Engineering Designer magazine - Jul-Sep 2021

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THE JOURNAL OF THE INSTITUTION OF ENGINEERING DESIGNERS

JULY–SEPTEMBER 2021

Driver not included

ENGINEERING DESIGNER

How autonomous trucks are changing the face of freight

16 POWER PLAY

32 WASTE NOT

Can microgrids finally bring electricity to rural Africa?

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22 HRH PRINCE PHILIP

Remembering our Patron, a tireless supporter of design

What can designers do to solve the plastic crisis?

01/07/2021 12:18

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Contents Regulars 05 VIEW FROM THE CHAIR Colin Ledsome looks back on his time as Chair of the IED and forward to the future of the Institution 06 ASIDE Could satellite ‘stepping stones’ offer a cheap route into space, asks Colin Ledsome 08 IN BRIEF All the latest design and engineering news from around the world 12 IN DEVELOPMENT The Flexcraft modular aircraft

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14 PICTURE THIS New York’s Oculus transport hub, designed by Santiago Calatrava 36 BOOK REVIEW Jet Man: The Making and Breaking of Frank Whittle, Genius of the Jet Revolution by Duncan Campbell-Smith 37 MEMBER PROFILE

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39 IED NEWS

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Features 16 LIGHTING UP A CONTINENT Autonomous electricity grids are powering a socioeconomic revolution in rural Africa 22 OUR PATRON REMEMBERED The Institution marks the passing of its Patron, HRH Prince Philip, and celebrates his support for design

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26 FREIGHTED WITH AUTONOMY While self-driving cars have hogged the headlines, driverless trucks have been quietly taking to the roads 32 DESIGNING FOR AND FROM RECYCLING: WHAT’S NEXT? Mark Hester explores some of the ways in which designers can help to solve the world’s plastic problem

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Write for us Engineering Designer needs good articles on matters important to design. Why not write one? You’ll receive help from the editorial team should you need it.

If you want to try your hand at writing a feature for Engineering Designer, please submit an abstract (around 200 words), explaining what it’s about, along with an intended word count (preferably between 1,000 and 1,800 words). It will then be forwarded to the IED editorial committee for consideration.

We’re also very keen to hear about you and your career in engineering design. If you would be interested in appearing in our regular member profile section, please contact the editor and he will arrange an interview.

Contact Geordie Torr, Editor, Engineering Designer Address: Syon Media, Unit 3, Boleyn Business Suite, Hever Castle Golf Club, Hever Road, Hever, Kent TN8 7NP Telephone: 07414 019 611 Email: editor@engineering-designer.com

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ENGINEERING DESIGNER

@InstEngDes Institution of Engineering Designers

CIRCULATION Established in 1945, The Institution of Engineering Designers is the professional body for Engineering Designers, Product Designers and Computer Aided Designers. Engineering Designer is the Institution’s quarterly journal, sent to all Members, as well as design professionals and opinion formers in industry, schools, colleges and universities.

correspondents. They are not necessarily the views of the Institution of Engineering Designers, its officers, or its Council. The publication of an advertisement or editorial does not imply that a product or service is recommended or endorsed by the Institution. Material may only be reproduced in any form by prior arrangement and with due acknowledgement to Engineering Designer.

ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION RATES FOR NON-MEMBERS UK: £74.20; single issue: £14.60 Overseas airmail: £106.50 Schools and colleges: £57

AUTHORSHIP Unless otherwise stated, all articles have been written by the editor, Geordie Torr.

DISCLAIMER © Copyright The Institution of Engineering Designers 2021. Unless otherwise indicated, views expressed are those of the editorial staff, contributors and

NOTICE TO ADVERTISERS Although every effort will be made to meet the wishes of advertisers, it is a condition of acceptance of orders that Syon Media does not guarantee any insertion.

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Courtleigh, Westbury Leigh, Westbury, Wiltshire, BA13 3TA, UK Telephone: +44 (0)1373 822 801 Fax: +44 (0)1373 858 085 Email: staff@ied.org.uk Website: www.ied.org.uk PRESIDENT Pete Lomas FREng HonFIED Immediate Past President Maggie Philbin OBE HonFIED (PP) CHAIR EurIng Colin Ledsome BEng MEng CEng FIMechE FIED MCMI FBIS MDS IMMEDIATE PAST CHAIR Dr T Humphries-Smith BSc PGDip MPhil EdD CTPD CEng MIED (PCh) FHEA FRSA VICE CHAIRS DTH Castle IEng RCADMan FIED MBCS CITP N Phelps IEng MIED MIET PKR Bateman EngTech MIED ORDINARY COUNCILLORS SJ Benfield CTPD CEng CEnv FIED (PCh) MAPM, TN Channell MEng CEng MIED, DB Farrell BSc (Hons) MTech CEng CTPD FIED, Dr Eujin Pei CEng CTPD MIED FHEA ProBIDA, Dr PJ Sewell BEng (Hons) PGCert PhD CEng FIED MIMechE FHEA, Dr GAL Tizzard BSc MPhil DIC PhD MIEEE CEng MIED FHEA, I Treacy BA MSc IEng MIED MIET, EurIng SP Vaitkevicius BEng (Hons) MSc CEng FIED, Dr B Watson MDes (Hons) PhD LCGI CEng CEnv CTPD FIED, R Yuen MEng CEng MIED MICE Note: (PP) – Past President, (PCh) – Past Chair CO-OPTED COUNCILLORS M Lynch BSc (Hons) MSc CEng MIED, A Penn BSc (Hons) MSc CTPD MIED, J Roberts MEng CEng MIED HONORARY TREASURER AND COUNCILLOR ATA Keegan CEng FIED (PCh) CHIEF EXECUTIVE EK Meyrick BSc (Hons) FRSA THE JOURNAL OF THE INSTITUTION OF ENGINEERING DESIGNERS ISSN: 00137898

HELP US IMPROVE OUR INCLUSION, EQUALITY AND DIVERSITY WE RECENTLY SET UP a working group, known as IED², to look at improving our inclusivity, equality and diversity. We’re starting by figuring out exactly who our members are so that we can set a benchmark for where we are now and assess whether that changes as a result of our activities in this area.

We’ve drawn up a short survey we hope you’ll complete for us. All data collected will be anonymised and stored in accordance with

INSTITUTION OF ENGINEERING DESIGNERS

data-protection legislation. We won’t pass it on to anyone outside the IED and it won’t be used for any purpose other than improving our diversity and inclusion.

If you haven’t received an electronic copy of the survey via email and would like one, please contact nadine@ied.org.uk. Or, if you would like a hard copy, please ring us on 01373 822 801 and we’ll pop one in the post, along with a return envelope. ■

MANAGING EDITOR Libby Meyrick EDITORIAL COMMITTEE SJ Benfield, MK Chowdhree, KL Edwards, PC Hills, GJ Jeffery, C Ledsome, LJ Meaton, EK Meyrick, JD Poole EDITOR Geordie Torr ART EDITOR Becca Macdonald SALES DIRECTOR Lee Morriss 020 3900 0102 ied@syonmedia.com

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VIEW FROM THE CHAIR MUSINGS FROM THE CHAIR OF THE INSTITUTION OF ENGINEERING DESIGNERS

In his final View, Colin Ledsome CEng FIED looks back on his time as Chair and forward to the IED’s future

‘My three years in the Chair have passed quickly. I’ve witnessed progress both internally and externally, and news on various projects that are currently under way will appear in the magazine as they bear fruit’

BY NOW YOU WILL probably have noticed some changes to our magazine. We have a new publisher and a new editor, and Engineering Designer has grown to 44 pages. It will now be published on a quarterly basis and you will also soon begin to receive more frequent news and information direct to your computer or phone. We would love to know what you think about the changes.

I will be moving out of the Chair at the annual general meeting in July in order to make room for my successor, Dave Castle, so this will be my final ‘View’. The IED Chair’s job, as is traditional, is to make sure that everyone on the Council has a chance to speak and to try to find a consensus on the way forward. It also involves representing the Institution at external events and writing these pieces for Engineering Designer. The wider IED Council is an all-volunteer group made up of a mixture of old hands, including several ex-Chairs, a few Chairs of other committees and a number of newer members trying to work out what’s going on. Should you wish to join us, you would be most welcome.

All of this takes place in partnership with our CEO, Libby Meyrick, and the rest of our small staff, who work together to keep the IED’s activities running and developing as the Council requests. As a group, we have the big advantage of being designers.

We are all familiar with conceiving and analysing our options in order to find a sensible way forward. The Council

has the expertise and experience to examine the details of any proposals, so suggestions need not necessarily be thoroughly thought out before being put forward; even the crazy ones can spark a practical idea.

My three years in the Chair have passed quickly. I’ve witnessed progress both internally and externally, and news on various projects that are currently under way will appear in the magazine as they bear fruit.

Of late, the disruption caused by Covid-19 has concentrated our minds.

Remote meetings have attracted a larger audience, reducing both travel expenses and our carbon footprint. In future, it’s likely that we will hold most meetings remotely. The Institution’s membership has grown during the lockdowns, probably because people have found more time to sort out their applications, with the incentive that an extra qualification can have in a changing job market.

As things slowly return to something approaching ‘normality’, the companies that have safely navigated this difficult period are going to want their products to compete successfully in a re-expanding market.

That will mean more design work across all sectors. And with that in mind, it’s my firm belief that we can be optimistic about the IED’s future and the role that it plays in supporting good design practice.

Last, but not least, I would like to wish my successor all the best for his time in the Chair. Have fun Dave! ■

GET INVOLVED

If you would like to contribute to any discussions, write to: Dave Castle, The Institution of Engineering Designers, Courtleigh, Westbury Leigh, Westbury, Wiltshire BA13 3TA; or email: chair@ied.org.uk.

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ASIDE

Tethered together

Could satellite ‘stepping stones’ solve the space elevator conundrum, asks Colin Ledsome CEng FIED

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rotating the satellite around its centre of mass. This can be used to deliberately orient a satellite with one end pointing towards the Earth.

This is known as gravity-gradient or tidal stabilisation and its maintenance doesn’t require any energy.

This effect can be extended by connecting a pair of satellites with a long cable or tether. They can orbit together at a velocity appropriate to their joint centre of mass, which is located part way along the tether.

Since the angle of the tether changes, the upper body has further to go than the lower one, so moves faster. It would be moving too quickly for its orbital height so tries to move higher.

The lower one is slower, so tries to move downwards. This puts tension in the tether, keeping the satellites structurally connected.

PHOTOBANK GALLERY/SHUTTERSTOCK

e tend to use the terms ‘centre of gravity’ and ‘centre of mass’ as if they are the same, but they aren’t. The difference becomes important when a satellite is sent into orbit. For a circular orbit, the velocity of the satellite’s centre of mass determines its orbital height. However, the pull of gravity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the Earth, so the pull on its base will be greater than that on its top. Hence, its centre of gravity will be slightly lower than its centre of mass.

For compact satellites, this has little effect, but for larger ones, especially where one axis is longer than the others, the difference between the two centres can act like a pendulum, with the gravitational pull, acting at the centre of gravity,

This concept was taken to its extreme in 1895 by the Russianborn scientist and mathematician Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, who proposed a tether that extended down to the Earth’s surface from a large ‘counterweight’ satellite. To reach a stationary point on the Earth, the centre of mass would have to be at the level of a geostationary orbit.

Since the geostationary orbital height is 35,786 kilometres, the satellite would have to be even farther out.

The forces in a tether some 50,000 kilometres long, mainly generated by its own ‘weight’, causes a tension load that’s far beyond that which can be borne by any material currently available in that quantity. Even so, various proposals for a ‘space elevator’ using such an arrangement have been made, with some projecting completion by the middle of this century. How to get it all up there is a daunting challenge.

I would like to suggest a more practical alternative. A pair of satellites on a much shorter tether could provide a docking station for passengers and cargo. At the lower end, the inward forces would provide some sense of weight downward. A travelling capsule could then climb the tether to the upper satellite, where the outward forces would also provide a sense of weight, but now upward. These latter forces would have a slingshot effect on any vehicle released from the upper station. With appropriate timing and small adjustments, this could allow travel to the lower end of another pair of tethered satellite stations farther out. A sequence of these pairs could allow travel to and from extremely high orbits in a series of steps without an inconveniently heavy tether.

If the lowest station were close to the upper atmosphere, it would be within reach of small launch vehicles, since its velocity would be slower than orbital velocity. A high top-station would provide an initial boost for missions to the Moon and beyond. All tethers could be made from currently available materials and the launch requirements for each pair wouldn’t be excessive.

If the elevator doesn’t work, use the steps. ■

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29/06/2021 20:08

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IN BRIEF THE LATEST DESIGN AND ENGINEERING NEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD

USING A ‘LOOMING EYE’ TO SAVE BIRDS A TEAM OF SCIENTISTS from BirdLife International and the Estonian Ornithological Society has designed a ‘floating scarecrow’ that may help to stop vulnerable seabirds getting caught in fishing nets.

Known as a looming-eyes buoy (LEB), the device was developed in collaboration with engineers from Devon-based company Fishtek Marine, which develops and distributes innovative technical devices designed to minimise bycatch in commercial fisheries.

In a study conducted in Küdema Bay in Estonia, the LEB’s large, bright eyespots and looming movements were found to reduce the numbers of birds within 50 metres of the buoy by a quarter.

Still in prototype phase, the buoy will be tested in small-scale fisheries, where it’s hoped that it will help stop thousands of seabirds from diving into gillnets each year.

‘The development of low-cost devices such as the loomingeyes buoy offers up simple, yet innovative, solutions to these conservation problems and so that everybody benefits,’ said Yann Rouxel, a project officer in BirdLife International’s marine programme and lead author of the study. ■

‘Design is not just what it looks like and feels like.

Design is how it works.’

Steve Jobs

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SCANNER CREATES DIGITAL TWINS

RESEARCHERS AT IMPERIAL College London have designed a cheap 3D scanner that can be used to photograph small animal specimens in meticulous detail. Called scAnt, the cocoon-shaped scanner could help researchers and museums to display, share, study and protect their physical specimens by creating digital 3D models, or ‘digital twins’.

The scanning process can be configured so that the scanner automatically moves the specimen, which is held in place on a pin that can rotate about two axes, so that its cameras capture the specimen from every angle.

These images are then combined to create a 3D model of the specimen.

The scanner was built using a mixture of generic and 3D-printed components with a total cost of about £175. All of the relevant software and technical drawings are freely available, so anyone can build and operate one.

The researchers suggest that the new technology could help museums to create an immersive experience for virtual museum visitors and could also be adapted for use in largescale behavioural studies, particularly of insects that live in complex societies. ■

Bloodhound goes on display

BLOODHOUND, THE red-andwhite jet car that’s aiming to break the world land speed record, has gone on public display at Coventry Transport Museum, where it will sit alongside current record holders Thrust 2 and Thrust SSC. During testing in South Africa in 2019, the car reached a peak speed of 1,011

km/h. Bloodhound’s sponsorship team is currently raising the funds required to outfit the car with a Nammo monopropellant rocket and battery-powered fuel system, which the engineering team hopes will give the car a top speed in excess of 1,280 km/h, significantly greater than the speed of sound. ■

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IN BRIEF

NEW ‘FLOATING POOL’ CONNECTS TWO BUILDINGS COLORADO-BASED PLASTICS company Reynolds Polymer Technology has created the world’s first ‘floating swimming pool’ in southwest London. Consisting of a solid 36-centimetre-thick piece of transparent acrylic that spans 25 metres between two buildings, the Sky Pool is part of the Embassy Gardens complex in Nine Elms.

Two 38-millimetre-diameter steel rods run under the pool and connect it to two steel tubs that reduce the load on the acrylic structure. The tubs are supported on bridge bearings, allowing the structure to move in any direction as the two buildings move.

The project took four years to complete, six months of which were spent exploring the concept and discussing design data and safety measures with Ecoworld Ballymore Group, the international property developers who oversee the Embassy Gardens project. ■

Third eye for ‘smartphone zombies’

A SOUTH KOREAN industrial designer has created a satirical solution to the problem of ‘smartphone zombies’ – phone users so engrossed in their screens that they risk walking into obstacles.

Paeng Min-wook’s ‘Third Eye’ device uses a gyro sensor to measure the angle of the wearer’s neck. When it senses that the user is looking down at their phone, it opens its translucent

NEW PARTNERSHIP TO DESIGN NEXT-GEN MOON ROVERS

GENERAL MOTORS AND Lockheed Martin have entered into a partnership to design the next generation of lunar rovers or Lunar Terrain Vehicles (LTV). The LTVs will be designed for use on NASA’s Artemis missions, which aim to put astronauts on the moon by 2024.

The programme is still in its early stages as NASA hasn’t yet released

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‘eyelid’. An ultrasonic sensor then calculates the distance to any obstacles. If that distance drops below two metres, the device beeps to warn of impending danger. Both sensors are linked to an open-source single-board microcontroller and a battery pack.

‘By presenting this satirical solution, I hoped people would recognise the severity of their gadget addiction and look back at themselves,’ Paeng said. ■

its specifications for the vehicles beyond a desire for advanced LTVs that will allow astronauts to cover more distance and conduct a wider range of on-surface experimentation than the rovers on the Apollo missions. However, Lockheed Martin has already stated that it plans to make the vehicles capable of operating with or without a driver. ■

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THE ITALIAN GOVERNMENT has approved plans for a remotecontrolled, retractable floor within the Colosseum arena in Rome.

Designed by architecture studio Labics and Fabio Fumagalli, and engineering firm Milan Ingegneria, the retractable floor will cover the whole arena, allowing visitors to stand within it. When retracted, the elaborate hypogeum – the complex of lifts that was used to bring animals

and gladiators directly into the arena beneath the stage – will be exposed.

The floor will be made from carbonfibre slats finished in Accoya modified wood and will also feature a rainwatercollection system that will recover water for use in the Colosseum’s toilets. Retracting the floor will involve rotating the slats by 90° and then withdrawing them.

The floor is expected to be in place by 2023. ■

CARMAKER TO EXPAND

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A CONSORTIUM MADE up of key players in clothing design, recycling technologies and consumer behaviour in Denmark has launched a new project aimed at turning textile production into a circular industry.

Known as ReSuit (Recycling Technologies and Sustainable Textile Product Design), the £2.6million project will explore ways to help the textile industry get better at designing with recycling in mind, technologies that can ensure circularity for consumer textile waste and methods for motivating consumers to behave in ways that are more sustainable.

‘In this project, we are looking to get all textile waste in Denmark into a loop where it can become new textiles or raw materials for other products. If it succeeds, it can become a gamechanger,’ said Anders Lindhardt of the Danish Technological Institute, which is leading the project. ■

SUPERCAR MANUFACTURER the Gordon Murray Group has announced plans to invest £300million over the next five years on expanding its operations.

The plans include substantial investment directed towards a ‘superlight’ R&D facility tasked with reducing the weight and complexity of the group’s vehicle architectures and manufacturing processes, as well as an increased focus on the design and engineering of electric vehicles.

‘The automotive future will be increasingly electrified and it’s essential that we design the world’s lightest, most efficient and advanced EVs,’ said company founder and chairman Gordon Murray (pictured left).

‘Advanced work is already under way, and we’ll be sharing more news on our exciting all-electric platform soon.’ ■

FEDOR SELIVANOV/SHUTTERSTOCK

DESIGNING A GREEN TEXTILE INDUSTRY

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GORODENKOFF/SHUTTERSTOCK

Rome’s Colosseum to get new retractable floor

IN BRIEF

IBM DESIGNS FIRST 2-NANOMETRE CHIP A BREAKTHROUGH IN semiconductor design has enabled engineers at IBM to create the world’s first twonanometre computer chip.

According to IBM, the 2nm chip, which boasts 50 billion transistors, is expected to achieve 45 per cent higher performance than the most advanced 7nm node chips. Mobile devices that use processors based on the chips could have up to four times more battery life. The chips would also enable faster internet access, quicker processing in applications, faster object detection and reaction time for self-driving cars, and reduced energy use by data centres, which currently account for one per cent of global energy use. However, it may take several years for 2nm processors to begin appearing in consumer devices. ■

World-first 5G virtual 3D modelling tech goes on trial

HYPERBAT, THE UK’S largest independent vehicle battery manufacturer, has unveiled details of a new trial of 5G virtual reality (VR) ‘digital twin’ technology. Working with a consortium of partners that includes BT, Ericsson, Dell, Qualcomm and NVIDIA, the company will use the new technology to enable teams working in different parts of the UK to connect, collaborate and interact using a virtual 3D engineering model.

Dispersed design, engineering and

manufacturing teams will be able walk around and interact with a 3D life-size model in real time through a single self-contained VR device, without being constrained by a wired connection, using cloud-based mixed reality within computer-aided design software. The key enabler for the technology is the high-speed, low-latency and large data-handling capabilities of an Ericsson 5G mobile private network deployed by BT. Results of the collaboration are expected to be released this summer. ■

FEDOR SELIVANOV/SHUTTERSTOCK

GORODENKOFF/SHUTTERSTOCK

STUDENTS GET FREE ACCESS TO DESIGN SOFTWARE US INFRASTRUCTURE engineering software company Bentley Systems has launched a new education portal that allows students to register directly for access to some of its most popular software applications.

Built around Bentley’s existing education partnerships with universities and other educational institutions, the programme offers full free access to learning licenses

of more than 40 of Bentley’s most popular applications, including ContextCapture, MicroStation, OpenRoads Designer and SYNCHRO. It’s open to students and teachers at a range of institutions, from secondary schools to universities.

‘We want to make the Bentley Education portal the place where students can go to learn about and become inspired to make

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infrastructure engineering their career choice,’ said Bentley Education vice president Vinayak Trivedi. ‘The goal of the program is to help students who are passionate about infrastructure to get a jump-start on a fulfilling career.’

The education portal recently went live in the UK, Australia, Singapore, Ireland and Lithuania, and the company plans to expand it into the Americas and India later this summer. ■

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IN DEVELOPMENT

Choose your own aircraft The wing can land . with or without a pod Each pod has its own landing gear Capable of taking off and landing on very short runways

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aircraft to be used for a range of uses including short-hop passenger transport, search-and-rescue operations and freight transport. The passenger cabin, which is currently configured to seat nine, features panoramic wrap-around windows for spectacular views.

Only 13 metres in length, it will be capable of being remotely operated and of taking off on very short runways. At present, the plan is for the aircraft’s fan-in-wing propulsion to be powered by a hybrid-electric powerplant, but a number of other propulsion schemes are being

considered. It will have a range of 926 kilometres, an empty weight of 1,814 kilograms and a maximum take-off weight of 3,239 kilograms.

The aircraft is being developed by a consortium of companies and institutions that work in industrial design, aeronautical engineering, process engineering and aircraft manufacturing, including Brazilian aircraft manufacturer Embraer and Portuguese industrial design company Almadesign. Started in 2016, the project will conclude with the flight testing of an unmanned prototype. ■

ALL IMAGES BY FLEXCRAFT CONSORTIUM

eaders of a certain age will surely remember Thunderbird Two, the versatile green aircraft, piloted by Virgil Tracey, that transported rescue vehicles and equipment in detachable capsules called pods in the 1960s children’s TV show Thunderbirds. Well, meet Thunderbird Two’s real-world counterpart: Flexcraft.

Flexcraft’s innovative modular design enables it to be rapidly reconfigured for a range of different flight scenarios. Different cabins can be swapped in and out of the carbonfibre-composite wing, allowing the

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29/06/2021 20:48

The detachable pods can be configured for up to nine passengers...

...or they can be set up to respond to a medical emergency...

...or given the high-spec treatment to suit four VIP passengers.

A full-scale cabin mock up recently went on display in Lisbon

ALL IMAGES BY FLEXCRAFT CONSORTIUM

ns i b a c e l b a e Interchaenrgsatility create v w w w. i e d .o r g . u k

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PICTURE THIS

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ALEX CIMBAL/SHUTTERSTOCK

The Oculus

by Santiago Calatrava

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ALEX CIMBAL/SHUTTERSTOCK

LASFOTOSDEXUS/SHUTTERSTOCK

pened in March 2016, the World Trade Center Transportation Hub in New York City’s Lower Manhattan district – the Oculus – was designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava to resemble a dove taking flight.

About 110 metres long and 35 metres across, the arched, elliptical structure contains 10,400 tonnes of structural steel. Seen here, the 6,000-square-metre main concourse, which sits 50 metres below the apex, is lit by natural light streaming in through the gaps between the softly curving structural ribs. Calatrava says that light acts as a structural element – that the Oculus is supported by ‘columns of light’.

The Oculus is also a memorial to the victims of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks. Each year, at 8.46am on the anniversary of the attacks, the time at which the first plane hit the World Trade Center’s North Tower, the building’s glass spine retracts, creating a skylight that runs the length of the space. The building is positioned so that the opening frames the sun at 10.28am, when the North Tower fell.

Calatrava’s designs combine impressive structural qualities with sculptural elegance. Born and raised in Valencia, Spain, he studied architecture at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura in Valencia and structural engineering at the ETH Zurich – a combination of disciplines that was rare at the time. ‘I was determined to put to one side all that I had learned in architecture school,’ he once said, ‘and to learn to draw and think like an engineer.’ ■

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Autonomous electricity grids are powering a socioeconomic revolution in rural Africa

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RUSSELL WATKINS/DEPARTMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Lighting up a continent w w w. i e d .o r g . u k

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AFRICAN MICROGRIDS

‘Africa doesn’t have a generation problem; it has a distribution problem.’

Aaron Leopold, executive director, African Minigrid Developers Association

RUSSELL WATKINS/DEPARTMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Elizabeth Mukwimba, a 62-year-old Tanzanian woman, poses beside the controller for her newly installed solar system. The money she has saved by not having to buy kerosene to light her home at night has already enabled her to replace its tin roof w w w. i e d .o r g . u k

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More than 640 million Africans, some twothirds of the continent’s population, lack access to electricity

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MACRO, MINI, MICRO OR NANO? THE TERMS USED to describe power grids are poorly defined and often used interchangeably.

■ MACRO-GRIDS: large regional or central grids that connect large numbers of people over wide areas to energy supplies.

■ MINI-GRIDS: like macrogrids on a much smaller scale, operating over a small, lowvoltage localised distribution network and powered by distributed energy resources.

Some organisations define minigrids in terms of their generation capacity, with stated ranges usually falling between 50 kW and 10 MW. They can either be fully autonomous or connected to a macro-grid, although some definitions specify that only the former qualify. They should be able to serve larger commercial and small industrial loads.

■ MICROGRIDS: similar to minigrids but even smaller, with a generation capacity of between one and 50 kW. They, too, can be either fully autonomous or connected to a macro-grid, although again, some definitions specify that only the former qualify. The types of loads they serve are usually residential only, or very small commercial.

■ NANO-GRIDS: grids that serve a single customer or building using a single generation unit and don’t use transmission or distribution lines. ■ NASA, SEBASTIAN NOETHLICHS/SHUTTERSTOCK

A satellite image of Africa at night illustrates the continent’s lack of lights

to telecommunications networks and power appliances and machinery to reduce manual labour. Communities can light streets and provide power to schools and healthcare facilities.

Farmers can use irrigation pumps to increase crop yields and preserve produce with cold storage. And, yes, children can study for longer at night.

In the past, African governments have mostly relied on expanding the existing centralised power grid in order to improve access, but this has led to a large urban–rural divide, with about 60 per cent of the urban population having access to electricity compared to only 15 per cent of the rural population. This is largely due to the fact that the continent is home to hundreds of thousands of remote communities that are located far from the central grid. The cost of electrifying these communities is too great in terms of both time and money. And across most of Africa, the central grid is already overburdened, so adding more customers isn’t a good solution. Delivering power to remote areas is also inefficient because some of the electricity – as much as 15 per cent – is lost in transit.

Increasingly, governments and aid agencies are turning to what are known as minigrids or microgrids (the two terms are generally poorly defined [see Macro, mini, micro or nano?]; for the purposes of this article, microgrid will be used as an umbrella term).

Essentially decentralised electrical grids, microgrids are self-sufficient energy systems that serve a discrete geographical area. They are typically powered by one or more types of distributed energy source, such as solar panels, wind turbines, fuel cells and biomass and diesel generators.

Although they may be connected to the central grid, crucially, they can function completely independently, a capability known as islanding.

Microgrids offer numerous benefits.

Their autonomy insulates them from the negative aspects of larger power grids, such as rolling blackouts. Most microgrids use renewable energy sources, which helps governments meet their Paris Agreement and other climate-related responsibilities. They are significantly more cost-effective

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RUSSELL WATKINS/DEPARTMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, SEBASTIAN NOETHLICHS/SHUTTERSTOCK

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n a remote village in Nigeria, a young girl flicks a switch and her small bedroom is bathed in light. This small act, taken for granted by children in the West, represents a revolution in rural Africa. Instead of having to study in the weak light produced by a smoky kerosene lamp, the young student can work in bright light long into the night. Numerous studies have seen an increase in both the amount time students spend studying and their test scores when their homes are electrified.

Ensuring universal access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy is one of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. At present, however, more than 640 million Africans, some two-thirds of the continent’s population, lack access to electricity.

Africa has the world’s fastestgrowing population, which is, in turn, creating a rapidly increasing demand for energy; the African Energy Chamber projects that the continent’s power demands could double by 2050. And governments are struggling to keep up.

Energy poverty can act as a brake on economic growth. In otherwise self-sufficient local communities, it can handicap development, and a lack of available energy is a factor in rural to urban migration.

Access to electricity allows people to pump and purify water, gain access

AFRICAN MICROGRIDS

NASA, SEBASTIAN NOETHLICHS/SHUTTERSTOCK

RUSSELL WATKINS/DEPARTMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, SEBASTIAN NOETHLICHS/SHUTTERSTOCK

Joyce, a 12-year-old Tanzanian schoolgirl, is now able to study at home at night, thanks to a solar lighting scheme backed by UK aid

than simply expanding the existing electricity grid; upfront costs to connect to the utility grid can run to several thousand US dollars, whereas the cost of an average microgrid connection is less than US$1,000 and continuing to fall (between 2014 and 2018, the cost more than halved).

They can also be set up quickly; it can take as little as two months to install a typical microgrid. And because microgrids are modular, they are relatively easy to upgrade and to integrate with other microgrids and conventional power grids.

According to the World Bank, more than half of the world’s unelectrified population would be most costeffectively served via microgrids.

However, the scale of the situation is daunting; World Bank estimates suggest that universal electrification in Africa would require more than 140,000 community-scale microgrids.

Many African governments have seized on microgrids as the solution to their electrification woes.

The Kenyan government recently launched the US$150million Kenya

A large array of solar panels can power an entire village

Off-Grid Solar Access Project, which aims to provide 5.2 million new electrical connections to rural populations through support for hundreds of new microgrid sites and millions of new solar home systems.

The Nigerian government hopes that by 2030 it will be generating 5.3 GW from at least 10,000 microgrids.

And Cameroon recently launched a public-private partnership aimed

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at installing 750 microgrids to bring electricity to some of the 11,000-plus villages in the West African nation that currently lack power.

Aid agencies are similarly enthusiastic. The US government’s Beyond the Grid programme has committed to investing more than US$1billion to provide renewable microgrid solutions in sub-Saharan Africa. The initiative hopes to bring

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It can take as little as two months to install a typical microgrid. And because microgrids are modular, they are relatively easy to upgrade and to integrate with other microgrids and conventional power grids Among those taking part in the microgrid roll-out is African renewable energy provider PowerGen, which has installed utilities for more than 50,000 people in Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, Zambia, Uganda, Rwanda, Benin and Niger. According to PowerGen CEO Sam Slaughter, the organisation’s microgrids typically serve 100–500 connections and have

Residents lift a solar panel in Gbandiwlo village, Sierra Leone

a geographic radius of less than one kilometre. The company hopes to expand energy access to a million more Africans by 2025.

One of the keys to the success of for-profit microgrids is the PAYGO business model, whereby people use mobile money to pay their energy bills. Advancements in smart meters, management systems and battery technology, as well as significant cost reductions in solar panels and storage batteries are also important factors.

Companies installing microgrids across Africa are increasingly using a mixture of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to make their operations more efficient. Before work on a project begins on the

MINING AND MICROGRIDS

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one-megawatt solar plant will typically produce 2,000 MWh annually – the equivalent of using about half a million litres of diesel.

Even when there is an option to connect to the main grid, there are often problems with the reliability of supply, which can be smoothed out by connecting a microgrid to the main grid. The battery compensates for any shortfalls in generation.

In South Africa’s North West province, the Vametco vanadium mine recently announced plans to use vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFB) to store energy from a 3.5

MW solar PV plant, which will supply almost ten per cent of the mine’s electrical needs. VRFB technology, which uses large electrolyte storage tanks, can easily be scaled up to provide almost unlimited energy capacity. The microgrid is projected to reduce carbon emissions by more than 13,000 tonnes over its 20-year lifespan. ■

Solar panels require little maintenance

OLIVIER ASSELIN/UNICEF (2)

MICROGRIDS ARE ALSO increasingly being embraced by the mining industry. Mining is an energy-intensive industry (energy accounts for up to 30 per cent of operating costs for a typical mining operation), but mines are often located in remote, off-grid locations, so mine operators have limited options for decarbonising their operations. They typically have to rely on unreliable oil-fuelled generators, but with the falling cost of solar PV and improvements to battery design, many miners are turning to solar microgrids. A

ground, AI and ML are being used with advanced geospatial processing techniques to extract information from satellite imagery. For example, medium-resolution imagery can be used to identify settlements of people without energy access and features relevant for a specific project, such as the distance to the nearest city, distance to water and population size. High-resolution imagery can then be used to gain information on parameters such as demography, economy and purchasing power, including the level and patterns of commercialisation, which will affect demand. Together, this information helps companies to determine the best locations for projects.

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BILL RAWHEISER/ WISE POWER SYSTEMS

30,000 MW of electricity to more than 60 million African households in remote and rural regions by 2030.

Although many of the projects currently underway are being funded through a mixture of public and foreign aid funds, private businesses are also becoming increasingly active.

For these organisations, achieving profitability requires tailoring the microgrid to the community’s needs: if the system is too large, it will be underutilised, leading to high per-unit costs; if it’s too small, it will forego revenue and scale effects, again leading to higher per-unit costs.

OLIVIER ASSELIN/UNICEF (2)

BILL RAWHEISER/ WISE POWER SYSTEMS

AFRICAN MICROGRIDS In Nigeria, NGO Renewable Africa 365 is using AI to develop a gridcoverage analysis and ML-driven heatmaps to identify the sites that are most suitable for solar panel installation.

These have then been coupled with an interactive map of regions with a high demand for electricity.

Because they tend to rely on renewable energy sources, whose output is often highly variable, and they serve communities in which demand is also highly variable, energy management within a microgrid can be extremely complicated. The microgrid may need to regularly transition between grid-connected and island modes of operation. It needs to know when and where to store energy, and perhaps even which buildings get power at which times. These decisions are made by the microgrid’s controller, which regulates the different generators, batteries and inverters, and the flow of energy among them.

AI is increasingly being used to make this decision-making more efficient.

Algorithms may use historical data, weather data and associated load predictions to manage supply.

AI-enabled controllers can also track real-time changes in the wholesale power prices on the central grid, which constantly fluctuate with supply and demand. When prices are low, the controller may choose to buy power from the central grid and use the microgrid’s solar panels to charge its batteries. Later, when grid power is expensive, the microgrid can discharge its batteries rather than using grid power.

The use of smart inverters, which balance out the demands on the system, matching energy consumption and generation, and siphoning off the excess into battery storage, has been particularly important. Like traditional inverters, smart inverters convert the direct current output of solar panels into alternating current for use by consumers. However, they go beyond this basic function to provide gridsupport functions, such as voltage regulation and frequency support.

Smart inverters also allow flexibility, enabling the addition of more energygeneration capacity as demand grows, which means that grids can

CASE STUDY

ANNOBON ISLAND MICROGRID

LOCATED OFF THE coast of Equatorial Guinea, Annobon Island is home to about 5,000 people. In the past, the island only had reliable electricity for up to five hours per day and residents spent an average of 15–20 per cent of their income on supplemental power.

The government of Equatorial Guinea contracted MAECI Solar and Princeton Power Systems to install a 5MW solar microgrid system on the island, featuring 20,000 solar panels in three separate arrays, system

be built with capacity to meet only the initial demand. And they can extend the system’s reach beyond the typical 600-metre range of a low-voltage distribution network by boosting the voltage at the network’s periphery. And finally, if the main grid is extended to reach these rural communities, smart inverters allow the microgrids to be connected to the main grid. ‘For the last five years, I’ve believed that mini-grids can connect unelectrified citizens and businesses in Africa more quickly, more cheaply and more sustainably than main-grid connections can,’ says Jon Lane, associate director of the Carbon Trust.

‘Smart inverter technology takes this a stage further by connecting both options to ensure that we leave no-one behind and provide the best possible service to all.’

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integration, an energy-management system consisting of twenty 250 kW battery integrated inverters installed across the island to manage power flow between the different sources and loads, remote control/update capabilities and three large-scale advanced battery banks. When it was installed in 2015, it was the largest self-sufficient solar project in Africa. Today, the microgrid supplies enough green electricity to meet all of the island’s current energy demands. ■

At present, the most significant barrier to the widespread roll-out of microgrids are regulatory compliance processes, which can take, on average, more than a year per site.

For-profit microgrids also face the challenge of low consumption; the average consumption per customer is only 6.1 kWh per month across the continent. This makes it difficult for companies to ensure that operational costs – let alone return on investment – are covered for residential consumers.

However, momentum appears to be on the microgrids’ side and as costs continue to come down and partnerships between microgrid developers, governments and aid agencies continue to multiply, it certainly seems as though rural Africa’s future is bright. ■

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It was with great sadness that the Institution of Engineering Designers marked the passing of its royal patron, His Royal Highness Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, who died on 9 April at the age of 99

Touring the newly opened Salford Technical College building

T

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association with the Institution cannot fail to further its cause and it is hoped that it will mark another milestone on the road to the Royal Charter.’

The presentation of the Duke’s membership diploma and an illuminated address, which had been delayed by the royal couple’s sevenmonth, 13-country around-the-world tour, took place during a special ceremony at Buckingham Palace at 11 o’clock on Friday 4 June 1954. The low-key ceremony was attended by Francis Curzon, the Fifth Earl Howe, Lord Brocket and Lord McGowan, and the IED’s general secretary (and founding president), Walter E Walters, who was in attendance at the express request of the Duke, who wished to meet the person ‘who does all the work’.

UNIVERSITY OF SALFORD ARCHIVES AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

he Duke’s association with the IED began in 1953, not long after Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation, an event marked in the September 1953 edition of the Drawing Office Announcer.

Under a rather ornate item offering the new Queen the ‘sincere congratulations on the occasion of the coronation of your majesty’, there appeared a somewhat more subdued but equally momentous note entitled ‘A coronation honour for the institution’, which announced the news that the Duke of Edinburgh had accepted the IED’s offer of Honorary Membership. ‘The entire IED Membership will welcome this news with enthusiasm since it seems to indicate a measure of Royal favour and encouragement. The Duke’s

In accepting the Honorary Membership, the Duke of Edinburgh paid eloquent tribute to ‘creative ingenuity, the distinguishing hallmark of a profession which rarely comes to the note of the public’. Given that Earl Howe had been a very successful racing car driver during the 1930s, it’s perhaps unsurprising that the Duke chose to speak of his own attempts to design a car, a topic that he then explored further with the delegation.

According to a piece in the Drawing Office Announcer that reported on the ceremony: ‘The tone was most friendly and informal – a cordial exchange of comments all round – which the Duke appeared to enjoy no less than the rest of the party.’

The piece continued on to say that ‘it was gratifying to note that the BBC attached sufficient importance to the event to make mention of it in the news bulletins’.

Prince Philip became Patron of the Institution soon after and continued to work with the IED on a variety of topics, including the Duke of Edinburgh’s Prize for Elegant Design (later renamed the Prince Philip Designers Prize; see Royal Recognition) and the hosting of receptions. And in the ensuing years, he took an active interest in the workings of the IED, receiving notices regarding notable events and requesting details of the running of the organisation, such as balance sheets, annual reports and the appointment of auditors.

In 1956, Prince Philip founded the Duke of Edinburgh’s Commonwealth Study Conferences, and hosted the first, in Oxford. Entitled ‘The Duke of Edinburgh’s Study Conference on the Human Problems of Industrial Communities within the Commonwealth and Empire’, it was a project that was ahead of its time,

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GETTY IMAGES, UNIVERSITY OF SALFORD ARCHIVES AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS (2), JAGUAR LAND ROVER, ANDRÉ CROS/WIKIMEDIA

Our patron remembered

HRH PRINCE PHILIP

Admiring a gas turbine unit in a Rover workshop in Solihull

UNIVERSITY OF SALFORD ARCHIVES AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

GETTY IMAGES, UNIVERSITY OF SALFORD ARCHIVES AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS (2), JAGUAR LAND ROVER, ANDRÉ CROS/WIKIMEDIA

‘The tone was most friendly and informal – a cordial exchange of comments all round – which the Duke appeared to enjoy no less than the rest of the party.’

At Jaguar Land Rover’s engine manufacturing centre in Wolverhampton

Talking to some Salford Technical College students

Visiting the University of Salford hydraulics laboratory in 1967

Visiting French-state-owned aircraft manufacturer Sud Aviation in 1965

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The final formal event that the Duke attended was held in July 2015, shortly before he stepped back from public duties. To mark the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the formation of the IED and the presentation of diplomas to the first Chartered Technological Product Designers, the Duke hosted a reception at St James’s Palace.

During the event, he met with a group of founder members, reviewed the work of some current members and spoke fondly of his personal interest in engineering and the

Royal recognition

shifted from product design to the designers themselves. The renamed Prince Philip Designer’s Prize for the Designer of the Year was presented to some of the leading names of British design, including James Dyson, Terence Conran, Quentin Blake and Norman Foster, in recognition of their lifetime achievements. In 2011, the prize went on hiatus as the Duke began to cut back on his royal duties. Four years later, following discussions with the Chartered Society of Designers, the Duke handed over management of the award to the society and lent his name to a new set of prizes: the Prince Philip Student Design Awards.

Prince Philip also regularly presented the Chartered Society of Designers’ Minerva Medal. He himself was presented with the award in 2003 in recognition of his contribution to design. At the ceremony, the Duke quipped that ‘it was a delight to receive the medal rather than always presenting them at these dinners’.

The Duke was also a strong advocate of the role and importance of engineering in society. Between 1966 and 1976, he was the president of the Council of Engineering Institutions, during which time he helped to create a path for engineers to reach professional status. He also presented the MacRobert Award, the Royal Academy of Engineering’s highest award for UK engineering, almost every year from its inception in 1969. And in 1989,

Chairing the judging of the Prince Philip Designers Prize in 2009 at Buckingham Palace

THROUGHOUT HIS LONG LIFE, the Duke of Edinburgh strived to find ways to recognise the unsung work of designers and engineers.

In 1959, with the UK still in the grip of post-war austerity, he launched the Duke of Edinburgh’s Prize for Elegant Design in partnership with the Design Council. His aim was to shine a light on British designers whose works ‘improved daily life by solving problems’, a reflection of his belief that designers of all disciplines would play a crucial role in boosting the British economy and setting the nation on the path for success.

From the beginning, the Duke was heavily involved, chairing the judging

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panel and presenting the prize.

Winners were chosen for ‘the quality, originality and commercial success of their work, and the designer’s overall contribution to the standing of design, and to design education’.

The inaugural prize went to Charles Longman for his minimalist Prestcold Packaway refrigerator, which was designed to fit into cramped kitchens. The prize’s broad scope and remit to recognise products that stood out from the largely functional design of the late 1950s was then illustrated the following year when it was awarded to WT Copeland and Sons for its sleek Apollo tableware.

In 1990, the award’s focus

CHARTERED SOCIETY OF DESIGNERS

In 2001, Honorary Membership of the IED was replaced with Honorary Fellowship and a lunch was held to mark the occasion. A letter from Buckingham Palace notes that the Duke was ‘disappointed not to be able to attend the lunch to celebrate, but looking forward to receiving his new certificate’.

In January 2012, the IED was granted a Royal Charter and later that year, the Duke hosted a reception at St James’s Palace to mark the occasion at which he also made presentations to four new Honorary Fellows.

concerned with the social wellbeing of communities around the world in the face of rapid industrialisation.

The Duke’s membership file contains a variety of communications received across the years, including a note from 1955 commenting on the fact that HRH was ‘most interested to read about the new Headquarters of the Institution and congratulates all on the great success of our undertaking’ and, from 1989, a telegram to Peter Booker on the occasion of his retirement as CEO after 35 years to be read out at his retirement lunch.

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HRH PRINCE PHILIP importance of design to the future of ‘UK plc’ and humanity in general.

The Duke then insisted on personally presenting chartership certificates to four CTPD recipients.

Despite stepping away from public life, Prince Philip retained his patronage of the Institution.

To mark the occasion of the Duke’s 100th birthday, a gift was designed that outlined some of the major engineering and design innovations that have taken place during his life, as well as some notable occasions in the relationship between the Duke

he agreed to the commissioning of the Prince Philip Medal, to be ‘awarded periodically to an engineer of any nationality who has made an exceptional contribution to engineering as a whole through practice, management or education’.

Following the Duke’s passing, Sir Jim McDonald, president of the Royal Academy of Engineering, paid tribute to his ‘genuine enjoyment and passion for engineering [which] were evident in his many visits to the Academy and his typically challenging discussions with the engineers he met’.

The Duke was adamant that each of the design awards presented in his name should be received by the industrial designer of the winning work, rather than an engineer or a representative of the company that manufactured it

CHARTERED SOCIETY OF DESIGNERS

The Duke’s support for good design and engineering wasn’t restricted to the UK. In 1967, during the early days of the Industrial Design Council of Australia and the Australian Design Council, he introduced the Prince Philip Prize for Australian Design.

The inaugural prize was awarded in 1968 to a self-propelled grain header designed by Kenneth Gibson. In July

and the IED. Sadly, he passed away a few months before his birthday and this commemorative memento will now be framed and mounted in the library at the IED’s headquarters in Westbury Leigh in Wiltshire, next to the copy of the Duke’s original membership certificate and his address from the 1950s.

It has been an honour and a privilege to claim HRH Prince Philip as an Honorary Member/Fellow and Patron for the past 67 years. His drive, enthusiasm and leadership will be sorely missed. ■

1978 and September 1979, the awards ceremony was broadcast nationally on the ABC television network, with several million people tuning in to see the Duke present the prizes. ‘I hope this whole exercise will provoke a great deal of discussion and argument on the subject of industrial design,’ the Duke said. ‘I don’t mind in the least if people disagree violently with our choice because it will mean that this is a subject worth attention and worthy of well-informed criticism.’

At the start of the 1980s, the New Zealand Industrial Design Council hastily arranged the creation of the Prince Philip Award for New Zealand Industrial Design so that the Duke could personally present the prize during the 1981 royal tour. With his trademark desire to be involved, the Duke chaired the final stage of the selection process.

The Duke was adamant that each of the design awards presented in his name should be received by the industrial designer of the winning work, rather than an engineer or a representative of the company that manufactured it. At the awards ceremony for the inaugural New Zealand design award, he lamented the lack of recognition of the designer’s role: ‘As far as the development of human civilisation is concerned, design has obviously played a very important part. After all, everything that was not designed by the Almighty has been the responsibility of some sort of designer.’ ■

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THE DUKE’S FINAL DESIGN

THE DUKE OF EDINBURGH’S interest in engineering and design extended all the way to his own funeral. In 2003, the year he turned 82, the Duke began a collaboration with Land Rover to modify one of its vehicles, a Defender, to carry a coffin – his own.

The modifications he designed included an open-top rear section within which the coffin would rest, along with the ‘stops’ – rubber grips on metal pins – that prevent the coffin from moving. He also specified that the original Belize-green bodywork be replaced with dark bronze green, a colour commonly used for military Land Rovers.

The purpose-built hearse was used to transport the Duke’s coffin in the ceremonial procession from the state entrance of Windsor Castle through the castle grounds to the west steps of St George’s Chapel.

‘We are deeply privileged to have enjoyed a very long and happy association with the Duke of Edinburgh over many decades,’ said Thierry Bollore, Jaguar Land Rover’s chief executive. ‘The Duke was a tremendous champion for design, engineering and technology. During his visits to our sites, he engaged with hundreds of employees and demonstrated his impressive knowledge and deep interest in vehicle design, engineering and manufacturing.’ ■

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Freighted with autonomy While companies such as Tesla, Uber, Cruise and Waymo have been making a lot of noise about their self-driving cars, another group of almost a dozen companies have been quietly leapfrogging them in their quest to create autonomous trucks, which promise to have a profound impact on the transportation of freight

VOLVO

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DRIVERLESS TRUCKS

A

ll over the world, heavygoods-vehicle drivers are in short supply. In the UK, there is a shortage of about 100,000 drivers; Germany has 45,000 truck driving vacancies and estimates suggest that two-thirds of all German lorry drivers could retire within 15 years; and the American Trucking Associations has projected that the driver shortage in the USA will exceed 160,000 by 2028. Numerous factors are to blame, but chief among them is an ageing demographic: the US Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that in 2019, the average

age of a commercial truck driver in the USA was 55 years old; in the UK, the average age is 48 years, almost half of drivers are over 50, and only one per cent are under 25.

Logistics companies are scrambling to find ways to convince young people to join the industry, but elsewhere, numerous start-ups are working their way towards another solution: do away with drivers altogether. Among the companies vying to bring robotic trucks to our roads are TuSimple, Gatik, Aurora, Embark, Locomation, Plus.ai and Waymo, the Alphabet spin-off that

has long focused on self-driving cars. The general consensus is that the current leaders in the race are TuSimple, Aurora and Waymo.

The underlying technology in both autonomous cars and autonomous trucks is relatively similar. Both use sensors – typically a combination of cameras, lidars and radars – to collect data that are then fed into an onboard computer that controls the vehicle using algorithms finetuned during extensive training and simulation that may involve millions of kilometres of test driving.

Trucks offer an excellent platform

VOLVO

Volvo’s distinctive cab-less Vera autonomous truck

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catastrophic. You don’t get a small accident with a big rig truck,’ says Bruno Bowden, a former engineering manager for simulation at Aurora.

‘Because of the heavier weight of the vehicle and the high speeds, if something goes wrong, it’s catastrophic. You don’t get a small accident with a big rig truck’

Volvo is working with ferry and logistics company DFDS in Sweden

‘The heart of the problem for driving is predicting about five seconds into the future.’ However, with trucks, he says, that figure doubles.

Freight-hauling trucks have another advantage over passenger vehicles: they typically follow fixed routes and spend most of their time on highways, which tend to be more predictable (no traffic lights, cyclists or pedestrians) and easier to navigate than local streets.

In the USA, about 80 per cent of freight travels along 20 per cent of the country’s highways. ‘By automating these high-volume freight routes, there will be tremendous efficiencies gained in terms of improved safety, increased capacity, lower operating costs and a reduced environmental impact,’ say Jim Mullen, TuSimple’s chief administrative and legal officer.

TuSimple’s fleet of 40 autonomous trucks is already hauling goods between freight depots in Arizona and Texas, following routes that are about 95 per cent highway under what’s known as level 3 or ‘supervised’ autonomy (see Autonomy levels), in

WAYMO, VOLVO

for autonomy. Their size makes it possible to mount sensors higher off the ground, giving them an improved field of view and also enables greater processing power for the on-board computers. Both of these are important factors because trucks also bring specific problems. Because they are much heavier than cars, they have a much longer stopping distance and hence need to be able to sense conditions further in advance. In most autonomous cars, the primary lidar sensor has a practical range of about 200 metres; whenever possible, the multiple high-definition cameras on TuSimple’s trucks look up to a kilometre ahead, which is about twice as far out as professional truck drivers look while driving. The onboard computer system uses input from the cameras to detect other vehicles and then calculates their trajectories.

The weight of the vehicles also means that there’s greater scope for damage if an accident does occur. ‘Because of the heavier weight of the vehicle and the high speeds, if something goes wrong, it’s

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TUSIMPLE, VOLVO

Waymo has adapted technology developed for self-driving cars for use with Class 8 trucks

DRIVERLESS TRUCKS

AUTONOMY LEVELS

Volvo’s self-driving FMX truck is being tested in operations in the Boliden mine, Sweden

WAYMO, VOLVO

TUSIMPLE, VOLVO

A TUSimple-computer’s-eye view of the road

which a driver rides in the cab, ready to take the wheel if required.

TuSimple plans to achieve level 4 autonomy by 2024. Later this year, the company will hold its first ‘driver out’ test, running a fully autonomous truck for more than 100 miles, including at night, to show what its technology can do. ‘This is no longer a science project,’ says Chuck Price, chief product officer at TuSimple. ‘It’s not research; it’s engineering.’

The southwestern US states – specifically, Texas, Arizona and New Mexico – are where most of the testing of autonomous trucks has been taking place, due to a combination of favourable regulation, weather and road conditions. ‘In 2018, we identified Texas as the ideal location to start commercialising our autonomous trucks because of the dry weather, massive freight economy, strong highway infrastructure, innovation friendly regulations and public-private partnership potential.

It’s why our first route was Dallas– Houston in 2019,’ says Kodiak Robotics CEO Don Burnette.

One reasons why driverless trucks have attracted so much interest is the cost reductions they offer, projected to amount to 30 per cent or more per kilometre. They offer increased productivity because vehicles can essentially operate 24/7, stopping only to re-fuel. The algorithms that control driving behaviour also ensure that the trucks choose the safest and most efficient way to drive, using their brakes less often than humanoperated trucks, which improves fuel economy by about ten per cent. By driving more steadily, with less sideto-side movement in their lane, they bring additional efficiency gains and minimise tyre wear. The improved safety promised by driverless trucks is also likely to bring down insurance costs. ‘As long as there are human drivers out there, there will be accidents, but you are taking a lot of cases away where it’s the truck driver’s fault, due to fatigue or other factors,’ says Bart De Muynck, an analyst at market-research company Gartner. ‘When you take that fatigue away, you improve safety.’

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AS SET OUT by the Society of Automotive Engineers, the different levels of autonomy for vehicles are as follows: ■ LEVEL 1: a single aspect is automated, for example, radarmanaged cruise control and lane-keep assist.

■ LEVEL 2: two or more elements are automated, for example, cruise control systems that take over directional, throttle and brake function, lane-changing modes and self-parking features.

■ LEVEL 3: conditional automation, where the vehicle can control all aspects of driving but a driver must be on hand to respond to a request to intervene.

■ LEVEL 4: fully autonomous in controlled situations, such as particular times of day, in certain weather conditions or on premapped routes.

■ LEVEL 5: fully autonomous anywhere, anytime. ■

Cheng Lu, TuSimple’s CEO, goes further, stating that removing human drivers and allowing trucks to run more hours on the road will cut freight costs in half. ‘When we started the company in 2015, it was very obvious to us that logistics would be first,’ Lu said. ‘We’re hauling freight, we’re not hauling people, so obviously it’s a different technology framework.

I don’t know why it’s taken some people five years to realise this.’

TuSimple recently said that trucks using its automated driving systems while hauling fresh watermelons along a 1,530-kilometre route from Nogales, Arizona, to Oklahoma City cut ten hours off what’s normally a 24-hour journey. Although a human driver was on board for safety purposes and worked on the pick-up and delivery of the produce, during the long middle segment of the drive, the vehicle drove itself.

While most of the testing of selfdriving trucks on public roads has taken place in the USA and China, Scania, which is working with TuSimple, was recently granted permission by the

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Most observers agree that ‘depot-todepot’ transportation, where freighthauling trucks travel on highways between reloading centres, will most likely be the first use for completely autonomous trucks on public roads.

Human drivers would handle local driving and cargo loading and delivery, while the self-driving trucks would operate in the more controlled highway environment. ‘We have come so far in the development of self-driving vehicles that the technology may be ready to be introduced to the market already within the next five years for this type of transportation. However, it will take longer before autonomous vehicles for driving on roads with twoway traffic and in urban environments becomes a reality,’ says Nordin.

Another option under consideration is human-guided autonomous convoying, where a human-controlled and

supervised lead truck is followed by a self-driving truck. The driver would drive the trucks manually through the surface streets and onto the highway, at which point the autonomous system would be engaged.

Human drivers would handle local driving and cargo loading and delivery, while the self-driving trucks would operate in the more controlled highway environment It’s clear that the automation of trucking isn’t a question of if, but of when, where and how. And at the current speed of development, the when looks as though it will be sooner than you think. ■

EINRIDE

Swedish Transport Agency to carry out human-driver-supervised tests on the E4 motorway between Södertälje and Jönköping. A test engineer will also be on board to monitor and verify the information transmitted to the truck’s onboard computer by its sensor array. ‘In the coming years, we also expect to be able to test the technology in other European countries and in China,’ says Hans Nordin, who heads up Scania’s Hub2hub project.

Scania has already gained considerable experience testing self-driving trucks for use in mining transportation in Australia, which has been taking place since 2017. ‘The experience gained from these tests shows that autonomous vehicles can become a reality in just a few years for transportation in closed areas such as mines and terminals,’ says Nordin.

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SCANIA, SANDVIK

IN POD WE TRUST

SWEDISH START-UP Einride is taking a slightly different approach. In addition to producing electric heavy trucks driven by humans, it’s also developing autonomous electric pods that are designed to carry freight. In addition to operating autonomously without human intervention, the unusual-looking cabless pods can be controlled by a remote operator who may be located hundreds of kilometres away using Einride’s own in-house tele-operation technology.

Einride plans to produce pods with differing levels of autonomy and functionality for use in different settings.

For example, the fully autonomous AET (Autonomous Electric Transport) 1 Pod is for use in closed facilities with predetermined routes, while the AET 2 pod is designed for closed-facility operation but also has the capability to travel on public roads over short distances.

Both have top speeds of 30 km/h, weigh 26 tonnes, a payload capacity of 16 tonnes and a battery range of 130–180 kilometres. The AET 3 pod is designed for rural use and the AET4 for highway travel.

Einride claims that its new vehicles will ‘reduce transport costs by up to 60 per cent and CO2 emissions by a staggering 90 per cent’. It aims to have the level 3 and 4 pods ready to ship to customers in 2022 and 2023. ■

DRIVERLESS TRUCKS

EINRIDE

SCANIA, SANDVIK

ROCK STARS AS IS TRUE OF MICROGRIDS (see page 16), the mining industry has been an enthusiastic early adopter of autonomous-vehicle technology.

At present, Australia dominates the market; in 2020, it had 80 per cent out of the almost 500 autonomous haul trucks that were in operation at surface mines around the world.

Fortescue Metals Group’s Solomon Hub iron ore mine in the Pilbara in Western Australia is currently being developed into a fully autonomous operation.

While Volvo, Scania, Sandvik and Saab are all developing driverless mining vehicles, some of which are now in active use, Komatsu and

Caterpillar together account for almost 95 per cent of the autonomous surface trucks in operation.

Mostly operating in iron ore and coal mines, the trucks offer improvements in productivity, a reduction in accidents and operating costs, increased machine and tyre life, and lower fuel consumption.

Estimates suggest that the technology reduces operational costs by about 20 per cent and improves productivity by about 30 per cent, while cutting the number of safety-related incidents by half. According to Tim Day, vice president of BHP Billiton, this last improvement is the primary motive

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Above: Scania’s first fully autonomous self-driving concept truck, the AXL; Inset: Sandvik’s TH663i truck can be fitted with the company’s Automine control system

for the adoption of driverless trucks: ‘The single biggest reason is safety,’ he says. In 2017, the World Economic Forum predicted that the automation of mining machines would save more than 1,000 lives and avoid 44,000 injuries.

The vehicles use a combination of cameras, lidar, radar and GPS to navigate their way around a predefined course that takes them from loading units to dump locations.

They are operated and controlled by a central supervisory computer that collects information from their sensors and directs them around the course, setting speeds and directions. The trucks can also effectively ‘talk’ to other trucks in order to optimise loading and hauling efficiency. ■

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29/06/2021 20:44

MOHAMED ABDULRAHEEM/SHUTTERSTOCK

Designing for and from recycling: What’s next?

RECYCLED PLASTIC

MOHAMED ABDULRAHEEM/SHUTTERSTOCK

S

Mark Hester BSc (Hons) MCSD, co-founder and director of technology at London-based strategic design and engineering agency the Imagination Factory, explores ways that designers can help to solve the world’s ongoing plastic crisis

ince the beginning of its mass production during the 1940s, plastic has become a ubiquitous part of human life.

As of 2018, global annual plastic production amounted to almost 360 million tonnes. By 2050, production is expected to have tripled and will account for a fifth of global oil consumption. Unfortunately, the low cost of production and widespread use mean that far too much plastic ends up in our environment, either as landfill or as litter.

It has been a few years since China stopped accepting the contents of our recycling bins. Since then, pressure has been mounting globally for manufacturers to take a more resource-conscious approach to design, with the end of a product’s life in mind. All too often, product lifecycles are linear rather than circular because the initial design fails to take into account the recycling of the product’s constituent materials.

It’s clear that we need to work towards significantly reducing our reliance on virgin and singleuse plastics. As designers and engineers, we’re strategically placed to have a significant impact on this problem by making smarter decisions about the materials we specify for the products we design.

By understanding the choices that we make about recyclability at the earliest stages of our design thinking, we can significantly affect the end of a product’s life and greatly increase the proportion of the product that’s available for recycling. The ultimate goal is to create products that can be turned back into their original materials at the end of their life and used to make more products.

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FOR AND FROM

There are two elements to this process: designing for and from recycling. Designing for recycling means creating a product that enables better and easier recycling at the end of its life without compromising on its requirements during the useful stage of its existence; designing from recycling means creating a product (wholly or partly) made from recycled materials.

There are many reasons why designers and engineers struggle to engage with designing for and from recycling, but it doesn’t have to be this way. A project with which I’ve been heavily involved over the past four years proved that working together across sectors is the most effective way to improve the situation. But at a local level, if each of us plays our part in understanding how designing differently and increasing the demand for recycled plastics effects change, we’ll see more rapid improvements.

As designers and engineers, we’re strategically placed to have a significant impact on this problem by making smarter decisions about the materials we specify for the products we design Obviously, there are obstacles to the use of recycled materials that need to be dealt with. Perhaps your company has had a bad experience with recycled materials, such as unpleasant smells, failures in functional testing or poor surface finish. There may also be issues related to cost or availability, or simply a lack of expertise or confidence when it comes to designing for recycling.

Cost is a potentially significant stumbling block. Recyclers currently operate on very small margins, so turning products back into useable materials favours metals rather than plastics. Producing recycled plastic

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Sony’s HX99 camera features the company’s own SORPLAS recycled plastic

can also require a lot of effort (and hence cost) compared with virgin plastic. This is compounded by the fact that the cost of virgin plastic doesn’t currently factor in the impact on the environment of the oil used in its production, nor the cost of disposal.

The decreasing price of oil has also made it harder for recycled plastic to compete against virgin materials.

Two very different worlds with very different needs must come together for things to improve. On the one hand, you have design and manufacturing, and on the other, you have material recovery. Typically, these two worlds haven’t communicated often or effectively. Designers and engineers haven’t understood the implications that the decisions they make when designing a product have on the material-recovery phase of that product. And those carrying out the recycling haven’t always considered the requirements of designers and engineers.

As designers, when choosing or specifying a material for a project, we want to be confident that it will be repeatable and reliable, and will consistently behave the way we want it to. Recyclers haven’t always been able to provide us with that confidence;

a high-end product has been particularly difficult to source. If you were using a plastic for garden furniture, for example, many recycled plastics would be fine, but it would be too risky to use the same material in, say, a new vacuum cleaner.

This isn’t down to a lack of willingness on the part of the recyclers.

It has more to do with the level of demand from manufacturers and their willingness to take on some of the risk to see progress, driving down some of the costs in order to encourage more widespread adoption of recycled plastic. Recyclers need to be supplying materials that enable them to make money from material recovery.

They also need to understand that engineers want to use recycled plastic, but need it to reach a certain level of quality; it’s rare for a recycler to go to a manufacturer and ask, ‘What is it that you want the plastic to do?’

Engineers want to use recycled plastic, but need it to reach a certain level of quality; it’s rare for a recycler to go to a manufacturer and ask, ‘What is it that you want the plastic to do?’

CIRCULAR ECONOMY

Five years ago, we began to talk with a group of innovative thinkers across Europe, including manufacturers, polymer scientists, designers and recyclers, about how we might collaborate to bring these two worlds together and find a way forward. The result was PolyCE (Polymers for the Circular Economy). With EU support, we were able to create new materials together and prove that they could be produced at sufficient scale to make them economically viable.

One of the 20-member consortium’s most exciting breakthroughs involved the Philips SenseSeo coffee

machine. Philips challenged its coffee machine department to develop the most sustainable Senseo machine possible by incorporating recycled material and closing the loop. The creation of a Senseo Eco demonstrator enabled Philips to overcome challenges such as material availability, heat stability and colour freedom while also reducing the product’s environmental footprint, creating new and useful aesthetics, and helping to raise consumer awareness. The process proved that the machine could be made with three quarters recycled content and provided a test case for the integration of recycled plastics in new products, thus helping to build the internal confidence needed to continue sustainable development at Philips.

We also produced a set of guidelines for designing for and from recycling, focusing on the consumer electronics market, which has often been neglected. However, the principles can be applied across the design of most durable plastic products.

Products represent the total assembly of a collection of parts.

At the product level, we must consider things such as usage, end of life, collection, pre-treatment, shredding, sorting and turning back into useful material. So, for example, we should avoid making assemblies with adhesives because they can interfere with shredding and sorting. At the part level, we must think about the material properties, production, moulding and geometry.

Here, we might consider trying a recycled material instead of a virgin plastic to see how it performs, even if much of the overall assembly remains unchanged.

When designing from recycling strategies, it’s important to consider the four main parameters

Left: the HP Elite Dragonfly; Right: the Philips SenseSeo Eco coffee machine

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RECYCLED PLASTIC mentioned above – material, geometry, mould and production – each of which bring specific challenges.

For materials, there may be a lack of specification data or information on how to best process the material, and there will likely be limited colour options and availability. When considering geometry, designers may need to experiment because the upper and lower limits of what can be achieved with the recycled material might not be known, or there may be little data available on mould flow. There is also the possibility that contaminants in the material will damage the mould, or extra cleaning might be required.

And when it ultimately comes to production, problems may arise due to a lack of stability and repeatability between plastic batches.

To counteract these challenges, we recommend using what we call the drop-in method, which is based on three key pillars: a complexity-level tool, a ‘look and learn’ approach and six steps to material approval.

The complexity-level tool is a flowchart that allows designers to identify how feasible it will be to swap an existing part made from virgin plastic to one that is made from recycled plastic. Classifying the product parts creates a roadmap and a starting point. So, for example, it’s advisable to start with the ‘lowhanging fruit’ – parts that have relatively low technical and aesthetic requirements and are hence easier to manufacture from recycled materials – before moving on to more difficult parts. It also allows the identification of parts where it’s currently unfeasible to switch.

The look-and-learn approach involves designers building into their processes the creation of ‘demonstrators’: physical samples made using existing moulds that enable testing of the material’s aesthetic and functional properties, as well as the material’s behaviour during processing. This approach is all about removing specific uncertainties within each of the six

Google, Apple and Logitech have all committed to increasing the amount of recycled plastic in their products. Many of the larger electronics brands are also developing their own custom post-consumer recycled plastics in partnership with their suppliers

steps below. It will help to determine the feasibility and desirability of the recycled materials for your purpose and enables you to compare virgin and recycled plastics, and find out to what extent they match.

Once you’ve chosen which parts will be made with recycled plastics, the development process begins.

There are then six steps to final material approval: material selection, property testing, pilot moulding, a large moulding trial, product assembly and, finally, mass production.

DRIVING DEMAND

The guidelines also go into detail about specific areas that designers need to look out for when designing for and from recycling. For example, when designing for recycling, it’s obviously best to avoid hazardous or polluting components, but if they must be used, it’s important to enable easy access to, and removal of, those components. When using recyclable materials, it’s important to avoid coatings, foam, thermosets and composites, plating and galvanising, uniform high-gloss surfaces, glass fibre, polymer blends and additives.

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You should also minimise the use of magnets, thermoplastic elastomers and thermoset rubbers, and where possible, use plastics that are in common products today. And finally, use material combinations that will aid liberation, so avoid overmoulding, moulding in inserts, bolts and the like, and attaching ferrous and non-ferrous materials.

If you’re involved in the design and manufacture of plastic products, consider how you might embed these guidelines into your business’s workflow. But don’t try to tackle the plastic problem alone – find an advocate inside or outside your business who’s already doing this and can provide you with advice and support. Ultimately, the aim is to help drive the demand for recycled plastic by finding ways to incorporate it in your next project. By doing so, you’ll be helping to save the world, a little bit at a time. ■ The full PolyCE guidelines can be downloaded here: tinyurl.com/nt6wunsk. Learn more about the Imagination Factory here: www.imaginationfactory.co.uk

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BOOK REVIEW

What if?

Jet Man: The Making and Breaking of Frank Whittle, Genius of the Jet Revolution by Duncan Campbell-Smith Head of Zeus, 2020 ON A STORMY November evening in 2018, I drove from Bristol to Rugby to stay the night at Brownsover Hall Hotel. I had booked a place to attend a lecture there the following day, on the life and career of the British inventor and aviator Sir Frank Whittle, to be presented by his son, Ian, a former RAF and airline pilot. The lecture was to be held in the very room that had been his father’s office during and immediately after the Second World War. After breakfast, I drove into Coventry, where I am a Freeman in recognition of my ‘servitude’ as an indentured apprentice in and near the city. I found my way to the suburb of Earlsdon, where I stood for a short while before a small terraced house that bore a small plaque above the front window, marking it as Sir Frank’s birthplace.

My interest in the life and times of this great British innovator stems from the fact that I regard him as having laid the foundations for my lifetime career in gas turbine design.

I own several of his biographies, but was still pleased to read Duncan Campbell-Smith’s new tome.

Jet Man provides a very readable, authoritative and unbiased insight into Whittle’s life and work between 1928 and 1948. The book has been thoroughly researched by the author, who goes into considerable detail; at times he gives an almost dayby-day account of the trials and tribulations that Whittle experienced while dealing with a highly sceptical bureaucracy. With a career lifetime in gas turbine design behind me,

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I would have preferred to see more technical detail of the design issues and development problems that Whittle encountered; however, to do justice to this work would probably require another volume.

In November 1929, the former RAF boy apprentice was given short shrift for his revolutionary ideas by a man who had also been considering the possibility of using a gasturbine device to drive an aeroplane propeller. A decade later, that same man, AA Griffith, was still pursuing a complex concept that had yet to work.

In contrast, Whittle, with relatively little in the way of funding, had demonstrated a working prototype of his simple turbojet.

Even with the evidence of progressive improvements through three rebuilds, there were sceptics, among them Major George Bulman, who continued to be opposed to the accelerated development of Whittle’s engine, more than likely because of the negative experience he’d had with a disastrous engine project, the ‘Dragonfly’, at the end of the First World War. Nevertheless, his antipathy persisted, even after the Gloster E.28/39 ‘Pioneer’ flew successfully in 1941, becoming Britain’s first jetengined aircraft, and design was proceeding on the Gloster ‘Meteor’, which was to be powered by two of Whittle’s engines.

Bulman’s opposition was clearly misplaced. Whittle’s W.1 engine, which powered the first flight of the E.28/39 in 1941, had a higher thrust-toweight ratio, was more efficient, had considerably better handling and was far more reliable than the axial flow engines that powered the Luftwaffe’s much-vaunted Me262 in 1944.

Bulman was also implicated in the duplicitous behaviour of the Rover Car Company, which was contracted

Frank Whittle in 1946 during a lecture tour

for production manufacture of the Whittle W.2B engine. This engine, with significant changes relative to its predecessors, suffered from a problem that continues to be the bane of all gas turbine engineers to this day – a phenomenon known as ‘surging’. The eventual solution, the so-called No.13 Diffuser, was validated after intensive development work.

Rover had stealthily incorporated design changes that they hadn’t divulged to Whittle and they failed to deliver a flight-standard engine after more than two years’ work.

Their involvement ended with the handing over of their Clitheroe and Barnoldswick factories to RollsRoyce, in exchange for Rolls-Royce’s tank engine works in Nottingham.

Rolls-Royce went on to successfully produce their equivalent of the W.2B as the ‘Welland’. This was followed by the development of Rover’s ‘straight through’ version of the W.2B, which became the ‘Derwent I’.

As Jet Man’s subtitle – and the above examples – indicate, Whittle had a difficult time of it in the UK. Even after his achievements were recognised, he was treated in an appalling manner here in the UK, to the extent that he spent his last and, perhaps, happiest years in the USA. Campbell-Smith pointedly includes in his prologue the introductory and concluding paragraphs from a memorandum regarding a jetpropelled interceptor fighter, dated 25 October 1938, that was submitted to the Air Ministry by Squadron Leader F Whittle. Campbell-Smith asks his readers to imagine what might have been had Whittle’s genius been recognised and a secret jet engine and jet fighter programme been initiated before the war. What if a few squadrons of Gloster ‘Pioneers’ had been in service during the summer of 1940 as the Blitz began? What if? ■ GJ Jeffery

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MEMBER PROFILE

Lesley Wray MSc PhD MIED

Lesley Wray in 2020

Receiving her PhD from Betty Boothroyd, chancellor of the Open University

A MEMBER OF THE IED for more than 30 years, Lesley Wray grew up on a new council estate during the 1950s.

‘I went to an overcrowded primary school – my class was one of the smaller ones, with 47 pupils,’ she says.

Despite the challenges she faced, she passed the 11 Plus and went on to attend the local grammar school.

However, when it came to choosing a career, she discovered that, far from encouraging her to follow her dream of becoming a draughtsman, all the school could suggest was that she become a teacher, social worker or go into the civil service. ‘Luckily, the male careers officer helped,’ she says. ‘He explained that I was unlikely to get into engineering, but helped me to apply to the Ministry of Public Building and Works, which accepted me as a student architectural assistant.’

And so, in 1965, Lesley’s career began. Her training as an architectural assistant provided her with draughting skills that she then developed in a series of different jobs outside the civil service. ‘I tried cartographic and hydrographic draughting, and took every available opportunity to expand my knowledge,’ she says.

Eventually, some seven years later, still before the Sex Discrimination Act had come into force, she got a job as a draughting assistant in a local engineering company. ‘The chief draughtsman trained me well and

Thanks on retirement

encouraged me to learn as much as I could,’ she says. ‘He helped me to move on to other companies, all the time expanding my experience and knowledge. In those days, there was no such thing as a career plan or continued professional development – your career was in your own hands and experience and capability counted far more then qualifications.’

‘In those days, there was no such thing as a career plan or continued professional development – your career was in your own hands and experience and capability counted far more then qualifications’ As a young woman, Lesley’s career often took second place to her family commitments. In late 1980, her husband changed jobs, which involved a move to the West Country, where she joined the Westland Helicopter Group as a design engineer. ‘I worked in various parts of the company, always in a similar role but learning about the many different specialist areas involved in aerospace design,’ she says.

While her practical knowledge was gained on the job, she also

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Celebrating the publication of her book on local history

undertook academic studies through the Open University, eventually becoming a senior design engineer specialising in helicopter flight controls. ‘I might have made the final step to principal engineer,’ she says, ‘but I had to take 11 months off sick to conquer cancer. The only time I ever broke down in the office was when I returned and was greeted with a huge bouquet of flowers from the men with whom I worked.’

Having retired 12 years ago at the age of 60, Lesley would recommend a career in engineering design to anyone with an interest in solving problems, regardless of their gender.

When it came to problems with her career, the only ones she ever encountered were from people outside the industry who assumed that there would be a lot of discrimination. ‘Teachers were particularly bad,’ she says. ‘One even went so far as to tell me that I must have suffered discrimination in engineering, and if I hadn’t noticed it, I should be ashamed.

‘We need young people to become engineering designers,’ she continues.

‘Their visions of the future, their familiarity with new technologies, and their enthusiasm for solving the problems previous generations have caused is our best hope for the human race to continue to have a wonderful, diverse planet to inhabit.’ ■

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THE LARGEST UK EVENT DEDICATED TO DESIGN ENGINEERING 19 - 20 October 2021 Ricoh Arena, Coventry @EngDesignShow

THE ONLY EVENT POWERED BY NE W FOR 20 21

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Join us at EDS to stay ahead of the curve with everything to do with the future of engineering, electronics and embedded design.

Over 50,000 design engineers choose us to gain the latest knowledge. Don’t miss out, join our engineering community!

I N T E R N AT I O N A L 17th Annual

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DON’T MISS OUT 25/06/2021 21:36 10:53 29/06/2021

IED NEWS

NEW JOURNAL, WEBSITE AND MEDIA PRESENCE NO DOUBT, YOU’LL Driver not HAVE included noticed some changes recently in the ways in which we communicate with you. This is due to a new strategy that has been developed by the IED’s Council, with the aim of creating a more frequent communication stream between HQ, the Trustee and the membership. Key changes include: ■ A bigger, brighter magazine – Engineering Designer is now a 44page quarterly journal packed with premium-quality content and the latest news, views and information about the design community. Our new publishing house, Syon Media, has been working on a reformat and redesign, the first issue of which will

ed

THE JOURNAL OF THE INSTITUTION OF ENGINEERING DESIGNERS

ENGINEERING DESIGNER

16 POWER PLAY

Can microgrids finally bring electricity to rural Africa?

22 HRH PRINCE PHILIP

Remembering our Patron, a tireless supporter of design

JULY–SEPTEMBER 2021

How autonomous trucks are changing the face of freight

32 WASTE NOT

What can designers do to solve the plastic crisis?

have been delivered to your door (in compostable wrap) in early July.

■ A monthly digital magazine – the quarterly printed journal will be complemented by a monthly digital publication, designed for less weighty content, more news items, more recent events and more profiles of, and content by, members. Delivered to your inbox every month, this digital publication will keep you up to date with everything that’s going on in between the quarterly publications.

■ Weekly newsletters – Syon Media is launching a weekly newsletter featuring hot-off-the-press content that simply can’t wait until the next quarterly journal, such as industry announcements, discussion pieces and news about events.

■ Engineering Designer app – everything in one place, giving you quick access to content, opinions, videos and profiles no matter where you are.

REGISTERED ENVIRONMENTAL PRACTITIONER LAUNCHED WE’RE REALLY EXCITED to announce that the IED has recently been granted a licence to award Registered Environmental Practitioner (REnvP) status to our suitably qualified and experienced members. By making everyday decisions within their profession, designers play a vital role in the protection of the environment and sustainability. Whether it’s through materials selection for a product or working on an environmentally focused project, designers can have a huge positive influence on the environmental impact of both products and projects.

As a licensed body of the Society for the Environment, the IED has been able to award Chartered Environmentalist (CEnv) status for several years and we’re really pleased that we’re now able to extend this professional opportunity to those members working at REnvP level.

To find out more about the new REnvP registration, including the competencies required and the assessment process, please contact Linda, our membership manager, at linda@ied.org.uk or on 01373 822 801. ■

OBITUARY: MIKE OSBORNE IT IS WITH great sadness that the staff and volunteers at the Institution note the passing of Mike Osborne, former secretary and chief executive of the IED. Mike joined the IED in the post of deputy secretary in April 1982, before succeeding Peter Booker as secretary in 1989. Over the next 11 years, he became a Member of the Institution and served as CEO, leading the IED through many developments and changes, both internally and externally.

A driven and dedicated leader, Mike had previously served in the military, which showed through in his attention to detail and his passion for order and accountability. His methods for writing procedures and recording events are still used today and our licensing organisations use our practices as a model to share with other professional bodies. In 2000, Mike retired from the position of CEO, but the following year he volunteered to join both the Editorial Committee and Council, on which he served for three years.

Mike was a solid, reliable character who was well liked by the volunteers and staff, and he will be greatly missed.

Our thoughts are with his children, Mark and Jane, his grandchildren and Margaret, his long-term companion. ■

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■ And, coming soon, podcasts and a new website – watch this space!

In order for you to benefit from these new communication channels, it’s essential that we have your current contact details. Please contact us at membership@ied.org.uk to make sure that we have your correct email address and mobile phone number.

Communication is a two-way process.

If you have any content you would like to share with the wider membership, or an idea for a profile or news piece, please contact our new editor, Geordie Torr, at editor@engineering-designer.com and we’ll do our best to incorporate the information into the next journal/ newsletter/podcast. We would love to hear all about what you’re up to, the projects that you’re working on, any news from your organisations, events that you’re holding and your personal achievements.

Please do get in touch and we hope that you enjoy your new-look communications from the IED. ■

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IED NEWS

ELECTIONS AND REGISTRATIONS TRANSFER TO FELLOW Dirk Schaefer

Merseyside

REGISTRATION AS REGISTERED CAD MANAGER Ray Faiers Buckinghamshire REGISTRATION AS CHARTERED ENGINEER Laura Read Bristol Lee Price Cornwall Jonathan Hamill Bristol ELECTION TO MEMBER Rajesh Kumar Philip Gowers David Faulkner James Pinkham Karan Singh Michael Belk Stefan Nowinski Karen Winfield Peter Tuthill Zain Ansari Kevin Naik James Clarke James Conway Ben Younger

Northampton Greater Manchester Hampshire Hampshire Birmingham Kent Oxfordshire Nottingham Penarth Buckinghamshire Nottingham Huddersfield North Yorkshire Kent

ELECTION TO STUDENT MEMBER Ryan Vincent Peter Dascombe-Olson James Abbott-Capps Dominic Callaghan Sibylle Rerolle Bhuvaneswaran Palrasu Cain Holliday Thomas McWilliam Myles Jenkinson Hannah Knight Thomas Lambi Samuel Dawson Ramneek Ahluwalia Alexandra Dust Naini Mandal Samuel Hansford Muhammad Naeem Alexander Rawley Sibylle Repolle Chloe Farman Mario Pozzi Rebecca Wallace

UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL Sifan Yan Matthew Lawson Alfrieda Hahn Tong Zhang Jinwie Shi Shengya Gao Harriet Elizabeth Hebden Hamzah Babaria

Cardiff Metropolitan University Cardiff Metropolitan University Stafford University Open University Imperial College London University of Strathclyde Liverpool John Moores University Loughborough University Bucks New University Imperial College London Nottingham Trent University Manchester Met University University of London University of Warwick Imperial College London University of Hertfordshire NED University, Pakistan Loughborough University Imperial College London Anglia Ruskin University Chelmsford Poli Design Milan Perth UHI Lanting Feng Zhiyong Xie Wanxin Cao Qinglin Liu Guanyao Chen Thomas Hallmark Evelyn Purcell Yifie Fan Jianqing Laing

LONDON SOUTH BANK UNIVERSITY Anthony A Donnai Shannon Noreen Quirke Josh Lawson Myers Philippa E Peart Bethany Elizabeth Browne Thomas Edward Casey Daniel Philip Warren Luke Vincent Handley Sergi-Andre Miranda-Benitez Zaynah Amirah Chaudhry Jaafer Al-Rubaye Xanthe Lending Rafael Kharkharian Quinn Hilaire Nathan Osahon Ogunyemi Ben Kelsey Melvin Omari Osei Benjamin Le Jose Andres Ortiz Rizwan Ahmed Jesse Kojo Anderson Hamdan Alauddin Xanthe Lending Julia Kubiak Scott Penfold Muhammad Shuaib Hasan Dan Goodwin Adam Mohammed Abdur Md Mohsin Ali Raheem Butt Lewis Whybrow Bosion Kabashi Katie Rankine Javane Lawrie

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LONDON SOUTH BANK UNIVERSITY Melvin Osei Owen Grosvenor Jogesh Gurung

Zaynab Mohammed Patel Clara Meunier

PORTSMOUTH UNIVERSITY Maria Akintunde Adriana Almeida Maria Ameyinoge Mark Anthony Jack Alan Batchelor Danielle Bautista Robert Bean Christian James Beecher Abubakar Musa Bello Tyler Matthew Berry Holly Boalch Ethan Max Bronziet Luke Bushby Steven Cabell Nicholas Cade Joshua Capon Matthew Caton Igor Cazamir Pueh Koon Chua Madhura Dixit George John Rymer Dunn Emily Duong A P Eagle Jaime Echevarria Klein Fernandes Thomas Fort Bryan Robert Freebrey Alvaro Garbi Sancho Luke Goodbody

Matthew Granil William Arthur Grover Harriet Ivy Hastings-Noble David Hayward Brianna Hofstetter Joel Holland George Hopkins Nikodem Hoppe Edward J L Howe Miss Joanna Hulley Jake Ireland Rhys James Maxwell Jenns Fehim Korkmaz Miss Sophie Lal Joshua Lane Joe Langford Sahleem Lewis Ramy Francis Lynch Ben Lyon Jenny McNamee stanley McQueen Aidan Mitchell Benita Mubiru-Lwanga James Niedermeier Alexa Nunes Chan Jamie O’Shea Kirstie O’Halloran Jonathan Otun Martyna Magdalena Pietrzak

Lewis Plested James Powell José Antonio Prieto Corces James David Pritchard Abneer Qamar Azizur Rahman Zahir Raja James William Renouf Hayden Charles Runacres James Alexander Sanmogan Venggkadesh Sathevil Tom Savas Daniel James Scott Simon Ian Scully Toby Setchell Hannah Smurthwaite Inês Cristina Oliveira De Sousa Eloise Spruce Prakpian Sribang Jasper Teunissen Darius Jake Tomlin-Fosh Chay Tudberry Madeline Turner Hayley Walker Benjamin Waddell-Yerburgh Ollie Watts Grace Weller Molly Wray Alex Wright

UNIVERSITY OF BOTSWANA Omphile Percy Jonas Thandiwe Kelendria Headman Kabelo Shepherd Moroke Aone Godfrey Bontsi Brian Basimanebotlhe Ofentse Magasola Mpaphi Peros Whitney Nanwi Ntema Thatayaone Majere Kentse Natasha Papiso Brian Mazibuko Alec Mosojane Mopati Ntloyathuto Kagiso Brendon Petros Bongiwe Dlamini Moeletsi Makaja Ofentse James Bakang Gontse Dithole Bonagni Sita Kgotla Rakola Mongunda Mongunda Freddy Selala Ketlego Mojatlale Michael Tlhongbotho Chepete Okgato Semadi Magole Olerato Magole Botshelo Potso Moatshe Samuel Karabo Mosetlha Leago Mongale Ntshole Kesaobaka Mosetlhane Boago Thabang Kukune Olebogeng Moilwa Altlang Abednico Phiri Jeremiah Molamu Obakeng Kebopetswe Tebogo Phiri Douglas Keokgale Boineelo Thapo Kabo Tsopane Kago Alex Maboka Clinton Seshike Thabo Tumelo Thowe

Nonofo Marope Larona Tshukudu Kagiso Sepako Louis Tshireletso Mokoma Tebogo Phillime Kalto Segwati Lincoln Lethabo magosi Phenyo Mangundu Samuel Nyangwara Jacob Obakeng Ramontsho Kenneth Tshepo Kefodile Kabo Kesiilwe Calvin Kagiso Pako Mokakapadi Godfrey Rampheng Sentle Andrew Rabatsile Theo Gontswe Zwikamu Majaye Michelle Kgotso Mabe Amantle Motswakhumo Sthandile Precious Dlamini Cheryl Teixeira Sethunya Yolanda Lekuntwane Omphile Malobela Wame Botho Chabaditsile Maatla Kedikilwe Kealeboga Martin Wantlo Molegobeng Thini Boatametse Moanaphuti Leatile Ntebele Tlhalefo Stanley Basima Kago Bachebuki Yussuf Paul Guesela Obakeng Changu Maleke Edwin Refilwe Kangwane Kerapetse Kehakgametse Wedu Albert Bofelo Rankhubu Tshepang Sibanda Ronald Lekgowa Moishepi T L Lucky Thabo Rangaka Innocent Othusitse Reginald Itiseng

Kaboyaone Moshe Bokamoso Keabetswe Thabo Thabang Rapotsanyane Tlamelo Theodora Tumedi Ledirile Mosethlane Letso Kgakgamatso Peniel Maziyane Onkabetse Kgosiemang Roscoe Rapelang Gaolatlhwe Leboko Treasure Enosa Odireleng Thabiso Mmeso Kagiso Onkemetse Wame Shaun Mokalake Thatayaone Makepe Prince Kgoboko Koketso Phaladi Phenyo Ernest Mokaeto Maatla Ngakaayagae Keneth Kagiso Reetsang Okemetse Machengedza Maduo Walter Moeng Obakeng Ntwaagae Itumeleng Vanneel Thabang Tsekane Leato Motlamorago Modisa Kenaope Maatla Orapeleng Elijah Mujokeri Firaas Dabbour Moemedi Metswi Aubrey Mosime One Erica Boabilwe Lulu Mwaipopo Kagisano Fane Monkgogi A Thokwanda Kesaobaka Mooketsi Monametsi Ezekiel Motlhagodi Thuto Moiteri Frank Game Kewagamang Zoe Khumo Mogami Onalethata Maemo Koketso Letso Basupi Jaden Muvirimi

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t n e l a t t c s a b r o j Att D E i h g u o r h t ■ The platform to engage a pool of highly qualified engineering design professionals perfect for filling your latest vacancy ■ Advertised and promoted to the industry via IED’s website and electronic newsletters ■ Candidates can search a growing list of exciting opportunities ■ The UK’s largest job site dedicated to engineering designers

https://iedjobs.com/ Ads_iED.indd 2

30/06/2021 10:58

ABOUT US

Who are we?

THIS JOURNAL IS produced by the IED for our Members and for those who have an interest in engineering and product design, as well as CAD users.

The IED, established in 1945, incorporated by Royal Charter in 2012, is a licensed body of both the Engineering Council and Society for the Environment, and we register our suitably qualified Members as Chartered Environmentalists (CEnv), Registered Environmental Practitioners (REnvP), Chartered Engineers (CEng), Incorporated Engineers (IEng) or Engineering Technicians (EngTech), Chartered Technological Product Designers (CTPD) and Registered Product Designers (RProdDes). We also offer professional recognition to CAD Managers (RCADMan) and Practitioners (RCP), and those who teach and lecture in design or CAD. We represent our Members’ interests at the highest levels and raise awareness of their professional standards, while providing a resource and information service, and a friendly and approachable route to assessment and registration.

WHY BECOME A MEMBER OF THE IED?

Membership of any professional body gives you professional recognition and

status, and an acknowledged code of conduct to work to. Membership of the IED gives you the added credibility of being acknowledged for the role you play in Design and Innovation, and helps to develop your skills and knowledge in these areas.

As well as the various registrations, membership of the IED gives you the opportunity to meet other designers and discuss issues particular to your field of expertise or interest. Many of our Members prefer to communicate primarily through the discussion forums on our website, as this lends itself to their work schedules; however, we also run seminars, meetings and events where Members can carry out continued professional development and meet up.

The IED is the only institution that represents designers in all Engineering and Product Design fields, as well as those who teach these skills.

HOW DO YOU JOIN?

We’ve made the application process as simple as possible. To maintain the high standards of membership, we need all prospective Members to: ■ Complete an application form; ■ Submit a CV and details of relevant educational qualifications.

All applicants are then assessed by a committee of Members. ■

‘For any design engineer hoping to pursue a career in industry, membership and registration shows commitment to continuing professional development and promoting good practice in those with whom we interact on a daily basis. The IED provides a natural home for those whose roles encompass a diverse range of skills.’ BH, Chartered Engineer

ARCHITECTURE

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DESIGN EDUCATION

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IT & COMPUTING

MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

AEROSPACE If you are a designer who would like to gain formal professional recognition or work in an organisation that employs designers and would like to have your employees gain membership and professional recognition, contact the IED on 01373 822 801 or send an email to: membership@ied.org.uk to discuss your next step.

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The SX Series is the latest innovation from Star, representing years of machine tool research and development to produce the next generation of sliding head technology.

Delivering superior metal cutting performance within a modest footprint, the ergonomic SX-38 Type A is a breakthrough model ideal for complex mill-turn parts.

Find out more about Star’s latest machine at www.stargb.com

SCAN HERE

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