RAC, I’m calling these guys for a tow!

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Profile: Dr Nikos Dervilis

What made you want to become a mechanical engineer?

Oh, long story short; money. I am kidding. To be honest, my first degree is in theoretical physics, but for me, mechanical engineers, apply maths and physics laws from a fundamental basis to more complex ones in order to create and build an everyday engineering reality. Also, for me it is important to be able to imagine and visualise what you learn. Mechanical engineers play a key role in the development of a new era of technology, technology which often nowadays has to operate in difficult and harsh environments and on a range of scales: from understanding the bio mechanisms of medical implants to large-scale projects like offshore wind farms and space stations. I hope Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory will forgive me.

Where did you train?

I can say that I have had an interdisciplinary learning journey. From studying physics in the National University of Athens, to enter 4

the paths of Electronics and Electrical Engineering via an MSc in the University of Edinburgh, and to expand my horizons via a PhD in Mechanical Engineering in the leading Dynamics Research Group in the world in the University of Sheffield which involved/ involves continuous research visits to Los Alamos National Laboratory in USA.

What are your research interests?

One of my main areas of interest is how to bring new ground to structural health monitoring (think of it as a clever and advanced way of health abnormality diagnosis in an online manner, but not in humans, in structures). One of the greatest challenges Europe and the western world will face is a reliable and efficient sustainable and renewable energy future. I am looking how to bring to the surface the structural challenges of the new generation of sustainable power plants, with a big interest in offshore wind energy. I am working a lot with advanced nonlinear dynamics and artificial intelligence (machine learning)

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algorithms that can shed light on the challenges of lighter, greener aerospace structures, new materials and large civil infrastructure.

What are you working on at the moment?

If I tell you then I have to kill you. A lot of different things that are blended into a nice mix. I like to be multifunctional, so, I am working from wind energy intelligent monitoring campaigns to pattern recognition data information tools and nonlinear dynamics to robust statistical methods for Structural Health Monitoring and nondestructive evaluation methods, like guided waves.

If there was one Mech Eng problem you could solve, what would it be? I think for me the engineering question/ answer is smart, efficient and ergonomic sustainable energy systems. And I am basically referring to offshore wind and nuclear energy.

What words of advice would you give to your student-self about the future?

Life is too short to be grumpy. Life is long enough to be creative both in your personal life and career. Age for me is just a cryptic measurement of how much you’re learning and how much you are questioning the status-quo. Never stop doing either of them. It’s important and vital to listen to “conventional wisdom-advice” that people give you, but always you have to formulate your own opinion, celebrate your memories and differences. And always be a team member because, as they say in Greece, one swallow does not bring the spring, neither one bee the honey.

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Mechanical engineers play a key role in the development of a new era of technology.

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Water, water Everywhere Approximately 20% of treated water is lost through leaks in water distribution networks. This represents a high loss in revenue and negative impacts on the environment where energy is used to pump and treat water. Many methods exist to identify the location of leaks in water distribution mains, including acoustic emission, visual inspection, dynamic pressure measurements and ground penetrating radar. Whilst all these methods are promising and have their place in leakage management, there is currently no effective method to identify the location of leaks on plastic pipe, largely due to the attenuation of certain frequency bands along the pipe wall. Leaks are commonly found by deploying two sensors at some distance away from the leak. The leaks produce a vibration signal which is then recorded by the sensors and the leak’s location can be approximated. Studies have shown that, if the leak’s flow rate is known, 80% of water can be saved by fixing only 35% of the leaks, resulting in massive cost savings. Although there have been a small number of attempts at doing this, none have so far been successful.

Joseph Butterfield is a Sheffield Mechanical Engineering student who is working towards his EngD under the STREAM IDC, sponsored by Northumbrian, Scottish, Severn Trent and Thames Water Companies Leak detection through acoustic means is currently the dominant method of leak detection. Initially, an area is identified for further investigation due to an abnormal rise in water use going through a flow meter into a district metered area (DMA). In its simplest form, a leak produces a noise which travels along the pipe wall to two accelerometers or hydrophones. Signal analysis, including the cross correlation function determines the presence of a leak and the arrival time of the leak signal to both sensors determines its location. Joseph’s research focusses on developing a method whereby the leak’s flow rate is quantified by incorporating more sophisticated signal processing techniques with existing leak detection technology.

STREAM is the Industrial Doctoral Centre (IDC) for the Water Sector funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and companies who sponsor its research projects.

Accou stic s e nso r

Vi br atio n Accoustic sen sor

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power to the people in a ktp with ferranti technologies ltd, professor matthew cartmell's research focuses on using a small mechanical device in a back pack to harvest human motions into useable and regenerative power. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve all run up stairs before, only to forget what we went up there for and by the time weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve got back down again we usually remember what it was. Frustrating. Imagine if all that energy wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t wasted, but instead could charge our mobile phones or other devices?

in other words, horizontally and vertically. However, it cannot respond to motion in the third (out-of-plane) dimension or to rotations about the in-plane axes.

Well, Professor Matthew Cartmell has been working on a project to do just that, and more!

Another option is to use a conical pendulum. The universal joint at the pivot allows the pendulum to move in any direction within a cone. The biggest advantage is that it can respond to pivot motions in three dimensions and to rotations about all three axes, therefore allowing it to pick up any kind of motion.

Previous work by Matthew has shown that a pendulum can be configured to do useful work against a mechanical load. The obvious next step was to convert the mechanical load concept into an electro-mechanical power take-off and use the pendulum as a means of responding to harvestable mechanical motions that may be present at the pivot. The simplest example of this is a planar pendulum, which has a horizontal oscillating pivot motion, this being the motion to be harvested. The oscillating response of the pendulum to this motion could, in principle drive a small motor-generator. An AC voltage would be generated proportional to the motion of the pendulum and then conditioned so that it could be used to charge a battery.

This offers a straightforward but limited capability for harvesting bi-directional motion.

By adding this 1 kg conical pendulum system to a standard backpack, the wearer could generate up to 20W of power, which could either be used or stored, and all just by carrying out their daily activities. It is envisaged that this product could be used in a military setting to power radios and other important tools, as well as in the civil market to recharge mobile phones and other devices.

Pendulum response could be optimised by using the appropriate length, mass and damping value for the motion to be harvested. The planar pendulum can respond to pivot motions which are undirectional or bidirectional within the plane of the pendulum,

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Where are they now? Adam Lorimer graduated in 2002 after studying his MEng Mechanical Engineering degree with us. After a stint at uC Berkeley, Adam stayed in California to set up his own business, Alphabet Energy.

After graduating from Sheffield, Adam took a job with BP in their graduate development programme where he was quickly drawn into upstream major projects, designing and building offshore oil rigs as part of multimilliondollar projects. Adam’s roles involved project management and engineering of mechanical equipment packages. His career has taken him all over the world; after a couple of years working in the UK Adam made the move to Azerbaijan and then later to Norway before he realised that getting oil out of the ground wasn’t his true calling in life. “I was, and remain, an environmentalist and I am deeply concerned about climate change. At the time California seemed to be where clean-tech

was happening and I thought what I’d learnt at Sheffield and at BP could be useful in making promising new energy technologies real.” he tells us. Wanting a legitimate reason to pack up his family and move them around the world again, Adam applied for a place on the MBA program at UC Berkeley. “ I was lucky enough to be accepted and gained an excuse to loiter around a university for a couple of years and see what interesting research was going on and if I could help take it to market,” says Adam. Towards the end of his first year at Berkeley, Adam and his co-founder set up Alphabet Energy. “We spun a thermoelectric technology from the labs to generate electricity from waste heat generated by vehicles and industrial processes. 7 years on we’ve raised over $40 million in venture

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capital, grown the team to over 40 employees, and achieved a long list of firsts in the field of thermoelectric power generation,” Adam says. For most of the company’s history Adam was VP for Engineering, leading engineering, product development and project execution. “Recently I broadened my role functionally while specialising by market and now run the automotive side of our business more holistically, wrapping in sales, marketing and product management, while still directing the engineering and product development,” he says. “My work is very varied and I like it that way. It seems to be roughly equal parts, planning and strategising, sales and talking to customers, developing and refining technical ideas and managing the execution of projects. The common theme is solving problems with other people, be they engineering problems or business ones and I think I got a thorough grounding in solving problems in groups studying Mechanical Engineering at Sheffield.”

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Get passionate about a problem you want to solve in the world, then keep an open mind about the tools you need to master to make a difference, be they engineering, business, activism, politics, whatever it takes.

”

There have been many memorable moments in Adam’s career so far and he anticipates more to come. “Moments that stick in my memory include the time when, early in Alphabet’s history, we pulled the whole company together to achieve a technology milestone which triggered a tranche of investment. It was several months of intense work and we finally made it at 3am the night before the critical board of directors meeting. And then there was installing and starting up the

world’s largest ever thermoelectric generator; seeing the thing that started as a vague seed of an idea in our minds, that we spent years refining and iterating on, through all the trials, tribulations and near disasters, standing there in front of us and doing what it was supposed to do.”

“I have high hopes for Alphabet Energy, one day Thermoelectric generators in car exhaust pipes will be as ubiquitous as electric windows and every generator, factory, ship, plane, train and automobile will be utilizing their waste heat to improve their energy efficiency. Waste heat recovery isn’t a silver bullet, but it is a great way to improve the efficiency of the most energy intensive things we do and it is a, so far, underutilized aspect of the technological and cultural changes we need to make to ensure we, as a species, can continue enjoying a quality of life on this planet.” Looking back over his career and education, Adam observed that his way of thinking has changed, “I used to compartmentalise things, science problems needed science answers, a big company’s problems needed big company solutions. But the truth is you often can’t solve a problem with the set of tools, the strategies and the mindset that created it in the first place. “I guess the real advice would be to get passionate about a problem you want to solve in the world, then keep an open mind about the tools you need to master to make a difference, be they engineering, business, activism, politics, whatever it takes.”

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Global Engineering Challenge What challenges will you face as a professional engineer? How will your decisions impact on the people around you and throughout the world? How will you promote and defend your projects? These are all things our students found out in our week long Global Engineering Challenge. In GEC all first year students in the Engineering Faculty tackle real-world problems from a global perspective. They’ll be challenged to think about the technical issues in engineering developments, as well as the social, ethical and environmental implications of their decisions. It’s the kind of thinking that will equip them for a career with impact – shaping and improving the world we live in. Working in teams, they find solutions to real-life engineering problems faced by developing communities and at the end of the challenge they present their ideas, showing they’ve considered the social, environmental and economic impacts. Students could find themselves researching alternative fuel sources for a small community in India, or designing new water and sanitation systems.

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MechEng alum Jenny Penn commented, “I took part in GEC in my first year at Sheffield and it was a good opportunity to mix with students from other departments and work in multidisciplinary teams something you find yourself doing all the time in the world of work! It is something you can talk about when applying for jobs and you can use the skills you learnt to answer ‘competency-based’ questions.” Another volunteer, Henry Brunskill said, “The day was a fantastic opportunity for students to engage with engineering professionals and really pick their brains about what it’s like to work in an industrial environment. They had a whole host of questions for us alumni and our interaction helped them move away from the more conceptual environment at university to the more tangible real problem solving challenges faced by industry. The multi-disciplinary team structure is highly representative of what the students will experience in any graduate job role and thus is great experience for them. Employers will like to see evidence of this on CV’s.”

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One hundred years of Mech Next year the Department of Mechanical Engineering will be celebrating a big birthday. We will be turning 100 years old and invite you all to join us in remembering the past century. On 15th December 1916, it was decided that the Faculty of Applied Science would split into two faculties; the Faculty of Metallurgy and the Faculty of Engineering. On 21st June 1917, the Department of Mechanical Engineering was born at the first meeting of the Faculty. We have seen a lot of change over those hundred years, from new people to new buildings, new technology and new ideas. When the Department opened we had a mere 6 academic staff, all men, now, almost 100 years later, we have over 60 academics, with the first woman (Dr Rachel Tomlinson) joining us in 1998. Our first Professor was Walter Greenwood and the first head of Department was William Ripper (of Ripper lab fame). It has been a century of growth which has led

to an extension to the original Mappin building in 1955, moves out to new buildings at Garden Street, the Arts Tower and even all the way out to Beighton, state of the art labs in Pam Liversidge and of course, our latest asset, the Diamond. The Department has shown itself to be adaptable to industrial needs, particularly during the first and second World Wars. In the First World War we trained 1000 men to make shells and later produced aircraft and gun components and trained hundreds of munitions workers, many of them women, in the Second World War. There are a lot of memories in these walls and we are looking to you, our staff, students and alumni, to share your best memories of Mechanical Engineering at Sheffield. If youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d like to tell your story, or share photos, please contact us at me-centenary@sheffield.ac.uk

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Building a greener future Dr Ben Hughes and Dr John Calautit in the Energy group have teamed up with a group of experts from around the world to launch a new journal dedicated to sustainable buildings. Having noticed that there were very few journals related to building energy, and that most of them were aimed at architects in Australia rather than to engineers, Dr Ben Hughes and Dr John Calautit decided to take matters into their own hands.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;This is a great opportunity for both John and I, and the others involved, to publish our own research, collaborate more internationally and develop contacts through the editorial board.â&#x20AC;? says Ben.

The pair teamed up with experts from around the world to create a journal that would develop an inter-disciplinary platform for the dissemination of knowledge and practice on the engineering and technical issues concerning all aspects of building design, technology, energy and environmental performance. The result is an eminently useful publication for researchers, academics, students and industry professionals.

The first issue, which will be out in March, will focus on sustainability in hot and arid climates and the team are open to paper submissions on the subject.

The primary focus of the journal is to advance knowledge on the forum of the global sustainability practices and to stimulate the exploration and innovations aimed at creating a climate resilient built environment that reduces energy consumption and environmental deterioration and creates high quality indoor spaces, taking into account all aspects of indoor environmental quality.

All relevant papers are carefully considered, vetted by a distinguished team of international experts, and rapidly published. Full research papers, short communications, professional profiles, case studies and comprehensive review articles can be submitted online via the journalâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s submission and peer review site (http://www. editorialmanager.com/sbuild/default.aspx). For more information visit

www.sustainable-buildings-journal.org/

The journal will be a key resource for engineers, architects, physicists, urban designers and researchers working to meet the challenges of sustainable buildings.

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Research focus: Small scale irrigation In August last year, two mechanical engineering students travelled to Nkhata Bay in Malawi to spend the summer working on a pedal powered irrigation sytem where they were asked to collaborate on a research project with Mzuzu Univeristy. We find out the results of that research. Mechancial Engineering students Sam Stedman and Andrew Merson are both members of Engineers Without Borders who, thanks to alumni donations, the Douglas Bomford Trust and Departmental funding, had the chance to travel to Malawi last year to carry out their research. The pair had been working on a pedal powered irrigation pump which they demonstrated to interested academics and technicians at the University of Mzuzu. The aim was to start a partnership with the Centre for Excellence in Water and Sanitation with future development of their pump in mind. The workshop raised some important issues and criticisms which provided them with some good ideas for improving their design and approach. After the workshop, they were invited to collaborate with the Department on a further research project. The team began their design test work after being introduced to Mr Msiska, head of the Nkhata Bay District Agricultural Office, an arm of the Government that advises low-income farmers with the aim of providing food security and raising standards of living. Mr Msiska proposed a pair of irrigation sites near Chandero village. The two sites are shared with around 30 families and have been used as a test bed for previous government farming trials. They agreed to leave the pump with them for a few days before returning to receive feedback. One of the main points was that the farmers were disappointed with the low flow rate compared to the physical effort they were putting in.

Having recorded an output of 20l/minute during testing, Sam and Andrew were surprised to hear that the farmers were disappointed with the flow rate. However, they found that the cross-sectional area of the pipe was actually restricting the flow and by changing some of the pipe connections to ensure the flow was not travelling through any cross sections smaller than 3/4” and changing the outlet pipe to 1” internal diameter they were able to increase the flow rate by almost 20%. When the pump broke during testing one of the farmers took a piece of rubber chord from the rack on his bike and tied it around the pump to hold it in position. Rubber chord is used by everyone to tie cargo to their bikes so Sam and Andrew decided to use it as a key part of their redesign, along with offcuts of timber, making the new design much simpler and intuitive to locals for ease of manufacture and repair. “Getting this feedback from the villagers taught us never to make judgements based solely on an engineering principal - think logically and test your idea before adopting it or discarding another,” says Andrew, “and make sure you design with local skills and knowledge in mind. By observing how the farmers used our pump we were quickly able to see where the unnecessary complications were.” After the field testing and improvements were complete, the team began interviewing farmers using a closed-answer survey in order to compare the new data to previous research in the area. In total 120 farmers at 9 irrigation schemes within the district and 2 senior government coordinators were interviewed.

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Research funding received H2020 £244,004

Government £442,032

Industry £594,290

Innovate UK £346,868 EPSRC £921,888

£2,452,156 our top 5 research grants this quarter: Prof. Keith Worden, Dr Ifigenia Antoniadou, Dr Lizzy Cross - autonomous inspection in manufacturing and remanufacturing - £921, 888 from EPSRC. Prof. Mohamed Pourkashanian - process design and optimisation of new solvents - £442,032 from Department of Energy & Climate Change. Dr Simon Blakey, Dr Eshan Alborzi - optimisation of an on-board adsorbent/catalyst unit for aviation fuel thermal stability improvement - £244,004 from Horizon 2020. Prof. Matthew Cartmell, Professor Elena Rodriguez Falcon, Dr Charles Lord - KTP with Ferranti Technologies (pg 7) - £206,745 from Innovate UK. Dr Kamran Mumtaz - a methodology for efficient development of high performance bespoke alloys for Additive Manufacturing - £140,123 from Innovate UK.

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Summer school Mechanical Engineering student Yun-Hang Cho spent his winter summering in Hong Kong after his seasons were turned topsyturvy on his study abroad in Australia this summer...winter... it's all upside down. A number of scholarships, funded by alumni donations, are available to UK students who need additional funding to help them afford to attend a summer school abroad. Our student Yun-Hang Cho was one of the lucky ones this year and after completing his exchange in UNSW in Australia his academic calendar meant that November was actually summer time so he jetted off to Hong Kong to complete a diploma in Intellectual Property Law at the Institute of European Studies of Macau.

“The stuff taught to me on this course by the great teachers (who are European patent judges and esteemed professors in IP law) will allow me to formulate my own patent applications in the near future.” Yun received a distinction on the diploma and was named the most distinguishing student in the exam, a great achievement considering that he was the youngest attendee by 3 or so years and that a large proportion of attendees were already practising lawyers or graduates in Law.

“As I would be conducting research funded by the Sheffield Engineering Leadership Academy on my return to the UK, it seemed wise to brush up on my understanding in patent law and how this affects research and publication issues.” says Yun. “This is undoubtedly one of the most important and relevant courses I have taken and only made possible because our mech department had enrolled everyone in a law module in second year, it really highlighted the importance of law in the field of engineering. “Intellectual property law, specifically patenting; underlines many of the research efforts that the University of Sheffield undertakes. The basic principle of an Engineer is to apply mathematics and science to solve real world problems. Patent law encourages sharing of our inventions and brings benefit to the world in exchange for a right to exclude others from commercially using their work without permission.

Non final year UK students with a household income of £42,621-£62,143 are invited to apply for a scholarship to contribute towards an overseas summer school either at one of our partner universities or elsewhere. The application form closes in November. Please contact alumni.scholarships@sheffield. ac.uk if you have any queries regarding these opportunities.

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winds of change Dr Ben Hughes in the Energy 2050 team has partnered up with the winners of the Zayed Future Energy Prize in the uae to develop a new form of cooling wind towers for what is set to be the first zero-carbon school in the uae. Dr Ben Hughes recently contributed to an article in the United Arab Emirates’ newspaper, The National, for his work on cooling systems with a school in the region ahead of the announcement of the winners of the Zayed Future Energy Prize.

Thanks to funds from the ZFEP Global High Schools Prize, Ben was able to commission two full-scale prototype cooling wind towers that were built using sheet metal in the UK, assembled then shipped to the UAE.

The Zayed Future Energy Prize is a global competition in which 14 schools from five continents travelled to Abu Dhabi in anticipation of the prize’s award ceremony, which forms part of the launch of Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week. The $100,000 prize money enables winning schools to implement a year-long environmental project that could transform the lives of their communities. In 2013, Ben worked with the Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Bangladeshi Islamia School (SKZBI), the only UAE-based institution to have secured the prize so far. The school’s winning entry was a solar-panel project, backed up by a student-led audit on energy usage. The school spent some of the prize money installing solar panels that power all of its lights, fans and computers, which has reduced energy consumption by 15%. The second phase of the school’s winning proposal was for a rooftop wind tower that would provide energy-free, passive cooling and act as a demonstration model for its students. After seeing an article on Dr Hughes in the newspaper, the school contacted him. He was completing a research project on the development of a new form of cooling for wind towers at the time and agreed to help the school.

Ben commented on the project: “What we’ve been able to do by working with the school is to gather real-time data to see how much energy we can save and how much cooling we can provide. “We’re now at a stage where we have sufficient data to make us confident that the technology provides sufficient cooling and now we need to raise sufficient funding to allow us to install 22 wind towers across an entire block. We’re hoping to reduce the school’s air-conditioning loads by about 60-70 per cent.” The school now needs further funding to install these towers and hopes to complete their aim of becoming the first zero-carbon school in the UAE, to act as a model for other schools and buildings in the region.

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Read all about it! News from around the Department

Pover family with Sharon Davis. Photo courtesy of Chester Chronicle

Champion of Champions The family of a student who passed away in 2013 from a rare form of testicular cancer have been awarded the Champion of Champions award by Trinity Mirror and Scottish Power

Mike Herbert working in the Ripper Lab

A new generation of technicians Two new technicians, Mike Herbert and Luke Callaghan, have joined the Department recently after completing the Faculty’s 2 year Technician

Foundation for their fundraising efforts to create a scholarship in their son’s name. The Richard Pover Outstanding Contribution Award will be a permanent endowment, open to all students within the University of Sheffield’s Department of Mechanical Engineering who have excelled in their extracurricular activities and made an outstanding contribution, just as Richard did. Richard’s mum Anne says, “The idea of an everlasting award in Richard’s memory gives us some comfort as we learn to accept the desperately sad loss of our wonderful, courageous and inspirational son.” To donate visit https://www.justgiving. com/remember/160653/Richard-Pover

Training course in which trainees work in each department for 3 months to create engineering technicians with skills in Electronics, ICT, Mechanical, and Laboratory environments. “Before joining the scheme I had 3 months ‘work experience’ in EEE’s mechanical workshop, and thought I wanted a career in that sort of environment,” says Mike, “Now I’ve experienced more areas I’ve ended up in a more suitable role in Electronics and Instrumentation! That’s the great thing about the training I guess, you may come in with an idea of where you would like to go, but your perspective can be completely changed, usually for the better.”

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way for the creation of paints and clothing colours that won’t fade over time. Current technology cannot make colour with this level of control and precision – we still use dyes and pigments. In an Innovate_UK grant with Akzo Nobel, Professor Patrick Fairclough has been working with Dr Andrew Parnell in the Department of Physics, looking to create a rigid structure that mimics the assembly within the bird so that the colour doesn’t fade when compressed.

Why don’t birds go grey? No, it’s not the start of a bad joke, it’s the start of an exciting piece of collaborative multidisciplinary research between the Departments of Physics and Mechanical Engineering. Using X-ray scattering at the ESRF facility in France to examine the blue and white feathers of the jay, researchers from the University of Sheffield found that birds demonstrate a surprising level of control and sophistication in producing colours. Birds use sophisticated changes to the structure of their feathers to create multi-coloured plumage, using a process that could pave the

Green Impact On 11th March we’re holding a Faculty Fairtrade Breakfast in Mappin Hall. We’d like staff to contribute on the day; we’re looking for Cake... LOTS OF IT! (all made using Fairtrade ingredients). We’ll also be swapping seeds and plants, so it’s a great time to come and get a plant for your office or share a cutting. Other stalls will include JUICE, EFM Transport (re-cycling) and Goodwin Sports. All proceeds will go to magicbreakfast.com - a charity that organises breakfasts

Now we’ve learnt how nature accomplishes it, we can start to develop new materials using these nanostructuring approaches. It would potentially mean that if we created a red jumper using this method, it would retain its colour and never fade in the wash. The underlying principles have applications in any system that scatters waves, such as light; acoustics and even coastal defences. Now, what about my greys?

for school children who receive free lunches. If you can bring along any baking please contact caroline.brown@sheffield.ac.uk As some of us are moving to a new building to allow the building works to go ahead with the heartspace, it’s a good chance for us to have a big clear out. If you have any electrical equipment that you no longer need, printers, scanners even PCs please contact Caroline and we will organise for them to be taken away as electrial waste. And finally, don’t forget to switch everything off and unplug for the Easter Break!

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The Final Word. This issue marks two years of MechEngNews and we’ve seen some fantastic stories coming out of the Department in that time. It’s great to read about what our colleagues are doing and how this opens up opportunities for collaboration and sharing best practice. Imagine if this magazine had been running for the last 100 years, the stories it would tell! Will someone be reading this in another 100 years time, laughing at our funny haircuts and clothes? We’ve had several new staff join us this quarter so I’d like to wish a warm welcome to all of them. I hope you will enjoy being a part of our ever growing team, we all look forward to working with you. I’d like to congratulate Paul Crosby, Jamie Booth and Les Morton in the techincal team who have successfully completed IOSH Managing Safety, a nationally recognised certificate. And of course we say goodbye to one of our professors this month. Professor Neil Hopkinson will be moving on to continue his work in additive manufacturing at Xaar. Neil, we wish you all the very best for the future!

Neil Sims

Head of Department, Mechanical Engineering

This publication is produced using 100% recycled FSC certified paper

MechEngNews