openME 50.1

March 2019

“Beyond the Ster”

INTERVIEW: ROB FEY

MASTER THESIS: 3D PRINTING COMPOSITES

TECH: PORTABLE GADGETS

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TABLE OF CONTENTS 5 6 8 10 14 16 18 20 22 25 26 28 30 32 35 36 38 40 44 46 50 53 54 56 58 60 62 64 69 70 72 75 76 79 80 82 84 86 89 90 94 96 98 100 102 104 106 108 110 112 115

Forword Smile of Science Interview: Ines Lopez Arteaga Test track: Cayenne The art of flying Advertorial AME Blue Jay Torro Rosso sTaut Symposium: Machining the future Inventions that changed the music industry Decentralize selection Mechanical Engineering Solar Team Bachelor Final Project: Controlling Bridges the safe way Wervingsdagen Interview: Rob Fey Portable gadgets Flat earth society Interview TNO Master thesis: Handbike Aerodynamics Nuclear Fusion Het Thiende Lustrum Roller coaster Groep-ĂŠĂŠn Reach for the stars Team Solid Interview: Mirna van den Boomen 6 blind men and the elephant Interview: Ron Peerlings Venilia URE Cross word puzzle Interview Prodrive Lorum Ipsum Ford Mustang The ocean clean up Master thesis: 3D printing composites IJszeilen Advertiser AME Bachelor Final project: CVT application in a fully endurance race car Stage: Mark Hooglugt Parker solar probe ESR Bachelor Final project: Design of a miniaturised methane slip sensor for Otto engines Non-sparking Engines ASML advertorial Hephtig STORM to Spike Leukste sterrenhoekjes Puzzles Contest

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m Featured

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Does the Cayenne still resemble some of the Porsche sport car DNA or is it just another PC Hooftstraat tractor?

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Rijkswaterstaat and the Eindhoven University of Technology teamed up for the big renovation of the Dutch bridges and waterways.

The control of the water infrastructure became a lot safer due to this challenging BFP. Now you’ll read why.

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G adgets

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On your way to university the aerodynamics of your student bicycle that’s almost falling apart are not that important. For Tim de Vries, twofold World Champion in handbiking, the aerodynamics of his bike do matter.

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Editor in Chief

Maartje Maartje Borst, Borst, Sjoerd Sjoerd Narinx Narinx

Editorial Committee

Sjors Sjors van van Adrichem, Adrichem, Noud Noud Boonen, Boonen, Maartje Maartje Borst, Tjalle Tjalle Dijkstra, Dijkstra, Sebastiaan Freek Janssen, Borst, van Robbert Kemenade, Robbert Louwers,Louwers, Rik Lubbers, Rik Lubbers, Roelof Mestriner, Roelof MestriStijn ner, Middelhuis, Stijn Middelhuis, Fercan Molenaar, Fercan Molenaar, Sjoerd Narinx, Sjoerd Narinx, Joël Peeters, Joël Peeters, KarstenKarsten Slakhorst, Slakhorst, Noah Tabor, Noah Tabor, Lex Verberne, Lex Verberne, Mike van Mike devan Vleuten de Vleuten

Layout and Design

Maartje Maartje Borst, Borst, Rik Rik Lubbers, Lubbers, Roelof Roelof Mestriner, Mestriner, Joël Joël Peeters, Peeters, Lex Lex Verberne Verberne

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InMotion aims to reduce charging times to roughly the same amount of time it takes to fill up a petrol car.

6 blind men and the Elephant - Starting your own company after graduation

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Colophon February February 2019, 2019, volume volume 1, 50,issue issue1 1 ‘OpenMe’ ‘OpenMe’ is is aa publication publication by by the the study study association association of of Mechanical Mechanical Engineering Engineering Simon Stevin Stevin of of Eindhoven Eindhoven University University of of Simon Technology Technology .. ‘Open ‘Open Me’ Me’ will will be be publispublished five hed times two this times year.this year.

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There are three vital areas to an autonomous vehicle. To make it simple, they are: ‘seeing’, ‘thinking’ and ‘doing’.

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ABN-AMRO: NL87ABNA0529096358 Illustrations and Pictures

Editorial Committee, PaparaCie and members of Illustrations andStevin Pictures W.S.V. Simon Editorial Committee, PaparaCie and members of Bart van Overbeeke W.S.V. Simon Stevin Paul Raats Bart van Overbeeke

Contact

Contactof Technology Eindhoven University Eindhoven University of1.61 Technology Gemini-Noord Gemini-Noord 1.61 Den Dolech 2 DenAZDolech 2 5612 Eindhoven 5612 AZ Eindhoven Postbus 513 Postbus 513 5600 MB Eindhoven 5600 MB Eindhoven Phone: (040) 247 33 13 (040) 247 33 13 E-mail:Phone: redactie@simonstevin.tue.nl E-mail: redactie@simonstevin.tue.nl Homepage: wsv.simonstevin.tue.nl Homepage: wsv.simonstevin.tue.nl

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Subscriptions Drukkerij Snep BV It is possible to receive the openME at home. Subscriptions for the Simon Ster are available for an annual fee ofSubscriptions €15,- , including shipping. youopenME are interested or want It is possibleIntocase receive at home.

Submore information, it is possible to contact scriptions for the openME are available forthe an editor, at aforementioned annual fee of €10,including shipping. adress.

In case you are interested or want more information, it is possible to contact the editor atCirculation aforementio900adress. pieces ned © Simon Stevin MMXVIII Nothing from this edition may be duplicated Circulation and/or made public by means of press, 900 photopieces copy, microfilm or any other possible manner © Simon Stevin 2019 without priorfrom written frombe the board of Nothing thisconsent edition may duplicated W.S.V.ofSimon and/or made public by means press, Stevin. photocopy, microfilm or any other possible manner without prior written consent from the board of W.S.V. Simon Stevin.

Foreword

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Dear reader,

After fifty years, 900 pieces per publication and a lot of reading pleasure the Simon Ster is no more. From now on it will be called openME, which will only be published twice a year instead of the usual five. Apart from a new name and a new look, not much will change. The content and topics of the articles will remain the same. We now also publish a lot of articles online at www.openme.nl, so take a look on there as well if you haven’t done so yet!

The last weeks were completely filled with finishing this first paper version of openME. After lots of hard work, some stress and a lot of fun reading the articles published in this first edition, it is finally finished and I am happy to say it consists of more than 100 pages!

I am very proud of what we have achieved in the past six months. The step to go online was a big one, but also a very exciting one. More than 40 articles have already been published and we are averaging over 100 readers per article. As you can see from the magazine that is laying in your hands right now, the amount of pages and the name are not the only things that have changed. The layout of the magazine had a big change too.

With the help of Roelof Mestriner, Lex Verberne, JoĂŤl Peeters and Rik Lubbers this new look was made.

But, on to the contents of this magazine. In this edition you can read about several graduation and bachelor final projects as well as some interviews with employees from the faculty of Mechanical Engineering. Also, you can read about a test drive in a Ford Mustang and about the Parker Solar Probe which was recently launched. Not to be forgotten, we have another competition with which you can win a great prize again, so make sure to submit your solution!

Lastly, I want to wish you a lot of fun reading the articles and exploring the new look of this magazine.

Maartje Borst Editor in Chief

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Smile of science

Definition of a kilogram The kilogram is used as a measure of weight in everyday life, but how is it actually defined what a kilogram is? Up an until the 20th of May 2019 it will be defined by the fundamental unit of mass of a platinum iridium cylinder, called the International Prototype Kilogram (IPK), stored in a vault of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in France. Why change this, you ask? In everyday life the definition of a kilogram doesn’t change much, the scale on which you weigh your beer belly will still display the same number, but for researchers relying on very accurate measurement data this does make a change. National metrology institutes have a copy of the platinum cylinder with which they can calibrate their measurement equipment. However, these copies had to be returned every few years to be calibrated again, since their mass started to vary from the original cylinder over time.

The new definition will be based on invariant constants of nature, in particular the Planck constant. Other SI units are already defined by such constants, the kilogram was one of the last to lack behind. The Planck constant relates a light particle’s energy, and thus its mass, to its frequency. It is only possible to change the definition of the kilogram now, since the measurement instruments to measure Planck’s constant with enough accuracy based on the IPK definition of a kilogram have not been available for a long time.

Faster computers Researchers from MIT and Singapore University of Technology and Design have recently found a new manufacturing trick to create phase-change memory systems. Nowadays, data needs to be moved from the high-speed RAM to a permanent storage spot on your HDD or SSD, which takes several milliseconds. Replacing the current two-part system with a single type of storage, called a phase-change memory, would reduce the delay to nanoseconds.

The problem in the creation of these phase-change memory systems was that the temperatures during the manufacturing process became so high that they would destroy gallium antimonide, a base material used in the creation of the phase-change systems. The researchers found that a biological virus, called a M13 bacteriophage, could pull the pieces of gallium antimonide together into usable wires, keeping the temperature during the process much lower.

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Tech WRITTEN BY: ROBBERT LOUWERS

Smart Curtains No one to talk to when you wake up? Why not talk to your curtains? Several smart curtains are already commercially available, but early next year IKEA will also release their smart curtains at a much more affordable price than the current ones. The curtains can be operated with a remote control or a smartphone app. If you want to voice control them, a speaker or telephone with Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa or Apple’s Siri is needed. Two versions of the curtain will be released, a translucent one for €119,- and a light-proof one for €149,-.

Maybe wise to add them to your Christmas list for next year.

Fastest animal movement The new record for fastest animal movement belongs to a species you would not expect, namely an ant. The term fastest animal movement is not implying that this ant broke the record for the time in which it moved from one place to another. No, it broke the record by clicking its mandibles. The ‘Dracula’ ant, which got its name because it sucks the blood from its own larvae, can snap its jaws together in a whopping 0.000015 seconds, which translates to a speed of roughly 320 km/h. This is about 1000 times faster than us humans can snap our fingers.

The ant does it this fast, by pressing the tips of its mandibles together to build up pressure. At the breaking point, the built up pressure is released, allowing for its jaw to slam shut.

Parker Solar Probe A while back an article about the Parker Solar Probe was published. This probe was shot in space by NASA to examine the Sun from the closest distance ever.

After its launch on August 12, the probe completed its first solar flyby on November 11, collecting data along the way. A few weeks later, the first photo was received back on Earth. The probe shot the picture at a distance of 27.2 million kilometres from the Sun, but they’re still sharper than any picture taken before.

On the picture a so-called ‘coronal streamer’ is shown.

This is a loop of electrically charged gases and plasma connecting two regions of opposite polarity on the sun.

The loop is extended by solar winds. The bright dot that can be seen in the picture is Mercury!

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Education

Interview Ines Lopez Arteaga

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What exactly do you do on the university?

What and where have you studied?

“I am the responsible teacher of the courses ‘Dynamics and Control of Mechanical Systems’ and ‘Structural Dynamics and Vibro-acoustics’, most students probably know me from these courses. The work of a professor is very varied and multi-faceted. Next to teaching, I guide students during their research, write proposals for research projects, manage research projects, participate in TUe, national and international committees, give talks and courses in NL and abroad and regularly meet with companies . I think the connection between university and companies is very important.

Since February 2018 I am the Dean of the Honors Academy. This is a special program for students that want an extra challenge, both in the Bachelor and in the Master. “

“I studied Mechanical Engineering at the Universidad de Navarra in Spain.

This was a 6 year study and broader than Mechanical Engineering at TUe.”

How did you end up at the Technical University of Eindhoven?

“When I was young I loved to work abroad. I did my master thesis as Erasmus student at KU Leuven. After I finished my studies, it was possible to do a PhD. I really loved to do a PhD at a university in a foreign country, however at that time (before the www) it was not that easy to find one. That is why I did my PhD at the Universidad de Navarra.

After my PhD I met my husband. He is a Dutch. Eventually we decided to move to the Netherlands, because there were possibilities for me in research. I never regretted going to the Netherlands, I really like it here.”

What project are you most proud of? And why?

“Pff, the project I am the most proud of, I did so many. Let me think for a moment.

One of my favorite research topics is the work I do in cooperation with Viktor Kornilov and Philip de Goey, so Combustion and Dynamics and Control.

Some years ago we had a very good PhD student, Maarten Hoeijmakers, and we were trying to proof that a flame only “vibrates” and produces a tonal noise if it is coupled to an acoustic system.

Eventually we found out that it was the opposite. A flame can vibrate and make noise on its own (it can have unstable poles), which we called the intrinsic flame instability. This was a new discovery, no one believed us and it took two years before the paper was published, but now intrinsic flame instability is a new research sub-field and everyone in the world knows that it was discovered in Eindhoven. What I like most about this project and my collaboration with the Combustion group, is the interaction between the different specialisms, that is the place you can find new things.”.

What do you like the most about teaching?

“I like almost everything about teaching: thinking about how to explain things better, looking for new examples to show, lecturing itself … On top of that

I have run and run several educational innovation projects. Basically I am always thinking about how to improve teaching, not only for my own courses but also for the department and the university.

But if I have to choose one thing, I really like to work with students and seeing other people grow. Especially being able to contribute to this growth, I think is very special.

Do you have any (strange) hobby’s?

“Probably students do not expect this. I used to do kite surfing, snowkiting and landboarding. However I am not doing this anymore. I still do long track skating and mountainbiking.

Next to these active things, I also was a fanatic piano player. During the first years of my Bachelor, I also went to the piano conservatorium in Spain and played 6 to 8 hours a day. Unfortunately I had to choose between my study and the conservatorium. I chose university, that was always my dream. “

Do you have some good advice for students?

“I think it is really important to have experience with foreign cultures. So go abroad during your study or in the first years of your professional career and find out who you really are.”

Written by:Maartje Borst

Photograph by: Otto van de Ven

PORSCH CAYENNE Test track

WRITTEN BY: NOAH TABOR

The Stuttgart brand Porsche used to be a brand very well known for their sports cars.

Especially the 911 has been a benchmark in its class for decades now. In 2003 Porsche shocked the world by introducing their first non-sports car called ‘Cayenne’. The Sports Utility Vehicle turned out to be a huge sales success and has had several generations.

However, does the Cayenne still resemble some of the Porsche sport car DNA or is it just another PC Hooftstraat tractor?

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Short History Just after the start of the new millennium, Porsche was a company on the brink of financial collapse. The brand was one of the first to enter the luxury SUV market in 2003. Porsche fanatics detested the idea of a SUV being part of their brand.

Despite the harsh criticism, there was a huge demand for the Cayenne. Porsche sold over 200,000 units within 5 years. It saved the brand financially and created a fundament to build on. The Cayenne has seen major changes in the 15 years it has been on the market. The tested example is a 2016 S E-Hybrid, one of the later model series.

Exterior

A Cayenne is never a subdued appearance.

It has large proportions and its rather aggressive looks make it quite the road presence. There are many different ways to personalize a Cayenne. This can have a large impact on the aesthetics. Smaller more simple wheels and a lighter tone in general gives the car a friendlier look. Porsche uses bright green colour accents to mark their hybrid models which makes this S E-Hybrid version easily recognizable for car fanatics. A specific example are the brake callipers.

The Cayenne is a heavy and potent car so the brakes are large, 360 millimetres diameter discs to be exact. The bright green colour on the callipers therefore stands out even from a distance.

In essence, every SUV’s genes should

contain at least a little off-road.

The adjustable ride height is a good resemblance of that. On top of that, the underside of the front and rear bumpers is finished off with a metal plating for security. The side skirts carry a metal strip. Although this strip is only for the looks , the combination of metal gives it a muscular and sturdy look.

Interior The interior of the Cayenne is recognizably Porsche. The first thing that immediately jumps out is the traditional five dial setup behind the steering wheel.

Porsche has been doing this for ages to provide a lot of information right in front

of the driver. Furthermore, the authentic key setup has been kept intact. Of course, like any luxury vehicle these days, the Cayenne has a keyless entry system.

This unlocks the doors and activates the ignition without having to take the key out of your pocket. However, unlike all the other manufacturers, Porsches always used to have the ignition on the left side of the steering wheel and the starting procedure is still that way. A replica key has to be turned on the left side of the steering wheel to actually start the car.

On top of all the specific Porsche stuff, the cabin feels really luxurious and spacious. High end materials are used all around. The dashboard and door panels

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are fully manufactured out of leather. The tested car has a carbon package which provides it with carbon finishing. This can for instance be seen on the steering wheel and centre console. This does not necessarily have to be carbon because the manufacturer offers a lot of different packages to personalize the car entirely to one’s own taste. More examples of this could be wood, aluminium, alcantara, leather or painted in any colour. An extra touch to the interior is the analogue clock and lap timer on the dashboard. This is part of the Sport Chrono package. The dial in the clock as well as the dials behind the steering wheel are the same bright green colour as the hybrid exterior parts to complete everything with a subtle touch.  

Driving

Porsche provided the Cayenne with several extremely different faces. This car is a thoroughbred all-rounder. This has everything to do with the many ride settings the car offers. First of all, it has four different driving modes: Comfort, Normal, Sport and Sport+. There is an extra mode for off-roading, but this is not meant for the road in any sense.

The first tool for the car to change its dynamics is the adaptable air suspension.

This changes the behaviour of the car dramatically. The difference in ground clearance between the highest and lowest setting is a massive 83 millimetres! The lowest setting is for the faster and more agile driving because of the very high damping rate. If one puts on top of that the car in the Sport+ setting, the car seems to shrink around you. The 3.0 litre supercharged engine is permanently turned on. No time for pure electric driving anymore. One does not notice the 2425 kilograms of luxury around them anymore. The steering is direct and the feeling of what the wheels are doing on the ground is pretty good. A full system power output of 416 horsepower makes that there is nothing that says slow in the Cayenne S E-Hybrid. Even corners can be taken with way higher velocities than expected with an almost two and a half tonne block of steel and leather. It almost feels like you are bending laws of physics a little. The only drawback when driving fast are the brakes. There is enough

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feeling in the brakes but under really heavy braking the enormous weight of the car is noticeable.

The completely other side of the car is what most people will see 99% of the time. All settings set to Comfort mode while the car decides when it is efficient to use pure electric driving, hybrid mode or only the petrol engine. The full electric range of the Cayenne is between 18 and 36 kilometres depending on the driving conditions and the driving style.

Overall the car is really comfortable on long journeys. The seats provide good support and are accommodated with

features like seat heating and ventilation to make them even more comfortable.

The adaptive cruise control is a real addition to the comfort on the highway and in traffic jams. One sets the driving speed and distance to the car in front of you and sits back. If the distance is set too far, the system becomes a little nervous when a car pulls in your lane. Therefore it makes it more pleasing and more natural to set the distance closer to the vehicle.

Visibility is great, mainly because of the amazing optional LED-matrix headlights.

On top of all this, the car is quiet. Even for people in a hurry traveling at a steady pace of 150 kilometres per hour.

Specifications Porsche Cayenne S E-Hybrid Drivetrain 3.0-liter supercharged V6 Gearbox 8-speed Tiptronic S Mass 2425 kg Power 416 hp Torque 590 Nm Acceleration (0-100) 5.9 s Price â‚Ź134,461,-

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Drawbacks There are two main drawbacks to the Cayenne S E-Hybrid. They both come down to costs. First of all, the fuel consumption.

Porsche claims an average fuel consumption of 3.4 litres per 100 kilometres, but this is quite optimistic to say If the car is used to drive around neighbourhoods and is charged regularly, this is indeed achievable. However, on long travels the battery runs out and the petrol engine takes over. In this case it uses 3 times more than Porsche claims it does. If the accelerator paddle is used a little more, this can easily go to a consumption of over 15 litres per 100 kilometres. It is trivial that this is not really beneficial to your wallet.

Secondly, due to tax advantages in our country, the hybrid Cayenne was available from €85,900,-. This is quite a lot already, however, at the Porsche dealership nothing is cheap. For instance, the LED headlights cost an additional €2500, active cruise control €2500, the brown leather €5000, the carbon

package €2000, exterior sport package €5000 and so on. This results in a total price of €134,461,- for the car as tested. This is almost a €50,000,- increase on the base price! The extra price for the options on this Cayenne can buy you 2.5 new base Volkswagen Golfs. So crazy expensive for the average Joe.

Conclusion The Porsche Cayenne S E-Hybrid is a very impressive machine.

It is a great car for long distance voyages. It is comfortable, quiet and quick. All the luxuries someone could want in a car are present. It has to live up to a certain Porsche standard of quality and sportiness though. The Cayenne is a master of many trades and can change its face within a couple of seconds. The Porsche DNA is certainly present in the biggest brother of the Porsche family. It is mind boggling how agile and sporty the Cayenne can feel, especially taking into consideration its weight. On the whole, this makes it a very desirable piece of automotive.

However, all of this comes with a large price tag!

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The art of flying “Plane and simple�

WRITTEN BY: FREEK JANSEN

A clear blue sky, only interrupted by these perfectly straight white stripes. Nowadays this sounds like the average day in Summer, but until not very long ago people wondered, and still do, how a humanly manufactured machine could withstand the unforgivable force that is gravity and carry hundreds of people all over the world.

The admiration is still very much visible, even though something like the habit of applauding after a successful landing on the surface has slowly outgrown us. This admiration is often visible on smaller scale as well. The expensive and timeconsuming hobby of designing a small, remote controlled plane has consumed an innumerable amount of hours from many ambitious engineers all over the world. Truly magnificent masterpieces of aircrafts can be seen all over the internet.

Sadly, some of the most stunning creations may only serve as nice decoration, as beauty is no guarantee for success in this relentless hobby. Nevertheless, the Crafting Committee has accepted this challenge this year and in February, they hope to enter the airspace together with other enthusiastic engineers.

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Plane When the concept of a plane is mentioned, many think of the traditional plane with a set of wings, the propeller on front and the tail-wings for steering. Or the commercial planes with jet engines below the wings to power the plane, instead of the propeller. But for getting a plane to fly, there are very few strict guidelines. As long as there is a forward thrust and enough upwards force, even a brick could fly. By carefully designing the shaft, the center of gravity can be brought to the optimal position, restraining the aircraft from making some undesired ups and downs, often followed by fatal crashes. By the usage of rotatable flaps, ailerons and a rudder placed all around the plane, movements from as basic as steering, up until majestic

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looking upside-down corkscrews can be realized. Above all, these controllable ‘flaps’, accompanied by a preferably skilled pilot, should keep the fragile plane in the air. The hobby can be rewarding after your own hand-crafted mini plane enters the airspace, but more often unforgiving, especially in the beginning.

During the first flights, the plane tends to behave unexpected and lacks stability, frequently resulting in direct nosedives into the ground. Poorly designed planes can demand hours of repairing time.

Getting your plane to fly is one thing, keeping it in the air is another and then there is successfully landing it.

As mentioned before, there is no such thing as the best design. Personal preferences, as well as the type of application it is built for, can heavily influence the design in numerous kinds of ways. A propeller on front is easy, convenient and does the job well, but when for example a bunch of untrained Mechanical Engineers start flying with it (read: crashing with it), they better bring some spare props and if they are lucky, reparation stops there. A strong nose, designed to take a hit, would serve better purposes here. The propeller can be moved to a position behind the wing and push the plane, or below the wing on every side.

The shape of the wings can be altered as well. Flat wings are perfect for speeding, as there is less aerodynamic friction, but require a higher minimum speed to maintain enough upward force.

Especially unskilled pilots will experience difficulty reacting adequately upon the plane’s sudden movements, which only gets tougher with increasing flying speed.

The traditional design of the tail, consisting of small horizontal wings on each side accompanied by a vertical wing on top is no unchangeable requirement either. A ‘speedy’ looking ‘V-tail’ might serve your likings just as well. As long as its main purposes, ascending/descending and steering are maintained to the right extend, not much could be done wrong here.

Almost the last step Fine-tuning the plane. It might seem like the last step there is, after most of the work is done. Wrong. When flying your first home-made RC airplane for the first couple of times, it could be wise not to attract too much audience. The few seconds it will stay in the air, followed by a devastating crash can be shameful, but also very informative for you as the engineer. Maybe the plane experiences too much lift, resulting in a directly

upwards movement, followed by a, well, directly downwards movement. Or maybe it was too susceptible for wind flow or unable to fly straight. Many things can go wrong and often the solution is also the cause of another issue, but fortunately, there always is a solution. It may involve stripping the plane from some relatively heavy parts, decreasing the weight of the battery, or by choosing entirely different building material.

When after hours of testing, assembling and frustration the airplane actually stays in the air, the euphoria is rather great.

Hopefully, this February all thirty planes will be able to fly with the wind. Although, must be said, crashing and having to repair the entire plane is part of the hobby.

While opting for the most advanced tech in your plane, stuff like a self-stabilizing gyroscope, intractable landing gear, a controllable ejection seat with parachute or even a bomber module, no modification comes without compromises. Whether it be added weight, costs or overwhelming and difficult controls, most advantages have their disadvantages. The trick is to make a controllable, likable aircraft, while keeping everything “plane and simple”.

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Applied Micro Electronics

“Developing and manufacturing tomorrow’s product”

You might be wondering, what a mechanical engineer does at a company with the name ‘Applied Micro Electronics’. However, I can vouch that that name really doesn’t do much justice regarding our mechanics. We make many products with broad applications, and you as an (aspiring) MechE will of course know that mechanics do all the cool stuff, operated by the best electronics and software engineered by very talented colleagues.

AME is an original design manufacturer of high-end electronics and technology, meaning we do both design and manufacturing. Customers from all over the world approach us with a development request or idea, which we then execute from idea to validation, to prototype, to testing and then to (mass)production.

I personally like this: no project is the same and every product provides new technical puzzles and requires new ideas and solutions. Some of our current projects include developing a domestic charger for electric cars, automated storage cabinets, a heated toilet seat that opens itself, and heat recovery units. In addition, we automate our own production as well so we can keep it in Eindhoven!

I started working here in August of 2017, after which I graduated with my HBO BSc. here in July 2018 on the same project I am currently working on. Now I work part-time while working on my pre-master at the TU/e. The provided meals, central location and flexible hours make this a great combination!

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My project is a great example of what a ME does at AME. One of our customers develops rear-hubs for bikes with an integrated continuously variable transmission (Similar to the ‘variomatic’ you might know from DAF). In order to automatically, or manually, operate the transmission of this hub, the user needs two devices: One on the steer for user input, and a device on the rear hub, which performs the shifting. I got to design the latter.

The device is called the Hub Interface, or HI for short. It connects via Bluetooth to the user control, from which it receives a transmission setting. The HI converts this signal into a rotation that does the actual shifting. It can provide up to 17 [Nm](!) of torque, so you can shift smoothly even when cycling up a steep hill. This required a custom motor design and gear set, which we have designed ourselves. Currently we are testing the device with a 3D-printed cover, for which we will later make our own injection mould.

As a Mechanical Engineer, I very much enjoy working here. Moreover, if I wouldn’t: there are many other opportunities such as project management, (system) architecture or production automation. However, for now I am content. We get to work on the products of tomorrow, which to me as an engineer is greatly satisfying: within a year, there could be thousands of people riding around with my product! If you have any questions, or if you are interested in a job, check our vacancies on

www.ame.nu/career

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MEET YOUR FUTURE DRONE

Four years ago, in collaboration with the Dream and Dare festival that was organized for the 60th jubilee of the TU/e, the first team of Blue Jay Eindhoven started. Blue Jay is one of the many student teams working on campus. Our office is situated in Momentum, together with some other teams as URE, TU/ecomotive and Solar Team Eindhoven.

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Introduction In the first year our team started developing a drone that was able to ‘work’ in a cafeteria, where it was able to bring a drink to the right person. A playful concept, but at least it made clear that drones could be used autonomously, helpful, safe and interactive. The last few years we started developing a new concept, where the drone can be used as an assistant in healthcare.

Health is a direction in which drones are not yet sought as a solution. Drones, and robots alike, are still viewed as intruders in nursing homes by its inhabitants. Some even say that when they have a cardiac attack and if a drone can save them, they would rather not be saved. So, even though our vision remains the same, only small steps can be taken towards this view.

The previous team, for example, created a drone that was able to fly autonomously above a swimming pool and detect if people were drowning. As a reaction, the drone can inform a lifeguard and help by bringing the needed supplies as a safety vest. This shows that our drone can perform assistive tasks indoor in an autonomous way. We hope that more drones will become more common over the years so that we can begin implementing our vision.

At the moment, our team consists of 16 enthusiastic students, all working together on developing the drone and creating new ones. To organize the team and let everybody work on his/ her favorite subject, the team is divided into a couple of sub teams: management, software, electronics, mechanics and interaction design. The management focuses on keeping the team together, software works on for e.g. autonomous flying, speech recognition and machine based learning. Interaction design focuses on the contact of the drone with people, by creating eyes and determining the drone its function.

Since this is OpenME, we will go further into details about what the mechanics team is working on.

Mechanics of the drone

Firstly, since our drones are supposed to be used indoors, the noise level is a really important performance measure.

When standing a meter away from a drone, you won’t be able to understand what your neighbours are saying. With all this noise, it is not desired to have that drone flying inside.

The sound comes from vibrations within the system and the turbulent air flow which is created near the propellers.

In order to reduce the sound of vibrations, the resonance frequencies of the components used should be taken into account. Especially the inner frame, which is in contact with the motors, should be closely examined. A high stiffness increases the natural frequency, when this is chosen correctly it will effectively lower the noise levels.

To reduce the sound created by the propellers and the air, ducts can be used. A duct is basically a cover around the propeller to prevent vortices to form at the tip of the propeller.

It is important to construct them very precise. Too tight and the strain in the propeller will cause it to hit the duct, too wide and the effect will be minimal.

A mechanical engineer at Blue Jay works on the creation of a drone that should be as lightweight and silent as possible. Part of the design process consists of finding the right materials for the frame, every gram counts. Last years drone was built from a 3D-printed outer frame and balsa wood for the inner frame. Balsa is a very light type of wood often in model planes.

It has a density of 0.15 g/cm3. In comparison, EPS (styrofoam) has a density of 0.9 g/cm3!

The outer frame has been designed using the CAD software known best to ME students. Siemens NX can help to understand the geometrical constraints that come with the increasingly complex configurations. The first months are spent on researching aerodynamics and designing the drone for the new year. The final result can be seen on the picture.

Furthermore, from previous year it has been seen that an interesting air dynamic will occur when trying to fly drones within small corridors. An airflow will develop between the drone and the wall next to it. This will eventually lead to the drone effectively being sucked to the wall. We are currently talking to professors at the university and research organizations to find out how to circumvent this issue.

This year, we are tackling these challenges by developing a ‘singlecopter’, a drone with only one propeller. This design is promising, since it outperforms the hexacopter on all the important stats that have been discussed. However, this type brings its own complications, like the lack of momentum balance. This is currently solved by adding four flaps which are put at an offset angle to provide the counteracting force. [If you think you have a better idea, don’t hold back]

However, this drone is not yet perfect for flying indoors.

There are still challenges that arise when using this drone.

The noise, size and weight are still parameters that restrict the performance.

If you find that one of these topics sparks your interest and want to know more about our project, come by in the momentum building, Visit us on www.bluejayeindhoven.nl or look for us on social media.

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Tech

THE JOURNEY...

Working on engineering problems at the highest level possible.

Working with the fastest cars in the world: A boys dream. Never going to happen, or is it..

Marco Lenssen is an ambitious Mechanical Engineering student who managed to accomplish something most engineers only dream of: a job at Formula 1. In this article, you can read about his journey of ending up there and what it is like to work in this unique environment.

How do you end up at Formula 1?

I remember the exact moment as if it just recently happened. I was at the camping of the 24h of Le Mans, where I was looking for a beer. You know, those good-old half a liter AH pilsener cans? Unfortunately, they don’t have any there... At that moment it was around 30 degrees and pretty sunny. To make things even worse, the fridge was empty and all the beer cans were gently warming up in the sun.

However, the student (read: alcoholic) I was, I definitely needed a beer at that moment. Let’s say that this beer was warmer than the tea you just had to wa.. anyway, I think you get the point.

I was at the camping and it was somewhere around 10 o’clock in the morning when I received a call by a foreign number. Due to my year as team manager of InMotion the year before, this was not completely strange and I vaguely remembered something about the +39 landcode.

With my head still wrapped around my warm beverage, a woman starts talking to me via the phone in a vague English/

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Italian accent. Besides, the speed she was speaking in would have defeated some decent rappers for sure and this resulted in me understanding absolutely nothing of the story she was trying to tell me.

Except for three words: ‘Scuderia Toro Rosso’.

After a long process of doing a lot of different application meetings I entered the last round. In this meeting I would meet my potential future boss and the HR of the company itself (as previous rounds were done by an external company).

Unfortunately, as always, everything that could go wrong, went wrong. The other side of the meeting couldn’t see or hear me during the Skype meeting, and as you might guess after that.. I didn’t get hired.

Formula 1 is not really known for getting a lot of chances. I really felt like I screwed up and told myself that if I ever got such an opportunity again, I would go there and tell them the reason why they should hire me in person. Something I guess just had to happen as I got a call a few months later by the company whether I wanted to re-enter the process for the year after.

A bit better prepared and doing my final meeting actually in Italy (the one day trip of course had to be dated just before my exams) I got a phone call by the same vague woman, but this time telling me these three fancy words: ‘you are hired’!

Probably, most readers of this magazine already know a lot of things about Formula 1.

But just for the formality I will give some small explanation. At the moment ten teams are active in Formula 1. Each team has two drivers, all these drivers compete to gain points in the championship. We all know these kind of things, but let’s try something you might not know about F1. Approximately 80.000 components come together to become one F1 car, with most components not even 3 mm clear of its surrounding. To get it assembled everything needs to be 100% accurately designed. All these components need to be designed and engineered, produced, tested and put on the car. For most of the fans of Formula one the sport exists between the green lights and chequered flag on a Sunday afternoon. But in reality this is merely the tip of the iceberg.

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Tech

What is working in F1 like?

Working in a F1 team isn’t really your usual type of job. What most people don’t know is that a F1 team has quite some people employed. A team can easily have over 500 people employed. These people are active in all kinds of different departments. Each race has a lot of logistic challenges to get everything and everyone on the right position at the right time. Furthermore, a lot of people are processing data coming of track days in order to optimize settings and behaviour of the car. A number of departments is for example: strategy, lamination, trimming, aerodynamics, purchasing, race engineers, management and of course the most important one, engineering. The whole car is designed by the teams themselves, which is done in a period of three months. As a reference, normal cars can take up to a couple of years before they are produced.

To get the highest efficiency process, our design office (the place where all our engineering are working on the cars) is divided into different groups. For example, there is bodywork, which main task is converting aerodynamic surfaces into parts that can be placed on the cars outer surfaces with the correct strength

and stiffness. But there also is the chassis group, as the chassis is a really important part and doesn’t change that much during the season, this is a group with great responsibility.

I’m hired as a System and Mechanical engineer, meaning that my group is the Systems group. This group is responsible for all ‘system’ applications in the car, such as fire extinguishers, the fuel system and cooling systems. Next to the usual challenge for designing as light and efficient as possible, this group has to deal with quite some other things as well. Where most groups have a quite defined zone available (you can’t really place the engine somewhere else), we have to work with the area which is more or less available in the car. Meaning that our shapes are quite ‘free’ in terms of shapes. Just to give you an idea, in a F1 car four different cooling systems with a total of ten different radiators are placed. These need to be connected via all kind of routings of pipework, meaning we are discussing a lot with all other departments about the best solution. As you may suggest, everything needs to be accurately calculated which means a lot

Study and practical knowledge A question I always asked myself is: How much of the knowledge you gain during your study will you actually use in the end? And to be honest, it’s not that simple to give an easy answer. As time is one of our main competitors in the challenge of building the best F1 car, or better, the lack of time, we often don’t have time to calculate everything to our best knowledge ourselves. But all the knowledge about general assumptions, exactly the kind of stuff they try to learn you, are really important as it will improve your design choices (as it will also improve the trust you have in the choices you make). Which in the end will speed up the process. I’m not differentiating or writing new codes all the time, but it sure is really challenging.

of interaction with our CFD calculations guys.

Does this already sound like a lot of work? The fact that my team exists out of only four people might make it even worse. That one of these four is a really inexperienced guy from the Netherlands and one of these four is actually the ‘boss’ doesn’t really improve the amount of work that needs to be done in this amount of time.

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Association

Staut:

Online Media

Fake news!, een kreet die de Amerikaanse president graag in de mond neemt, wanneer hij het niet eens is met de pers.

Steeds vaker ontstaat er ophef over wat er in de al sneller publicerende online media gezegd wordt. Het is een trend die nu al een aantal jaar steeds duidelijker wordt. De steeds meer opkomende digitalisering van de analoge media heeft zelfs de W.S.V. Simon Stevin bereikt.

GESCHREVEN DOOR: RIK LUBBERS

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Association

Het is dit jaar voor het eerst dat de opvolger van de Simon Ster, de Open ME, twee keer per jaar gedrukt wordt, in plaats van vijf. Daar staat tegenover dat de openME wekelijks online publicaties doet, hetgeen een constantere stroom aan artikelen oplevert. Voor een informerend medium als de openME is het een zegen om men sneller te kunnen informoeren over de gang van zaken binnen de faculteit Werktuigbouwkunde. Maar is de digitalisering van de nieuwsmedia net zo goed voor de mens als de digitalisering van de openME?

Vroeger was alles beter Het verspreiden van nieuwtjes – en dus nieuws – gaat al ver terug in de geschiedenis van de mens. Zelfs de jagers en verzamelaars communiceerden reeds over wat er in de omgeving is gebeurd. Het is daarom ook niet gek dat er in de loop der jaren steeds nieuwe media worden bedacht om het woord aan de man te krijgen.

De eerste echte vorm van drukkunst was rond 200 voor Christus al bedacht door, vermoedelijk, de Chinezen. Het was het zogeheten blokdrukken, waarbij er afbeeldingen en tekst uit een blok hout gesneden kon worden. Ondanks dat de Chinezen de blokdrukkunst toen al benutten, had het nog ruim 1700 jaar nodig om, na de uitvinding van Johannes Gutenberg (Mainz, DE) ook in Europa gebruikt te worden. Omdat het drukken van boeken en bladen steeds makkelijker en goedkoper werd, zijn er meer opties ontstaan om visies en denkbeelden te delen. Als voorlopers in de drukkunst, hadden de Chinezen rond 700 na Christus, gedurende de Tang dynastie, al hun eerste ‘krant’ om propaganda te kunnen verspreiden, een kunst

Johannes Gutenberg die in Europa pas aan het begin van de 17e eeuw begon. Sindsdien kwamen de ontwikkelingen snel, met als hoogtepunt dat er in de 20e eeuw het internet werd bedacht.

Met de komst van het internet kwam er een begin aan de digitalisering van de nieuwsmedia.

Naast dat de conventionele media, als de NOS, Financieel Dagblad en het NRC zich ook online laten vertegenwoordigen, bood het internet ook ruimte voor nieuwsmedia die zich louter op het web begeven. Het zijn juist dit soort websites, waarbij vooral aan nu.nl gedacht moet worden, die de digitalisering van het nieuws hebben geagendeerd.

Droomwereld Zeker nu de meeste mensen in het bezit zijn van een smartphone, is het voor deze media makkelijker om mensen te voorzien van nieuwe informatie over de gebeurtenissen in de wereld en om hen heen. Deze snelle productie van nieuws is het punt waar het eerste gevaar ligt: het zogeheten nepnieuws. Doordat er steeds meer mensen online informatie kunnen plaatsen, zonder dat dit gecontroleerd wordt,

Een drukpers

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Association

kan het zo voorkomen dat de onjuiste informatie wordt doorgespeeld. Wanneer blijkt dat duizenden ‘gebruikers’ deze nieuwsberichten blind gaan delen met hun netwerk, zie je dat de doorstroom van foutieve berichtgeving meningen onjuist kan beïnvloeden.

zorgt voor een constante stroom aan afleidingen. Dit gebrek aan concentratie is een groot probleem. Veel taken blijven liggen of worden niet goed afgemaakt, waardoor de algehele productiviteit omlaag gaat.

Ook andere cognitieve vaardigheden leiden onder dit fenomeen. De taalvaardigheid van de gemiddelde tiener is tegenwoordig dermate “Natuurlijk hebben we in laag, dat er experts zijn dia al spreken over een sterke groei het verleden ook grote in de laaggeletterdheid van de uitvindingen gedaan zoals het samenleving.

Wim Westera, expert in mediawijsheid, digitale media en professor aan de Open Universiteit, vertelt dat de grens tussen de schijnwereld en de realiteit steeds vager wordt. Dit komt mede doordat het nieuws dat men tegenwoordig uitvinden van taal, schrift en de Conclusie ziet, middels opgenomen beelden drukpers, maar geen van deze en audiofragmenten, tot zich krijgt, Het brengen van nieuws ondergaat uitvindingen was zo snel of zonder dat men het zelf echt ziet. Dit een eeuwenoude traditie van verschijnsel zorgt ervoor dat er een ingrijpend als de ontwikkeling ontwikkelingen. De digitalisering afstand wordt gecreëerd tussen mens van de nieuwsmedia geeft redacties van de digitale media” en gebeurtenis. Door deze afstand overal ter wereld de mogelijkheid verliest men de realisatie van realiteit, om gebeurtenissen sneller te waardoor men een makkelijker een schijnbeeld van verwoorden in artikelen, maar zonder dat hier de wereld ziet. een goede controle is betreffende de juistheid, is het belangrijk dat er goed wordt nagedacht over wat er wordt geschreven. Het aldoor krimpen Gebrekkige prestaties van de concentratieboog, in combinatie met het Los van de vraag of men foutieve informatie achteruitgaan van de taalkundigheid van jongeren, verspreidt, zijn er meerdere gevolgen duidelijk zet dan aan tot denken. zichtbaar. De afgelopen jaren is er veel onderzoek geweest naar het effect van digitale media op de De digitalisering van de media heeft grote voordelen persoonlijke prestaties van jongeren, volwassenen in het spoediger verspreiden van nieuws over de en ouderen. Vooral bij jongeren en volwassenen hele wereld. Het resultaat van minder onderzoek komen er ernstige consquenties naar boven drijven. naar andere perspectieven is dat nieuwsgeving een Doordat het brein tegenwoordig zoveel achter elkaar schijnbeeld kan laten laat zien, dan juist nieuws. geprikkeld wordt door nieuwe informatie, is het voor De gevaren van de trentd van het digitaliseren veel mensen lastig om zich langer dan 15 minuten gaan op met het grote voordeel van de constante te focussen op een taak, zonder hierbij afgeleid te nieuwsvoorziening, die na uren na publicatie vaak worden door andere zaken. Zeker het gebruik van de al minder relevant zijn. Het zijn de nieuwsmedia die, slimme mobiele telefoon is hier een groot aandrager hoe simpel het ook klinkt, de garantie van kwaliteit van. moeten waarborgen om de informatiestroom van de toekomst robuust te houden. Pas dan komt de De constante stroom aan meldingen, die dikwijls digitalisering van de nieuwsmedia in aanmerking gepaard gaan met een auditieve ondersteuning, voor positieve bijdrage aan u.

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Career

The potential we have as Mechanical Engineers is a very wanted thing in the job landscape. We are diversely trained and can be a great addition to almost any company. A lot of companies see this and therefore they invest in getting to them as soon as possible.

The problem: not nearly enough students see that they need to pay attention to their future. Some even only start looking at interesting companies at their graduation. This way it will take you years before you are where you want to be.

To solve this problem, Simon Stevin organizes – amongst other things – the yearly Symposium. This day is about the relation between the company and you, the student. During this day, companies present themselves and tell an interesting story about what kind of projects they encounter and how they solve them.

Also, in the afternoon companies present cases, which you will solve with a group. Lunch, coffee or tea and a drink afterwards are all included!

MACHINING THE FUTURE The Committee does not just invite random big corporations.

Instead, they come up with a theme for the symposium and search for interesting companies surrounding that theme, big or small. This theme can reach from Aerospace Engineering to Security. This year however, we have chosen the theme manufacturing. Engineering the Future: From material to product. As can be deducted from the title, this Symposium will be about products and their lifecycle. Companies will come tell about their role in the production of a product. Not all will be about the actual manufacturing however, before you get scared off because you do not like manufacturing. There are many aspects to designing and producing a product, so there is something for everyone!

This Symposium will take place on the 6th of May, so subscribe as soon as the subscriptions open to ensure your seat at this event. This way you can take a look at your own future!

WRITTEN BY: NOUD BOONEN

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INVENTIONS THAT CHANGED THE MUSIC INDUSTRY WRITTEN BY: MIKE VAN DER VLEUTEN

Music has always been an important art form which exists in many styles and plays a key role in (sub-)cultural activities, religion, social activities and hobbies. Although music has been changing constantly since the beginning of mankind, we will have a look at some important inventions that have changed popular music in the last few decades.

Although we know that mankind has been making music for thousands of years, the recording of music only dates back to the 19th century. In 1877, Thomas Edison invented the mechanical phonograph cylinder which was the first practical sound recording device. Over the years, technological inventions have changed the way music was recorded, listened to and performed which has eventually resulted in the emergence of entirely new genres.

Electric Guitar In the early 20th century, guitar players were searching for possibilities to amplify the sound coming from their acoustic guitars. Playing in big bands, the sound coming from an acoustic guitar was often not loud enough compared to the rest of the

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musicians, so a lot of companies were searching for solutions to this problem. Early inventions used an electromagnetic pickup device that was placed in the sound hole of a traditional guitar, but the big breakthrough came with the invention of the Fender solid body electric guitars in the early 1950s. The most wellknown model is the Fender Stratocaster, which is still sold today with a design that has not been changed since its introduction

ME

Tech in 1954. The distinct sound coming from this type of guitar and the possibility to manipulate the electric signal coming from it, has created a whole new wave of pop music starting with the AfroAmerican blues that was the inspiration for later pop heroes such as Elvis, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones.

Multitrack recording In the early days of recording, sound was recorded on magnetic tape. The whole group of musicians, orchestra or band was captured at the same time, in the same room, often with a single microphone. In the mid-1950s, the development of a multitrack recorder was a great improvement since it enabled sound engineers to record instruments separately, on different ‘sections’ of the tape. It also allowed them to tweak each individual instrument track to get the volumes and equalization at the desired level for a better listening experience.

Moreover, it was possible to do certain ‘overdubs’ to correct errors or get a better performance of each instrument or vocal track. A great example of these overdubs can be heard in the all-time classic ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ by Queen, where the operatic section contains a lot of phrases (Galileo!) that have been recorded multiple times by each band member. Since the computer age, digital recording software has enabled the use of a nearly unlimited amount of tracks for every song and therefore tape machines are hardly used anymore.

Marshall guitar amplifiers In the 60s, the music scene in the UK with bands like The Who, Deep Purple and The Jimi Hendrix experience aattracted a lot of fans and hence there was a need for loud guitar amplifiers that could be heard over the noise of the giant crowds. At that time, guitar amplifiers were imported from the USA and made by Fender. In London, the guitar player of The Who, Pete Townshend was begging music store owner Jim Marshall to come up with a better alternative since these imported amplifiers were not loud enough and very expensive. Marshall, who had little electrical engineering experience, formed a team of technicians that started to tweak the circuitry of existing Fender amplifiers,

and this resulted in the first Marshall amplifier. This design was revolutionary since it enabled bands to get heard by the whole crowd for the first time, as big PA audio systems that are nowadays used at festivals and concerts did not exist yet.

The unique distorted sound coming from this amplifier became instantly popular and until today, it is still the most sought after rock guitar tone that can be heard on records from Guns ‘n Roses, Metallica, AC/DC and others. The distorted sound (Think of AC/DC – Highway to Hell) is coming from the vacuum tubes that were commonly used at the time. At high levels, the smooth wave that is produced by the guitar is flatted off, which creates a block like wave that sounds a little bit more aggressive. The non-linear behaviour of the vacuum-tubes in guitar amplification is generally considered to be more pleasant than the ‘boring’ and ‘flat’ sounding transistor amplifiers and therefore this old technique has survived for decades and these early designs have hardly been changed.

Minimoog model D that was produced by Moog Music.

Analog synthesizer

Other inventions

In the early 1970s, the music industry was enriched by the coming of the first accessible analogue synthesizer that could be operated by the average musician. An analogue synthesizer produces sound waves by using oscillators. They are build using analogue components like op-amps, integrated circuits, resistors and potentiometers. High –and low pass filters are used to modify the sound characteristics, and different waveforms such as saw teeth and sine waves can be generated. Previously, since the 1920s there were already people experimenting with analogue synthesizers to produce sounds for radio jingles, but the machines were big, expensive and a lot of technical knowledge was required to operate it.

That all changed with the release of the

While not directly responsible for the creation of music, the production of the Compact Disk (CD) in 1979 by Philips and Sony has certainly had a major impact on music. The sound quality was superior to the crackling LP’s that had been the standard for years, there was no need for changing to the B-side and transportation was easy due to the small size.

Furthermore, there are numerous other inventions that have changed the music industry that are worth mentioning such as the drum computer, audio sampler, MP3’s, auto-tune and most of all the World Wide Web that has become the most important platform to share and distribute music content.

Starting with artists such as Kraftwerk Pink Floyd and later Michael Jackson and Dr. Dre, the unique sounds coming from this machine have ended up a lot of hit records. Nowadays, synthesizers are still used to produce film music, dance, trance, hip-hop and numerous other electronic genres. Those who have watched the sci-fi Netflix series ‘Stranger things’ might remember the daunting intro soundtrack that was made using only analogue synthesizers for nostalgic reasons. In recent years however, a lot of producers of these genres have switched to digital synths for practical reasons. The switch to digital music production has facilitated the creation of new content not only for professional producers, but also lowered the threshold for new artists and bedroom musicians to record their own music using only a laptop or tablet with software programs like FL studio and Garage band.

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Education

Decentralize selection Mechanical Engineering

STUDENTS

Last academic year the Technical University of Eindhoven started to implement a numerus fixus on three studies. This year the amount of numerus fixus studies even grown at the TU/e. Next year seven different studies have a cap. Among these studies, Mechanical Engineering is one of them.

What? Why? And for how long?

WRITTEN BY: MAARTJE BORST

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Education

What?

A numerus fixus is a fixed maximum amount of students, which can start with the study. Most of the time this choice is made to maintain the quality of the study. In the academic year of 2018-2019 more than 100 studies have a numerus fixus in the Netherlands.

Why Mechanical Engineering?

The demand of technical people is still growing. Because of that the technical studies became even more popular than they already were. Last year the Technical University had an increase of students of 10% . The total amount of students grew above 11.000 students almost to 12.000! To compare this to 10 years ago the amount of students was around 7.000. Of course the amount of new students for Mechanical Engineering also grew during these years. In the beginning of this academic year even more than 300 students started at the faculty of Mechanical Engineering.

Next year Mechanical Engineering will switch to English. This probably results in more international students. A few years ago Mechanical Engineering at the University of Twente switched to English. They had a grow of almost 20%, which is enormous.

This grow did not only came from more foreign students, also more Dutch students have chosen Twente, because of the English Bachelor. If the same would happen at the Mechanical Engineering faculty in Eindhoven, we cannot handle the amount of students anymore.

TEST YOURSELF! Exclusion Which one does not belong here?

The right answer in this example is the 4th figure because only here the two figures are equally big.

Number sequences

The biggest concern as mentioned before of this growth is how we can maintain the quality of our education. Because of this reason the faculty of Mechanical Engineering and the CvB (College van Bestuur) decided to implement a numerus fixus.

The cap of the numerus fixus is set to 330 new students. However this amount of new students is never reached before. So what is the reason for this cap?

It is known that the amount of students will decrease in the first years while implementing a cap. The CvB therefor chose to set the cap on 330 students, to give the new students the feeling there are a lot of available places and are not scared to subscribe.

Hopefully, this will not result in less students than last year.

Application procedure The application procedure is different with a numerus fixus.

These students need to do the following things: • Apply before the 15th of January. With this application the students need to hand in a motivation letter and their marks of VWO 5. • In the period from 14th of February until the 25th of February the students have to make a cognitive test. • The students need to attend the selection day at the 16th of March.

If the students have completed all these steps, a student gets a ranking number and has the chance to study Mechanical Engineering in the coming academic year.

Cognitive test The cognitive test is a capacity test. The cognitive test consists of 5 elements: 1. Exclusion 2. Mirror images 3. Number sequences 4. Components 5. Arithmetical skills The better students make this test, the higher the rank of the students. Examples of this test can be found on the following pictures: Interested in testing yourself: https://www.noa-online.net/tests/TestOverview.aspx

For how long?

64 is the right answer. In this question, the numbers in the sequence are formed by adding together all the previous numbers (i.e.: 1+3=4, 1+3+4=8, 1+3+4+8=16, 1+3+4+8+16=32, 1+3+4+8+16+32=64).

Not everybody agrees on the numerus fixus on technical studies.

Especially companies do not agree. They need a lot of technical people. With this cap on technical studies the demand of technical people can still not be solved. Above that the minister of Education have said that a numerus fixus is not likely to have and want to prohibit this maybe for technical studies next year.

So we will have to see what will happen the coming years.

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SOLAR TEAM EINDHOVEN Driving your family to France for vacation on pure clean energy, without having to charge once. Or drive to the office, park your car in the sun and then drive home again on the energy of the sun, without having to charge at all. That is the dream of the students who together form Solar Team Eindhoven.

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Tech Our mission Our team, is a multidisciplinary student team of the Eindhoven University of Technology. We set aside our studies for one and a half year to make a direct contribution to the passion that we share: a society that is fossil fuel independent.

The challenge of the previous teams was to show the world a solar car as a usable family car. Stella Vie is the realization of this vision. Stella Vie, the 5-person solar car with license plate, innovates by bringing solar cars to daily life. This car was built last year and has won the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge 2017.

Our challenge, of the new team, is to show that daily life can and must be powered by natural sources like the sun.

We want to show society that cars are more than a means of transportation. Cars could be an extension of the grid. In this way, life can be powered by the Sun.

New challenges We have decided to participate in the cruiser class of the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge again. This is a challenge in which the efficiency and the practicality of the competing solar cars is tested and ranked. Solar Team Eindhoven is undefeated World Champion in the cruiser class of this challenge. We want to use the platform of the challenge to show the world what the future will and must look like. Here, we will demonstrate all the innovative technologies we have implemented in our solar car.

The regulations of the World Solar Challenge change every year in order to challenge the teams to innovate. This year again, a few important changes have been made. Firstly, the permitted amount of occupants of the car is limited from ‘undefined’, to four people. This supports the way in which efficiency and practicality count towards each other. In contrary to previous years, these two factors now have an equal influence on the final score. The second adjustment in the regulations, are the rules considering external charging during control stops.

Recharge sessions will be metered during our challenge in 2019.

These changes lead to a lot of difficulties. As a result of the charging restrictions for example, the battery must be much larger than in our previous cars. Since the large mass of a

battery and the limitations in the weight that the tires can carry, a problem has arisen. These factors lead to a very tight mass budget and specifications of the spatial coordination of the components in the car.

Our System Architect Mechanical Engineering, Dennis Struver, is responsible for the overall architecture of the system and has to make sure everything we implement in the car remains within this massbudget. He is in contact with all engineers “It is my job to keep an overview, check whether the designs meet their requirements. Besides I keep an eye on the interfaces between engineers and their designs in order to make sure that in the end, all component are connected in the most efficient way. I have the responsibility to see if the system is well defined, so that ultimately our desired result can be achieved.”.

The start Our team characterizes itself by an enormous amount of motivation. In one year, we design and build a solar car that seeks and transcends the boundaries of technology and contributes to clean mobility. As a team, we started in September 2018 designing and building the most innovative solar car ever. Our team consist of 27 students of whom eight Mechanical Engineering students.

The first milestone we set as a team, is the deadline for the aero design. This is the design of the outer shell of the car. Together with our designers and physicist, bachelor degree mechanical engineer Luuk van Voorst has been drawing car concepts in Siemens NX for months in a row; “The basic skills of using Siemens NX I obtained during my bachelor degree, but the last couple of months have multiplied this, by putting it into practice.”. Day in, day out, even in the weekends and evening hours, they produced an enormous amount of designs. Well before the deadline, the group of aero-designers has finished the super aerodynamic and beautiful design. “We are proud and satisfied about the result that we have achieved and are looking forward to show the realization on the fourth of July.” On this day we will present our car to everybody who is interested.

PHOTOGRAPH BY: BART VAN OVERBEEKE

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w

Bachelor Final Project Controlling bridges, the safe way

Rijkswaterstaat and the Eindhoven University of Technology teamed up for the big renovation of the Dutch bridges and waterways. The control of the water infrastructure became a lot safer due to this challenging BFP. Now you’ll read why..

Written by: Johan Somers

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Education

Introduction Rijkswaterstaat, which is part of the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management, uses Siemens Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) to for instance control bridges and waterways. Since a lot of this infrastructure in The Netherlands has to be renovated in the upcoming years Rijkswaterstaat teamed up with the Eindhoven University of Technology. For this so called MultiWaterWerk project a new approach is developed to make, analyse and implement supervisory controllers for water and road traffic infrastructures. Since the project has been going on for some time now, the goal of this BFP was not to create those supervisory controllers, but to make sure they could be implemented according to all current safety standards.

Of course every system has to be safe. The safety of a system is measured with a Safety Integrity Level (SIL) which describes the rate of dangerous failure of a system.

Make sure not to overlook the term dangerous in this description. To reach a certain SIL all components of a system should be rated accordingly, so also the PLC. For safety critical components higher SILs should be reached. This often boils down to one thing: increasing the reliability.

Redundancy Let’s take a short side path into improving reliability before the real BFP is all clarified. Reliability of electronic components can almost always be increased by redundancy. This means adding more components to a system which all serve the same goal. An example of redundancy is a bridge which can be opened by hydraulics and by a rope pulley system. If the hydraulics fail, the bridge can still be opened with a rope. It might be less convenient, but it reduces the impact of malfunctioning hydraulics.

A frequently seen fashion to apply redundancy in electronic systems is static redundancy. This means that multiple components process the same input and should all produce the same output, see figure 1. These outputs are given to a voter which choses a certain final output based on a set of rules. For instance the rule that the final signal should be the majority of the separate outputs or that the voter can only give a final signal if all the modules give the same signal. This way of redundancy reduces the risk that one broken module will lead to catastrophic failure of the system.

Figure 1: Example of static redundancy

Dynamic redundancy is another way to improve the reliability of a system. This redundancy system uses one module at a time to process a signal, see figure 2. But, this module is constantly checked. When it appears that the module is malfunctioning the signals are switches and the next module will be used.

Figure 2: Example of dynamic redundancy

The way in and extent to which redundancy is applied can deviate a lot from system to system. The theoretical safest solution can only be found with some quite interesting probability calculations.

Safety coding Alright, back to the BFP. The goal was to implement the newly created supervisory controllers to PLCs according to the lasted safety standard (which is IEC61508 for anyone who wanted to know). The bridges and waterways which are key in the MultiWaterWerk project are subject to some safety critical processes. For instance the red lights for ships can absolutely not turn green before a bridge is completely opened, or the greens lights on one side of a water way can definitely not go on if the green lights on the other side are already green. The potential consequences are so big that these processes are considered safety critical and therefore need a higher SIL than other processes concerning water infrastructure. As described earlier this also means that the PLC has to apply with a higher SIL rating. Luckily PLC manufacturers came up with so-called Safety PLCs (SPLCs) or fail-safe PLCs to comply with these stricter SILs. In this way technicians can buy off the shelve safety instead of designing their own redundant system.

This al seems great, but to reach a higher SIL, Siemens SPLCs can only be programmed with graphical ‘dragand-drop’ like programming languages: Ladder Diagrams (LAD) and Function Block Diagrams (FBD). This poses a critical problem since the supervisory controllers are currently created in Structured Control Language (SCL).

This is a high-level programming language suitable for complex calculations. The limitations of programming languages for SPLC can be compared to trying to program a complex MATLAB program with LEGO Mindstorms commands: not impossible but extremely cumbersome.

However, it had to be done. So every step of the current workflow to create PLC code from plant model and requirements had to be evaluated. The supervisory

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Education

controllers are initially made with the programming language Compositional Interchangeable Format, at the TU/e this is better known as CIF. In CIF, the system model and requirements are scripted separately. The model describes all physical states the system can show. So explicitly no preferences or rules about how the system should behave are implemented in this model. These are all stated as requirements. A process called synthesis combines the separate model and requirements to a supervisory controller. Other students and PhD staff managed to convert this CIF supervisor to SCL, which is perfect for ‘standard’ PLCs without any code for an SPLC.

based on the added tags. Synthesis has the property that all requirements will always be correctly implemented in the supervisor (if they’re not conflicting). That’s why the functional and safety supervisor are split after synthesis.

This makes sure all the cross relations between the functional and safety supervisor are implemented in the right way.

Functional / safety Plant (CIF)

Functional Supervisor (CIF)

PLC code generation

Functional PLC code (SCL) Total PLC code

Synthesis

Functional / safety Requirements (CIF)

Safety Supervisor (CIF)

PLC code generation

Safety PLC code (LAD/ FBD)

Plants (CIF) Synthesis

Supervisor (CIF)

PLC code generation

PLC code (SCL)

Requirements (CIF)

Now different concepts were proposed to make it possible to create ‘safety’ code. Not all ‘standard’ code could just be implemented on a SPLC since safety code costs more time to execute due to extra checks which are done. A workflow had to be found to split the code in a way the standard code (functional code) and safety code could still comunicate with each other.

Implementation A workflow was found in which many of the original steps could be maintained, see the figure below. First the plant model and requirements are just modelled as before, with only adding a tag to the certain plant parts and requirements which should be implemented on the SPLC. Then synthesis is applied after which the created supervisor is split in a functional and safety supervisor

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Subsequently the functional supervisor is converted to SCL code with the already present methods. The safety supervisor could however not be easily (automatically) converted to one of the graphical languages. Therefore, a guide was made to convert CIF supervisory commands to FBD code.

Of course this whole method had to be tested. A Siemens SPLC together with complementary desktop software was used to test every bit of the whole method. The desktop feature to see the actual status of the PLC was great to see if every change of input gave the right output. After lots a tweaking the method worked spot on.

Contrary to what someone would think of this BFP after reading this article is that this project was very handson. Every step, every new concept could be tested immediately on the setup. That’s why this BFP showed the great possibilities of model-based engineering first-hand.

If you’ve any questions about this project after reading this concise article feel absolutely free to contact me. redactie@simonstevin.tue.nl

Education

Interview Rob Fey

Can you tell something about your job on the university?

“I am an Associate Professor (NL: UHD = Universitair Hoofddocent) in the section Dynamics and Control of the Department of Mechanical Engineering. I am involved in educational, research, and organizational activities. Among others I give lectures, I coach Bachelor, Master, and PhD students during their research projects (often in cooperation with industry), and publish scientific papers. Most students probably know me from the 1st year course ‘Dynamics’ and the Master’s course ‘Structural Dynamics and Vibro-Acoustics’.”

What, where, and when did you study?

“I studied Mechanical Engineering at the TU/e from 1982-1987.”

Can you tell something about your career after your Master’s studies?

“I obtained my PhD from the TU/e in 1992 (first advisor: Dick van Campen). During

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my PhD project, I was stationed at the TNO Structural Dynamics group in Delft. The title of my PhD thesis was: ‘Steady-state behavior of reduced dynamical systems with local nonlinearities’. After my PhD, for 10 years I worked for TNO in Delft. In that period, I already guided PhD and Master students. In 2002, I switched to TU/e. Since then, I work here and still with much pleasure!”

What do you like the most about teaching?

“I am enthusiastic about my research field Dynamics. I would like to pass on this enthusiasm to students. So I like to teach, interact with, and guide students to understand dynamics. For me this is a very rewarding process.”

What is the funniest moment during you student time?

“Pff, I have to think about that. Ok, I had a teacher and during his lectures he was always very nervous. He always used a plastic pointer. During a certain lecture

he held this pointer behind his shoulders holding one end in each hand. The pointer severely bent and then it broke in two parts with a big bang. He looked flabbergasted to the two parts of the pointer in his hands. It was hilarious, the lecture was over.”

Do you have hobbies?

“I love to swim once a week. I also enjoy reading (favorite authors: Stephen King and Lee Child), geocaching, and going to concerts. My favorite concert was Pink Floyd in de Kuip in 1988. I like listening to rock and pop music from the 70’s and 80’s and to the Top 2000”. Indian Askin is my favorite band of today. I also like to watch football (favorite teams: Roda JC, PSV, and FC Eindhoven).

What do you think about the fact that the Bachelor will be in English next year?

“Ah, this is a very interesting topic of discussion of course. By this step the TU/e can obviously also attract foreign students in the Bachelor, which is nice since in the future less Dutch students may come to the TU/e because of demographic reasons. We will see how this will develop. In addition, the world economy is globalizing and therefore it is important to get used to English in an early stage of one’s studies.

For me personally, it is not a problem to switch to English. I already give part of my lectures in English, because I also teach in the Master, which is in English for years already. For me the most important question is how the students will experience the switch to English. Obviously, for a number of students it is not a big step since they already followed bilingual VWO. I would like to mention another possible consequence of this step: in the long term some Dutch technical terms may disappear, such as for example ‘Massatraagheidsmoment’. I would pity this, since I obviously love my native language.“

projects. However, I do not like the fact that some students that really want to study Mechanical Engineering are not allowed to.

More resources are necessary to educate more students at a high quality level.”

Do you have some good advice for students?

“I am afraid that I may sound a bit as the student’s parents: use your contact hours well, so not only attend lectures but also go to guided self-studies (not only for Dynamics, but for all courses), they are really important. Do not postpone what you can do now.”

Can you briefly mention two examples of recent Master projects you were involved in as a coach?

“In cooperation with Philips Research, a student developed a semi-analytic model predicting the dynamic behavior of a Capacitive Micromachined Ultrasound Transducer (CMUT) array. This array of a few mm squared is located at the end of an intracardiac catheter (indicated in yellow in figure below) and acts as a camera: it enables a doctor to look inside the heart. It would take some pages to explain all details, so I will only describe the global working principle. Initially, the CMUT array serves as an actuator. A voltage pulse generates electrostatic force pulses which bring very small membranes into vibration. The vibrating membranes generate pressure waves in the blood. These waves are (partially) reflected when they hit some tissue, e.g. a heart valve. Then the process is reversed and the CMUT array will act as a sensor transforming the reflected pressure waves into a voltage signal. All this information can be used to generate an image.”

What do you think about the Numerus Fixus of the Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering?

“I think this numerus fixus both has a good and a bad side. At the moment the work pressure of the staff is at its limit. However, the amount of students is still growing. I really want high quality teaching to remain, not only during courses but also in the guidance of individual bachelor and master

www.clipart-library.com, PhD Thesis Martin Pekar (ISBN/EAN 9789402807202)

written by:Maartje Borst

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ME

Tech

THE GIANT LEAP: IPAD PRO AS MAIN COMPUTER WRITTEN BY: BART VERHAEGH

My 15” Macbook Pro’s screen died after only one and a half year of faithful service and it rendered me not only sad but I also had to get a solution right away. A visit to the Apple Store in Amsterdam learned me that taking in the notebook for repair would not only take time this time of the year, but also would set me back about €800,-. The thing I didn’t dare to do, I now did in a brief impulse; I walked out the Store carrying the 12.9” iPad Pro 2018, accompanied with an Apple Pencil 2 and the Smart (non-keyboard) Folio, which I was going to use as my daily driver for study, work and leisure altogether.

The Device People know what an iPad is, and most people are familiar with the pros of Apple products; they deliver a luxurious experience on a device that screams quality. The iPad Pro 2018 has a very nicely evened out weight over the surface, it is stiff while thin, and the quality of the screen is superb in terms of color accuracy, contrast and resolution.

Furthermore, it has a 120Hz refresh

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rate, which takes us to one of the biggest use cases I’ve encountered while using the iPad for quite a while now; pencil interaction. As I’m someone who has meetings quite a lot, as well as following courses and attending lectures like others, I’ve spend some hours taking notes, drawing diagrams and marking down PDF files and Powerpoint slides. The high refresh rate really makes the difference there. While on older iPads, writing would feel sometimes a bit sluggish, as if

the iPad couldn’t hold up with your hand movements, the 2018 edition feels like you’re physically writing on the glass. The screen doesn’t flex when putting pressure and the screen is very close to the surface, all contributing to a wonderful writing experience. I’ve experienced that this is not something that only stands out when paying attention to detail; it changes how you at first might’ve preferred paper, but now feel switching to iPad is the way to go. Also, I’ve slapped on a PaperLike skin,

ME

Tech

which is a texturized matte screen protector that makes writing on the iPad feel like paper.

Considering such switch asks for an assessment of what I was exactly doing on a traditional laptop. Of course, being able to take notes and do all my document and notes management on the iPad Pro is of added value, but I had to replace all my digital ways to this slab of glass. Which, as you may know, runs iOS. And thát is where stuff got a bit more complicated.

The Software When comparing what you can do with an iOS app versus how you interact in a traditional OS like Windows or MacOS, the greatest common divisor is the thing that stitches all those apps together. I Windows we call it Explorer, for Mac it is the Finder and for iOS it is.. Well, it should be the ‘Files’ app, but really there isn’t decent file management in iOS. Downloading some files, doing some editing, zipping them up and emailing the files to someone would on a normal PC take seconds to minutes, while on iOS you’d need a special browser for numerous file types, download the files, edit them in the Word or Pages app, and use a cloud ZIP solution to do the zipping. Download the ZIP, share the ZIP file with the Email or Outlook app and you’d be set back a minute or 10. While the most popular apps around are really good - even to the point where they are more productive than their PC/Mac counterparts - doing ‘regular’ stuff seems the hardest. Normally, iPad users would just flip open their laptops or boot up the desktop and get the work done on there. But I was trying to do what Apple promises I should be capable doing, which is using the iPad Pro as a laptop replacement.

The apps I’ve used most are Notability for notetaking, GoCoEdit for code editing PHP, Javascript and CSS, Blink for logging into my development server, and MATLAB. The last one may be the most interesting for mechanical engineers reading this, but I’m going to be honest in saying that Mathworks’ app leaves a lot to be desired. The app is not built for the high resolution the iPad has, which makes the whole interface feel bloated. Importing and exporting (sets of) m-files isn’t possible either, so you have

to use the website drive.matlab.com and manage your files there. As the MATLAB app does not (and isn’t allowed according to Apples rules) run the code on your local machine, but rather runs in on their servers, you can’t use all the toolboxes and libraries you like. After a couple of guided self-study sessions for the Advanced Computational Continuum Mechanics course, I threw in the towel. Not by switching back to the laptop, but rather a plan B, staying on iPad but trying to bring some of the traditional OS stuff back in. A French company called Shadow rents high-end virtual desktop PCs (primarily for gaming, but oh well), which stream to any device with zero latency.

This effectively would mean that I could stream a blazing-fast Windows machine right to my ultra-portable iPad.

The Future The result is marvellous, but mind-boggling at the same time.

Having access to a high-end Windows system when required (e.g. to use a proper MATLAB environment), being able to switch to great apps like Notability and Blink, all using a slab of glass which weighs about 650 grammes is absolutely remarkable and quite frankly the future. There just is something about the form factor that matches so many different use cases, be it producing music with MAVO, programming, doing some note taking or watching Netflix on the train. But having to divert to remote desktop solutions and renting a PC in the cloud for 25 euros per month while the device itself is packed with loads of processing power, all because the limitations of iOS, is quite sad.

It’s like Apple’s built a beautiful red Ferrari with a 5.2 litres V10 engine, but forgot to put in a gas pedal. Using the iPad in the cumbersome configuration like I’ve done gives a sneak peek in how the future of portable computing could look like, and I like what I’ve seen. Though, things need to be sorted out first, and its now the iOS team’s turn to step up the game. Until then, I’ve taken my MacBook Pro and brought it in for repair. But still, you’ll maybe see me in the train getting some work done, and it won’t be on my laptop.

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Flat Earth Society Diving into the conspiracy WRITTEN BY LEX VERBERNE

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Education

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Association

For over 2000 years, there have been speculations about whether the Earth is a sphere or simply flat. Now, until around 400 years ago, this would have been a good discussion. Scientists could give arguments for both theories and the argument could go back and forth.

However, we nowadays have high-tech equipment and even photographs from outer space that can confirm the round shape of the earth. And still, there is quite a big group of people who claim that the Earth is a beautiful flat disk. Let’s talk about the peculiar group of people who call themselves the Flat Earth Society (FES).

all astronauts are actors. Really, it would surprise you how much effort some people put into this organization. At conferences, you can even find ‘Flat Earth Artists’, who make pieces of art especially about the flat earth. One thing is for sure, the dedication is surely there.

The origin story

The Theory

As mentioned, these theories have been going on for quite some time. But the current society that has grounded around this doubtful theory, began in 19th century by Samuel Rowbotham. This writer, who conducted the Bedford Level Experiment, begun the hype of the theory.

During his life, he wrote the book: Zetetic Astronomy: Earth not a Globe, which is still mentioned on the home page of the Flat Earth Society like a bible. After his death, his followers soon founded the Universal Zetetic Society, which was later followed up by the famous organization we know nowadays.

Well, you’re an engineer who probably has been told that the Earth is a sphere ever since you were a young kid. But I want you to try to mainly forget about all your prejudices and hear these people out. For all you know now, have you ever seen the curvature of the Earth yourself?

Now, the theories are not all similar (according to the FES, this is due to all the amazingly free-thinking minds they have there), but we will talk about the most common one: The disk. Simply said, the Earth is a disk with the North pole in the middle and the American wall-obsession is continued by stating that the oceans are held back by an wall of ice which we call ‘Antarctica’. Now, of course this may raise some questions, but some theories can be explained.

These enthusiastic people organize conferences, debate in online forums and make bold statements about why the government is lying to you and that

In the last years, some celebrities decided to join the FES as well. Besides Tom Cruise following Scientology, there are a lot of famous (mostly American) sports celebrities who ‘came out’ to say that the Earth is indeed flat. Now, if even these people start believing it, why shouldn’t you start doing so?

?

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UNICEF Another interesting ‘argument’ the FES can mention is the UNICEFlogo. You may ask yourself why that would be so important, but when you watch the logo, you can see that there is great similarity in the Flat Earth they have in mind and the logo.

Watch it yourself.

What about the Sun, moon and everything else in the universe?

Every day you see the sun and moon for only a part of the day, but this is due to the fact that they rotate around the center of the Earth. When the sun turns away from you it will eventually become dark, simple as that. During the winter, the circle it rotates around gets a little bit bigger and during the summer it is a little smaller. Besides, forget about gravity and everything you think you know about it.

According to the FES, the disk we live on accelerates up with 9.81 m/s2 and that is what you experience as ‘gravity’. But there is more about explaining science.

How is for instance the magnetic field around the earth explained? This is because ring magnets, which are shaped like (you guessed it!) a flat disk, are capable of having radial magnetization.

In a radial magnet, one magnetic pole is at the center and the other is at all points on the edge of the magnet. Finally, you may be surprised, but the FES confirms the fact that other planets are spheres.

About a year ago, Elon Musk posted a tweet, asking: Why is there no Flat Mars Society!? For everyone’s entertainment, the official twitter-account of FES answered with maybe the most cringy answer you can imagine: Hi Elon, thanks for the question. Unlike the Earth, Mars has been observed to be round. We hope

Association

you have a fantastic day! As you can imagine, this resulted in some interesting discussions.

How would our physics apply?

Now, you may feel a bit confused about how this all would actually work. However, it is quite interesting to apply all the physics we know to this curious disk. Although the shape of a disk with the size the FES has in mind would immediately collapse because of gravity, we can discuss what would happen if it were possible after all. Things actually get pretty weird when gravity still works the way it would as we think it does. Walking towards the edge of the earth would feel like walking upwards towards an increasing slope. That is, until you reach the edge of the disk where, once you stepped over the edge, you could actually just walk around on the edge and gravity wouldn’t be that different there. But since gravity doesn’t exist according to the FES, this does not really seems to be possible for them unfortunately.

But, why?

So okay, there seem to be all kinds of reasons why the flat earth is possible, but even a lot more to accept that the earth is round.

Especially when it comes to pictures from outer space, which simply confirm the shape of the earth. The answer from the FES is that the ‘astronauts’ we see on TV going into space are simply actors. And this all holds together with other conspiracy

KYRIE IRVING

Kyrie Irving is one of the best players in the NBA at the moment, with arguably the best handles out there. This All-Star player has been one of many celebrities who mentioned that they doubt the fact that the Earth is a sphere. When asked in multiple interviews what his topic was, he most of the times answered with about the same: “Can you openly admit that you know the Earth is constitutionally round?” he said to me. “Like, you know that for sure? Like, I don’t know.” After him, some other basketball players starting saying similar things about the flat disk we live on. However, Irving has apologized later for making this statement and said he was simply “ Very into conspiracy theories back then.” Apparently, conspiracy theorists are everywhere.

theories like the ones about the moon landing not happening.

The big question I kept asking myself while reading all this theory, is simply: why? Why would someone keep convincing themselves about theories so hard to believe. After all the years of science and research we had as a human kind and the simple tests you can do yourself (like seeing a boat disappearing below the horizon), why still put so much time in convincing yourself and others about these theories?

The interesting philosophic thing is, there is kind of a pattern here. Apparently, people who belief in a Flat Earth, were most of the time conspiracy theorists beforehand. You know, the people who think 9/11 never happened and that Elvis is still alive. It all seems to come down to disagree with everything that is told to you. If you have ever watched the Matrix, there is a blue and a red pill. If you take the blue pill, you will experience life as ‘they’ want you to and everything will be fine. However, if you take the red pill, you will see the world as it actually is. Although there are no physical pills involved here, the conspiracy theorists are convinced that once they started doubting things, they actually start to see the world ‘as it is’.

Now, there is some research done into this subject, where 422 participants were investigated to find out how their personalities influenced their beliefs in conspiracy theories.

As it was found, people who believe in conspiracy theories more often, are often more influenced by schizotypy. This is a collection of schizophrenia-like personality traits, which you may be more familiar with. This includes for instance high levels of suspiciousness and in extreme cases even dangerous-world beliefs, where people think the world could erupt in total chaos at any moment. Well, that surely sounds normal.

Make your own choice However, I am not here to persuade you into admitting one theory is right and the other is wrong. After all, I haven’t even been in space yet, so how would I know? If you’re really interested, on the first and second of August the annual Flat Earth International Conference takes place in Toronto, buy your tickets online! However, I would like to end with a quote from Daniel J. Boorstin: “The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance – it is the illusion of knowledge.”

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Career

TNO

“Innovation for life”

WRITTEN BY: STIJN MIDDELHUIS

If TU/e students hear the word TNO, they know you are talking about a big company in the Netherlands which performs research, but that is about it. It is surprising that so little is known by students about such a big player, who is working in almost every field of expertise in the society. But to be honest, the first line is true for me as well and therefore I was glad to be welcomed at TNO in Delft by Lisa Tang to talk about TNO and her activities within the company.

Lisa completed her bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering at the Technical University in Eindhoven. She discovered during her studies that the mechanics of materials really interested her and therefore she ended up doing her bachelor’s final project within the Mechanics of Materials group. The project was an experimental research about the mechanical behaviour of brain tissue. After her bachel¬¬or she started with a master in Mechanical Engineering also in the Mechanics of Materials group under professor Marc Geers. During her masters, she went on a three months international internship at the National University of Singapore, where she modelled and validated the fatigue behaviour of large scale welded tubular X-joints used for offshore platforms. To get some experience within a company, she first did a small research project for Philips Applied Technologies in Eindhoven where she investigated the cracking behaviour of a small diode package, before she started her graduation project. She started her graduation project at the

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TU/e, where she continued on her research on the mechanical properties of brain tissue which she started for her BEP. During her masters, she was gaining some interest in TNO. At that time, TNO was still situated on the campus of Eindhoven in front of Gemini which made it easy to get in contact with them.

One of the courses she followed for her master, integrated vehicle safety, was given by TNO in Helmond and this was a real turn over point. Several employees with different backgrounds came over to talk about their functions and activities within TNO and this was really inspiring and appealing. She enjoyed doing research, but was missing the application of it when she did research for the university. A PhD was therefore not an option, but TNO did offer her this application she missed at the university. When she came back from traveling after her graduation, she decided to start living in Rotterdam and applied for a job as a research scientist in the Structural Dynamics department of TNO in Delft, which is now 6 years ago.

Career

To start off, can you explain what TNO exactly is and does?

TNO is an independent research institute for applied science which is basically operating between the universities and the industry. We try to translate the fundamental knowledge and science of the universities in such a way that it could be applied by the industry. It is always challenging since it is quite different every time to which player you are working the closest.

Sometimes you are doing a fundamental research project, so you are standing closer to the universities but sometimes it is more a consultancy project and you are closer to the industry. In every new project you will have to face new challenges and you will have to gain new knowledge. Of course you have experience and knowledge of projects in the past but every project is different. Companies come to TNO because other companies, e.g. an engineering company, cannot do the work so TNO has quite an unique position. Furthermore, TNO is never working alone. The projects are always in collaboration with universities, governments or the industry.

Can you tell a little bit about what your department is doing within TNO and the kind of projects you are involved in?

At the department of Structural Dynamics, we use our expert knowledge on dynamics, structures and materials to solve challenges in the Civil, Maritime and Offshore domain. We do this, among others, through consultancy, model development and experiments in our very own laboratory. The combination of sound theory and experimental facilities gives TNO a unique position in our field. The laboratory gives us the opportunity to test constructions, both scaled and true sized, under a large range of loading conditions. Some examples: fatigue on offshore wind turbines, vehicle loading on bridge decks and impact loading on LNG tanks. To be able to do this research, we built one-time set-ups, use our dedicated shock and vibration tables or ready a specimen for impact in the drop tower.

I started at TNO as a research scientist and this was a nice opportunity to elaborate further on the same work field as I did my masters in. I started with some projects related to the fracture behaviour of steel under extreme conditions, e.g. very low temperatures. . The last few years most of my projects are related to the mechanical behaviour of composites.

Currently I am working on projects related to the development of a composite military vehicle. Landmines are extensively used in warfare to attack vehicles. Protection against these underbelly explosions is an important requirement for all the modern military vehicles. Additional protection, e.g. extra steel plate, can be added to vehicles but this will add weight to the vehicles, while there is a demand for weight reduction. The goal is to develop new material solutions, e.g. composite, for lighter military vehicles keeping at least the same amount of protection. One of the things which I like about working at TNO is that you have a lot of opportunities to explore and develop yourself. During my masters I was interested in the mechanical

behaviour of all kind of materials. After working for a year at TNO, I was looking for a new challenge and I did projects related the mechanical behaviour of asphalt, concrete and composites, which is the focus of my projects nowadays. Maybe in the (near) future I will do projects related to a different material or application.

How big is the group of people you are working with and is the size of the company bothering you?

With 50 to 60 people we are quite a big department within TNO and let say that I am working directly with 10 of them.

Sometimes you are also cooperating with other departments at other locations of TNO, for instance I am working for my current projects a lot with TNO Rijswijk. The explosions, ballistics and protection department is located over there. They are doing the blast experiments and our department is supporting them with numerical analyses. We have a big variety of backgrounds in our department, for instance Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Physics and quite some Civil and Maritime Engineers. Because we have a quite large and broad department which is doing all kind of projects in different fields it was in the beginning quite difficult for me to exactly know what is going on within the department. We try to keep each other as much up to date as possible with for instance lunch lectures where we can inform our colleagues about an interesting project result or challenge. In total TNO has about 3000 employees but the size of the company is not making me feel like a number, since your daily activities are just within your own department with the colleagues you know and closely working with. Also the fact that you are working close to the customer and that in some cases the outcome of your work can be directly implemented gives a lot of satisfaction.

Lisa stated that she learned a lot about working independent and with responsibility. “As soon as your project is finished, it is up to you to find new projects�. She said that it felt rather strange in the beginning, since it seems like you have to ask for work, but it actually works quite natural. With this way of working there comes a lot of freedom and opportunities to explore yourself on different subjects within your department. After a while, people will get to know you and know what your expertise is, so they will come over to you to ask if you could maybe mean something for a certain project.

So if you enjoy doing research, think the application of it is important and like to work in a dynamic company with a lot of freedom and responsibility, I would say TNO sounds like a perfect match.

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HANDBIKE AERODYNAMICS Written by: Robbert Louwers

Photograph by: Paul Raats

One thing we almost all do on a daily basis is cycling. The past few years race cycling has gained a lot of popularity. On your way to university the aerodynamics of your student bicycle that’s almost falling apart are not that important. For Tim de Vries, twofold World Champion in handbiking, the aerodynamics of his bike however do matter.

Gijs Bastiaanse is doing his graduation project on improving the aerodynamics of Tim’s bike, so he can bring home some gold medals from the Paralympic Games of 2020 in Tokyo.

Handbiking knows five classifications, based on the impairment and impact of the impairment someone has. From the five classifications, the first four are bikes in which the athletes ride in a lying position.

The last classification are bikes in which the athletes ride in a kneeling position. Since Tim has an impairment on his legs, he lost a leg after a trampoline accident, he rides in the H5 class in a kneeling position.

Tim is the current World Champion road race and runner up at the individual time trials. At the Paralympic Games 2020 Paralympics in Tokyo he wants to win the gold medal in both disciplines. To be able to win these medals, he came to the TU/e to see if his bike could be improved to scrape off a few precious seconds.

Since one of his hobbies is road cycling, Gijs already had an interest in this sport. During his internship, he followed the course Sports and Building Aerodynamics by professor Bert Blocken. After following this course, he wanted a graduation project that combined his hobby with what he learned in this course. With Tims desire for a improved bike and the graduation project of Gijs, the two formed a perfect combination. After writing a project proposal that was approved by both the department of Mechanical Engineering and the Department of the Built Environment, Gijs started his graduation.

Education

tunnel and its research opportunities, scan the QR code to view it.

With the obtained results of the wind tunnel analysis, Gijs started with a CFD model. The results were used to make an accurate geometry estimation which can be implemented in the CFD model. The mesh which is used in this model has to be very accurate near the bike and skin, because of the extant boundary layers in this region. Each mesh cell near the layer has to be smaller than the layer itself, otherwise it will cause inaccuracies in the calculations. In the model a ‘bounding box’ was implemented. Within this box the mesh is small, and a nonuniform unstructured mesh consisting of tetrahedral cells is used. Outside the At the top a handcyclist in lying position. The H1-H4 classification uses different angles for the lying box the mesh is larger and a structured positions. At the bottom a cyclist in the H5 (kneeling) position. non-uniform mesh with rectangular cells is used. Using a small mesh in the whole Tim’s position on his bike. Since the domain would make it impossible to run Since the project is a collaboration air resistance is over 90% of the total calculations on the model. between the two departments, Gijs has resistance when riding in individual a supervisor from each department. time trials with average speeds of over Validation His supervisors from the Department 40 km/h, the wind tunnel is a perfect To check if the quality of the mesh of the Built Environment are professor environment to test the aerodynamics of within the box is high enough, it has to Bert Blocken and PhD student Thijs Tim’s bike. These tests were performed in meet certain criteria. For example, the van Druenen. His supervisor from the the new wind tunnel on the TU/e campus. skewness and dihedral angle are checked.

Department of Mechanical Engineering is More information on this wind tunnel When these criteria are met, the mesh is professor Niels Deen. can be found in an article of the Cursor converted from a surface mesh to a volume ‘Putting wind to work’. mesh. This volume mesh also has to meet The project started by performing For the opening of the wind tunnel, the certain criteria so that its quality is high wind tunnel tests of Tim’s bike and following video was made to present the enough. Of course, using small volumes

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Education

in the whole model would produce the best results, but this increases the computation time. After a few iterations, Gijs found a good combination of mesh quality and computation time. The mesh quality was not the only parameter which the model had to account for, parameters like the blockage ratio and turbulence models were also taken into account for the model to be as accurate as possible.

The blockage ratio is a ratio between the frontal area of the surface of the geometry and the cross-section of the domain in which the geometry is placed. You can imagine that putting objects very close to the wall of the wind tunnel influences the accuracy of the measurements. Ideally, the blockage ratio is between 3-5%.

After validating that the blockage ratio was not a problem in the wind tunnel measurements, Gijs increased the size of the domain in his CFD model so that the blockage ratio was between the desired values.

In the figure at the bottom of this page the CFD model with streamlines around Tim and his bike can be seen, with the vortex forming behind him.

The calculations that the solver has to perform cannot be performed on the laptops we all use, since they require more computational power, and thus they are being performed on a computer cluster from the Department of the Built Environment. Even on this cluster the calculations take quite some time to complete.

Wind tunnel VS Reality To translate the results obtained from the wind tunnel measurements to real world situations, several things have to be taken into account. For example, in the wind tunnel, the bike and its rider are standing still and the wind moves past them. This creates an extra boundary layer between the ground and the bike, which will not be present during a road race or time trial. Some wind tunnels compensate for this boundary layer by having a floor that sucks away this layer, But this was however not available with this analysis.

for improvement with his supervisors.

Not much can be said about these options for improvement, since these are confidential. We wouldn’t want Tim’s competitors to be able to use the same improvements on their bike. But every Mechanical Engineer that reads this article can put his mind to work and think of some improvements on his own.

The plan is for Gijs to finish his graduation at the end of February, and if he obtains good results, these will be used in the construction of a new bike for Tim. The first real testing opportunity for this new bike will be at the coming World Championships, and of course Tim hopes to win gold medals with it in Tokyo. If you want to follow Tim’s Road to Tokyo 2020, check his website https://handbikertim. nl/) or his Facebook (https://www. facebook.com/handbiketimothy/).

If you also want to tell something about your graduation project, feel free to contact redactie@simonstevin.tue.nl

Application

After the CFD model was completed and validated, Gijs discussed several options

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Tech

Nuclear Fusion

The power plant of the future or sci-fi?

WRITTEN BY: SJORS VAN ADRICHEM

A ‘fusion fire’ releases a billion times more energy per gram fuel than the burning of fossil fuels.

In theory this would mean that 1 kg of fusion fuel per day is enough for an entire power plant.

Compare that to the 2 km long train full of coal that a coal fired power plant uses daily.

The debate on power plants never stops. The radioactive waste of nuclear fission is unwanted, but fossil fuels aren’t that great for the environment either. Wind and solar energy have great perspective, but can’t provide much energy. There are many other sources for energy, on that is relatively unknown is nuclear fusion. How does this work, or even better: does it work?

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Tech Fusion

Keep it running

On earth nuclear fusion is almost nowhere to be found in nature. But that’s a different story for the entire universe. As you think of it, almost everything you see at night in the sky is fusion. And daylight is practically a product of the fusion done in the core of the sun. That’s where hydrogen-1 is fused into to form helium-4, known as the proton-proton chain reaction.

This fusion powers the sun and many other stars.

Now that we found the way to shape the plasma, the creating and sustaining of the plasma is considered. The first stage of heating is amongst others done by the plasma current. The plasma has resistivity, so there will be Ohmic dissipation.

However, the higher the temperature is, the lower the resistivity becomes. It limits the heating to 10 million K, very high but not enough for fusion. Other methods are used to further heat the plasma to the ‘working temperature’.

In a fusion power plant other isotopes of hydrogen are used, deuterium (2He) and tritium (3He). After research it shows that this reaction has the highest reaction rate and does that at the lowest temperature. This “low” temperature is still around 100 to 200 million Kelvin. Such a high temperature is needed, because the nuclei must overcome the Coulomb barrier, which requires a lot of energy.

A power plant would only be useful if the power generation is larger than its consumption. Therefore a good type of energy confinement is required to keep a plasma at its temperature.

That method is magnetic confinement: with the use of coils the plasma is kept in place in a huge vacuum vessel. It cannot touch the wall, because the material on the inside will evaporate instantaneously at 108 K. The core of the plasma is really hot and the edge can’t be, so there will be a very large temperature and density gradient at the edge of the plasma, which creates a very steep pressure gradient. The Lorentz force created by the magnetic field is the counterforce in order to sustain the plasma and keep the heat at the place where it is allowed.

Tokamak

This magnetic confinement is best kept in a toroidal geometry, because it is a system with no end-losses. Two promising concepts are used in research and experiments, the Stellarator and the Tokamak.

The stellarator uses external coils to create the proper magnetic field, but lies a bit behind in the development with respect to the tokamak.

The tokamak will also be the machine most people imagine when thinking about a largescale fusion reactor.

In order to have a magnetic field of up to 5 tesla that keeps the plasma in the toroidal vacuum vessel, three fields are needed that together have the proper confinement properties.

• The toroidal field is created by external coils.

• The poloidal field is created by a current of up to 25

MAthrough the plasma.

• The vertical field is also created by external coils.

Of course there are many more coils that help to shape the plasma, but these three are the principles.

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Electron cyclotron heating (ECH) is based on the method of injecting electro-magnetic waves that are absorbed by the plasma. By choosing the right frequency for this wave, it can be chosen where the wave will be absorbed in the plasma, because the frequency is dependent on the principle axis of the torus. The current can also be locally driven if the wave is injected tangentially, which gives some shaping possibilities. The operator can therefore locally heat the plasma, shape the plasma and disrupt certain turbulences.’

Another method is neutral beam injection (NBI). The plasma is then injected with neutral hydrogen (neutral because of the magnetic field). This hydrogen has to be much hotter than the plasma temperature and have enough energy to reach the core of the plasma, but not penetrate through the entire plasma. A plasma ion than has a charge exchange with the neutral hydrogen. It is now ionised and will transfer its heat by collisions with other ions or electrons. Because NBI injects particles, it is also one of the ways of fuelling the plasma.

However, the fuel cycle is most of all dependable on the tritium breeding blanket. This blanket is “wrapped” on the inside of the vacuum vessel and encapsulates the plasma.

Deuterium does not decay and is practically unlimited available in water. Tritium has a half-life of twelve years, so it can’t be found anywhere in nature. Tritium is bred from lithium-6, together with a neutron an exothermal reaction of 4,8 MeV occurs, where next to the tritium also helium forms. A kind of neutron-cycle is thus also present, because the fusion of deuterium and tritium produces a neutron. Of course there are some losses, so some other neutron source is needed, but those details will be left out.

If the fusion reaction would be running smoothly, it should supply energy, otherwise it wouldn’t be a power plant. What the fusion itself produces, is a lot of heat. This heat has to be transferred outside of the reactor. This is done via the conventional way, with a heat exchanger that heats up a coolant. Now the heat can be used to produce electricity like more powerplants do.

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“ITER can be seen as the largest, most expensive and most complicated experiment ever done. ”

The road to a power plant We are still a long way of commercial fusion reactors as power plants. A fusion reactor that is currently functional, is JET. The world’s largest nuclear fusion experiment. The highest amount of fusion energy was reached here almost twenty years ago: 16 MW during 1 second. The next step is ITER, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. It is currently under construction and will, hopefully, provide scientific proof of concept that nuclear fusion is a reliable source of electricity.

It can be seen as the largest, most expensive and most complicated experiment ever done. The planning is that in 2025 the first plasma is achieved and 10 years later the deuterium-tritium fusion will start. Whilst ITER will be for

the scientist, the start on DEMO has already started. Multiple DEMO will be made and those reactors are to show the world that fusion reactors can be power plants, and can compete with traditional power plants.

It is expected that around 2060 nuclear fusion will provide a noteworthy quantity of electricity. There are still a lot of challenges that have to be dealt with. Some are more practical, like finding metals that can sustain a large power flux and will be in the ‘first wall’ inside the reactor. On the other side there are theoretical issues where many scientists are working on.

However, a lot of progress will be made in the coming years/ decades. And who knows, maybe we can one day use the electricity produced by a nuclear fusion power plant.

Association

Het Thiende Lustrum Simon Ster Van toen tot nu...

De eerste Ster kwam uit rond februari 1970. Dit initiatief kwam van het 13e Bestuur van de W.S.V. Simon Stevin. Het doel was om de communicatie tussen de diverse groeperingen binnen de afdeling Werktuigbouwkunde te verbeteren. Daarbij was het streven om één keer in de twee weken een editie uit te brengen.

Toentertijd werd het typewerk gedaan door secretaresses en vervolgens met een kaft samengesteld aangezien de eerste computers pas begin jaren ’70 op de markt kwamen in Nederland.

Na twee mooie jaren aan Simon Ster ging het blad over in het ‘Afdelingsblad’, waarvan de Simon Ster een rubriek was. Deze overgang was een initiatief van het faculteitsbestuur, waarbij de redactie zou bestaan uit een breder georiënteerde groep, namelijk niet alleen meer studenten en Simon bestuur, maar ook staf- en personeelsleden.

Al snel herleefde de Simon Ster. In het jaar 1971-1972 besloot het toenmalige Simon-Bestuur de naam weer terug te veranderen in de Simon Ster. Er werd doorgegaan met hoe er begonnen was, alsof het nooit weg was geweest.

Naarmate de jaren vorderde werd de Simon Ster steeds meer een traditie en uiteindelijk niet meer weg te denken. Columns als technische artikelen, Smile of Science, excursieverslagen en sterrenhoekjes waren vaste onderdelen geworden.

Pas gedurende het jaar 1989, het Vierde Lustrum van de Simon Ster, werd er voor het eerst een PC (Personal Computer) gebruikt om de Simon Ster uit te brengen. Het betreft een 386 met een duizelingwekkende kloksnelheid van 4.77 MHz. De hulp van de lieftallige secretaresses was dus niet langer meer nodig.

Het professionele uiterlijk van de afgelopen Simon Sterren is ontstaan gedurende het Zesde Lustrum van de Simon Ster.

Doordat de Simon Ster niet meer in de universiteitsdrukker gedrukt werd, maar bij een externe partij, waren er veel meer mogelijkheden om het blad aantrekkelijker te maken.

WRITTEN BY: MAARTJE BORST Gedurende de jaren die volgen wordt het design van de Simon Ster nog aantrekkelijker en lijkt het een professioneel tijdschrift.

De inhoud van de artikelen is uiteenlopend en gaat met de tijd mee. Niet alleen de inhoud gaat met de tijd mee, ook steeds meer artikelen worden in het Engels geschreven, zodat het ook beschikbaar is voor een breder internationaal publiek. Vanaf het 61e jaar van de W.S.V. Simon Stevin is de gehele vereniging over gegaan naar het Engels en zo ook bijna de gehele Simon Ster.

Nu 50 jaren later na de mooie start van de Simon Ster en het einde van de typemachine voor het schrijven van de ster is er een grote verandering. Na veel wikken en wegen heeft het 62e Bestuur der W.S.V. Simon Stevin ervoor gekozen om de Simon Ster helemaal te veranderen. De naam van de Simon Ster is verandert naar openME, om het een meer internationaal karakter te geven. Daarnaast zijn alle artikelen niet alleen meer te vinden op papier, maar is er nu een online blog geopend waar gemiddeld twee keer per week artikelen te vinden zijn.

Graag wil ik iedereen bedanken die de afgelopen 50 jaar heeft gewerkt aan de mooie resultaten van de Simon Ster en laten we hopen op nog vele mooie jaren met openME. Wist je dat:….

• Het aantal oplages van de Simon Ster in de beginjaren 1 keer in de twee weken was, vervolgens één keer per maand en de afgelopen jaren gemiddeld 5 keer per jaar.

• In eptember 2018 de eerste betaalde advertentie geplaatst was.

• Maria Cliteur 25e Bestuur, Marloes van Ballegooijen 48e Bestuur, Sanne Janssen 54e Bestuur Maartje Borst 62e Bestuur de enige vrouwelijke hoofdredacteuren huisorgaan zijn van de afgelopen 25 jaar.

• Er vroeger ook eigen getekende strips in de Simon Ster gepubliceerd werden.

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ROLLER COASTERS

Whether you’re a child or an adult, roller coasters tend to be the main point of attention whenever you enter an amusement park. It should not be much of a mystery to anyone what’s exciting about soaring through the sky in a small metal cart while going 100 kilometers per hour. As you can probably imagine, the amount of work required to build even small rollercoasters can be substantial, and there are a lot of different rules that need to be taken into account.

Written by: Joël Peeters

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First, a bit of history The earliest designs for roller coasters originate from all the way back to the 15th century Russia. The idea came forth from a winter activity that’s still popular today: Ice sledding. People in areas with few hills and mountains would make large hills of snow and ice against wooden towers. Of course, this would not work nearly as well outside the winter season, so the ice hills slowly started being replaced by hills made entirely of wood. Wheels were mounted under the sleds, and lanterns were placed alongside the track so the attraction could be used at night. These constructions were brought under the attention of French citizens, and in the year 1817 the first true roller coaster was built in Paris, fittingly called the Montagnes Russes à Belleville (Russian mountains in Belleville). The same year also brought the introduction of the first roller coaster whose track looped back to its initial starting position. The rides grew more popular and designers tried to make them as fast and exciting as they could, even building the first ever roller coaster with a looping. Unfortunately, these coasters were far from safe, and due to a large number of injuries, most of the “Russian mountains” were broken down in the decades that followed.

Roller coasters would only become truly popular once amusement parks in the United States started looking at the designs used for track systems in mining operations and building miniature versions for the amusement of passengers.

Coasters in this time only went about 20 kilometers per hour, and only ever went up and down a few slopes. These coasters and their tracks were still made entirely out of wood, but despite their low speeds their popularity grew, and at the beginning of the 20th century, about 1500 roller coasters had been built worldwide. The first steel coaster, the Matterhorn Bobsled ride, was built by none other than Walt Disney and marked the birth of the modern roller coaster. Only over the last 50 years vertical loopings, corkscrews, and countless other track variations were added to the simple hills that rollercoasters used to consist of, and Rollercoasters have become larger, longer and much faster. Nowadays, roller coasters can go up to almost 140 m into the air and as fast as 240 kilometers per hour.

Extreme variation

The roller coaster industry is very heavily characterized by innovation and diversity. Roller coasters are extremely expensive to build, with costs for a medium-sized coaster easily ranging in the millions, the amusement parks that invest in them all want to build something unique that will draw new visitors. Some parks try to find this uniqueness by breaking

records. The Efteling’s Flying Dutchman, for instance, is the most expensive roller coaster in the Netherlands, costing over 20 million to build. More often, though, parks try to make their attraction stand out by building rare types of rollercoasters.

This push for innovation has allowed for an enormous amount of variety.

The standard design for a coaster is quite simple: A cart or train is attached on top of a metal track and pulled up an incline. At the top of the incline, the train is released and gravity does the rest. There are plenty of modern designs that take another route. Take the different models of launched roller coasters for instance. Instead of relying on gravity to get the train up to speed, this type of coaster relies on electromagnets, fluid pressure or large flywheels to immediately accelerate to high speeds, which allow for more interesting track layouts that aren’t dependent on different hills to maintain speed.

Another way in which coasters vary from the standard design is by the way the cart/train is attached to the rails. The large new coaster that Toverland opened in August last year, the Feniks, is an example of a wing coaster. In a wing coaster, the passengers are hung beside the track which allows for a much larger feeling of acceleration when the train changes direction.

There are a ton of different other ways rollercoasters can be attached to the tracks: from a spinning roller coaster, in which the seats of each cart can rotate individually from the track to a suspended coaster, in which the carts are hung to the rails in the form of a pendulum.

Designing a roller coaster.

When designing a roller coaster, there are a lot of valuables that need to be taken into account, ranging from the space where it needs to be built to the target audience. But generally speaking, what makes a coaster exciting? Speed alone, as most engineers will know, is not nearly as intensely felt as acceleration. A useful measurement for the excitement level of roller coasters is, therefore, the G-force. A single G-force is simply the force applied to any human by gravity, and the goal is to apply as high a G-force as is fun during a ride. A G-force of 4 or higher will leave most people feeling nauseous, and depending on how long the force remains at that level, a G-force of around 6 will make people black out. There are several ways a coaster can manipulate the G-force applied to a person. One very popular way of doing this is adding inversions, which is any part of a coaster where the track turns upside down and then returns to an upright position. Another way of doing so is adding a free fall, which gives the sensation that no G-forces are applied to the passengers.

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Education

It’s Tuesday morning, just a few days away from Sinterklaas and a few weeks away from Christmas (holidays!). For the past week the TU/e has been plastered with posters containing photographs of people you mostly don’t recognize. You receive an e-mail from the TU/e asking you to vote for the University Council elections and you recognize the name of the chief editor of this magazine and choose to vote for her.

WRITTEN BY: ERIK HEIJST All around you, people in yellow, green and blue clothes accompanied by a logo who ask you if you’ve voted yet. You tell them who you voted for to the delight of the yellow clad people and to the dismay of the others. The next week the posters are all removed and everything is back to the way it was. But what had just happened?

What did you just vote for? Why were there posters all over the campus? Why did your vote matter? Why were there different colors and what is the difference between them? The majority of students do not know and I will try to answer all these questions in this article.

University Council

What you just voted for was the University Council, more importantly the student representation in the University Council via the student fraction Groep-één.

This is a form of co-determination (“medezeggenschap”) which gives students a voice in everything that goes on in and around the TU/e. It wasn’t always like this though. It used to be (30+ years ago) that the executive boards of universities simply decided on policy and everyone simply had to take it. At one point especially students did not take it anymore and took to the streets.

These protests resulted in legislation that ensured the voice of students and staff is included in decision making at universities, which was then translated in the creation of University Councils.

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Picture 1: TU/e Executive Board with Victor Minds

Mainly the University Council advises the Executive Board on basically everything (from the names of base courses to the number of study places in new buildings to student well-being) but also has some power in the form of the “right to consent”. This means that if we say “no” to a particular piece of policy, it will not be implemented. The University Council consists of 9 seats for students and 9 seats for staff. Every year elections are held for the students and every two years elections are held for the staff. The elections for students are a lot more ‘serious’ as there are three student fractions (Groep-één, ESR and DAS) vying for the available seats and only one staff fraction. If you indeed

decide to vote for the chief editor of this magazine, we would like to thank you for voting Groep-één since your vote helped carry us to five seats and an absolute majority!

Groep-één Even though the University Council is a very political organization, Groep-één is very practical for a political party. Where politics usually takes years in order to achieve something, we can achieve the same in mere months. This is because we operate on the basis of three core values: We proactively make use of informal decision making, we use our sizeable experience and our equally sizeable

Education

network and we are both critical and constructive. Our fraction consists of experienced students who are already familiar with the TU/e and the people working there. Our experience with the TU/e allows us to talk with the decision makers more openly and to get to the bottom of certain issues in an informal setting. We are quickly able to get on top of problems due to a large network and thereafter resolve them due to critical although constructive discussions with decision makers. On top of this, we are also a member of the Interstedelijk Studentenoverleg (ISO) and we help the ISO with discussions surrounding issues on a national level that also affect the students of this university.

So why does that majority matter so much to us? Well, it gives us more power in the Council but it also gives us more people to work with. Most of our time is spent on our “official” University Council work, which entails reading documents and asking questions based on what’s in them. This sounds pretty boring and, granted, it may get boring at times but we are still willing to do it since it is the most important aspect of our work. In those documents lay the rights and possibilities of all students at this university, including you. Beside the official work we also engage in a number of projects, or dossiers as we call them, which are essentially problems or complaints students have about a certain topic. We are then able to use the connections we have built as members of the University Council to achieve the goals set by the dossiers. These dossiers are also our way of connecting with you and showing you what we can achieve.

Some of our most notable achievements are making Metaforum exclusively accessible to TU/e students during exam weeks,

increasing board grants and preventing a 12-hour schedule by gathering input of all students via a survey that was filled out by almost 1900 students.

One of the projects we are working on now is including students in the evaluation of USE. We understand that USE has garnered a lot of negative feedback from students and since the evaluation of Bachelor College as a whole is coming up, we thought it would be appropriate to involve the students in one of the cornerstones of Bachelor College, USE. Another ongoing project is raising awareness for the wellbeing of students. We have already taken steps by presenting a “Nota Studentenwelzijn” to the Executive Board but also by organizing a Time-out! event which addressed the psychological pressure of students. Lastly we plan to increase the opening hours of facilities, of course will keep an eye on the effect that will have on students working too long at the university and we hope to create more financial support for student teams.

You

There is a reason our logo is a voting icon. As a student at this university we need your input most of all. It is your input and your vote that eventually gives us the opportunity to properly represent you with the higher ups of this university. If you are interested in the University Council we organize various events for students, such as the OntbEIt during which you can talk to the Executive Board directly. So don’t forget to vote next year and if you ever want to reach us you can send an e-mail to: info@groep-een.com or ask your local association about us.

Photograph by: Bart van Overbeeke

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REACH FOR THE STARS

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This nebula is called

NGC 2818

and is located in the

sounthern constellation ‘Pyxis’, also called ‘The Compass’. So, it’s practically around the block, only a minor 10.400 light years away. However, you can skip 1,5 of that if you are content with just visiting the edge instead of the centre. This nebula is glowing mostly from the stars in the outer layer, which are at the end of their life.

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TEAM SOLID Enabling clean and renewable energy, for everyone at any time!

Two years ago, an unusual solution for energy storage called metal fuels was proposed in a paper by the Canadian McGill University. This (literally) sparked the interest of some Honors Academy students who founded Team SOLID. Now, Team SOLID has already proven the metal fuels concept and will build the first machine to actually use this solution in industry. But why is this necessary? What exactly are metal fuels? And how can they be used to make the world more sustainable?

What’s the problem?

As you all know, our society is currently facing one of its biggest challenges yet: transitioning from fossil to sustainable energy sources. One of the major problems in this transition is the unpredictability of the wind and sun causing a fluctuating energy supply when using solar panels and windmills. Another major problem is that sustainable energy sources have a hard time supplying high temperature heat. With high temperature heat temperatures of around 600 to 800 degrees Celsius are meant. These temperatures are necessary for a lot of industrial

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processes, and can therefore not easily be replaced by sustainable energy sources.

The cycle The application of metal fuels solves both of these problems.

Metal fuels are based on the oxidation and reduction of metal particles. Team SOLID uses iron as fuel, since it is abundant, cheap and safe. These fuels can be used in a circular way, and work as shown in figure 1. The cycle starts with iron oxides, or rust. These rust particles can be reduced into iron powder,

ME

Tech

which costs energy. This energy is now stored in the iron powder. The iron powder containing the energy can be stored for prolonged periods of time, or transported to another location. When the energy is needed again, it can be released by the oxidation of the iron particles. This oxidation process is actually a really fast rusting process and quite spectacular: the iron burns! During this oxidation process the iron particles react to rust again, which is captured. This way the cycle is closed!

Does it work in practice?

This cycle is theoretically speaking a great idea. But does it actually work in practice? To show that it does Team SOLID built a proof of concept last academic year. This proof of concept was built and tested at the engine cells of our very own Gemini. The other part of the cycle, which is the sustainable reduction of iron oxides to iron, is already researched and available at industrial scale. The cycle is therefore practically closed!

Go big or go home This proof of concept is of course just the beginning. Now that Team SOLID has shown the cycle works, the next step is to show that metal fuels can actually be applied in industry.

To do this, Team SOLID will showcase a ‘demonstrator’ at the end of this academic year. This demonstrator will generate steam for an industrial process by combusting iron powder. The

Figure 1: The metal cycle

demonstrator will really be used in industry. Building this system is quite a challenge, and Team SOLID will therefore not do it alone. It will be designed, built and applied in close collaboration with multiple engineering companies and industrial partners.

Of course, there is also excellent support from the TU/e, in particular from the Mechanical Engineering department. As the dean of Mechanical Engineering, Philip de Goey is one of the founding fathers of metal fuels. All these companies, partners and Team SOLID are united in a consortium to further develop this technology.

The demonstrator How will this demonstrator look like? Basically, it is a scaled up version of the proof of concept. A mixture of iron powder and air is generated and transported to a burner, where the iron is burned. The hot dust flow containing the iron oxide particles

Figure 2: Proof of concept 2: proof of concept

goes into a rotating particle separator (RPS), which separates the iron oxide particles from the hot gases. This is done by combining the principle of a cyclone with a rotating element consisting of a large number of narrow channels to separate even smaller particle diameters. The particles (iron oxides) are captured in a bin below the RPS and the hot gases flow to the next module, which is an 80 kW watertube type steam boiler. The boiler will be designed completely from scratch by HeatPower BV and Team SOLID. The generated steam will have a pressure of 10 bars and a temperature of 180 degrees Celsius, which is an industry standard. Finally a cloth filter is used to filter out even the smallest oxide particles. To make sure all modules operate safely and in harmony with each other a supervisory control system will be designed. All electric actuators and sensors are controlled from one central place, where automatic procedures are being executed for start-up, shut-down, response to failures and emergency situations, both through hardware and software.

Team SOLID is already well on its way in building this groundbreaking machine, but we need extra helping hands!

We’re still looking for two Mechanical Engineers who will work on designing and building the boiler and the control system.

This will include working at the facilities of our engineering partners, and testing the design on-site! Working on the boiler for instance includes making a PID (piping and instrumentation diagram), doing preliminary and optimizing calculations for the geometry (heat transfer area) of the water tubes and physical realization of the design and testing. We need students with a hands-on mindset and with some knowledge on heat exchangers and steam. For the control system, a hands on mindset is even more important. You will be working both combination of hardware (>20 actuators, >20 sensors) and software (PLC’s) and you will learn to implement process flow diagrams, P&ID’s and circuit diagrams. We are also looking for help in our pyromaniac team, to design, build and test a 100 to 200kW combustor and fuel feeder. Very exciting!

If you’re interested in joining or team, be it for these specific tasks or not, please contact us! Send an email to hr@teamsolid.org or simply walk into our office in the Matrix building.

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Education

Interview Mirna van den Boomen

What exactly do you do on the university?

What and where have you studied?

“I’m a fulltime communication assistant at TU/e. In addition to my tasks on a central level, I am also responsible for the communication of Mechanical Engineering specifically. I recruit and supply information for coming students.

This means I organize the information days, the ‘student for a day’ events, the graduate school event and send the newsletters to all the Mechanical Engineering students. I like the close contact I have with students the most in my job..”

“After high school I went to the Fontys in Eindhoven where I started my study Communication Management.

Where can students find you on the university?

“Well, this is a little difficult at the moment, because of the rehousing to the Atlas building. I will not have a fixed working place. I will get a fixed workplace in Gemini. However, that will change this year as well. If students want to meet me it’s probably the best if they contact me by e-mail and make an appointment.”

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After my graduation I got the feeling that I was not finished with being a student, so I decided to do a master, Strategic Communication, at the University of Antwerpen. Why I choose Antwerpen?

Because I really liked the city.”

How did you end up at the Technical University of Eindhoven?

“When I ended my master in Antwerpen, I started working at a small firm. When I saw there was a vacancy at the Technical University of Eindhoven I applied and was hired.

The biggest difference between my work now and my previous work, is that decision making takes a lot longer here. However, I work within a team and find my job challenging, because of the diverse culture at the university.

What do you think is the biggest difference between your period at the university and Higher Professional Education (HBO)?

“During my time at university I deepened my knowledge and learned how to use that knowledge for my research. From practical stuff at the HBO to theoretical at the university.

There is not only a big difference between ‘HBO’ and university, The difference between Belgium and the Netherlands was also significant. In Belgium they are a lot stricter.

Another difference is that less trains in Belgium are delayed. I think I only experienced delays when traveling by train three times during my time in Belgium. But then again, this might be because there are fewer trains then in the Netherlands.”

Do you have any (strange) hobby’s?

“Well, I like to salsa dance and I work out at the SSCE (Student Sport Centre Eindhoven). However, I haven’t been there for the last couple of weeks, oops. I also really like to go for a drink in the city with my friends.”

Do you have some good advice for students?

“Yes, don’t lose yourself in getting good grades, but remember to enjoy the little moments during your student life. Don’t panic or worry too much; it doesn’t help you and it’ll all work out in the end.

Oh and can I do a little call for extra student-assistants?” Yes! “Well we need some extra studentsassistants for the information team, because some people will finish their study coming months. If you are interested, please send me an e-mail with your CV to m.w.v.d.boomen@tue. nl and I’ll get back to you promptly. The only requirement is that you must have completed your first year.

After the hard work during the open days there is a drink in Auditorium with all the people that helped during this day. Since Pascal Appel it is a tradition that the mentor of the employees of ME starts this drink by chugging a beer. Are you able to do this during the coming open days in March?

“Oh no, I cannot do that at all. Can I take a shot instead? No? I do not like beer at all, I only drink wine. If that is a tradition I need to practice that before March.”

Written by:Maartje Borst

Career

6 BLIND MEN AND THE ELEPHANT Starting your own company after graduation

Around half a year ago in August I earned my Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering and no more than a month later, I founded my own company together with co-founder Tim Wilschut: Ratio Computer Aided Systems Engineering (Ratio CASE). This article describes how the company came to be, how I joined, what blind men and elephants have to do with it, and the way our tech works.

WRITTEN BY: TIEMEN SCHUIJBROEK

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Career

Leader In short, we build software that enables System Engineers to do their job more diligently and efficiently. Our key differentiator is the self-developed Elephant Specification Language (ESL) which enables the writing of highly structured system specifications. These specifications lie at the heart of design a process, outlining what the system and its components are required to do and how good they need to do it.

Our first client is Rijkswaterstaat, for whom we are investigating improvements to their rudimentary specifications (“basisspecificaties”) of their wet works of art (“natte kunstwerken”) – which is their moniker for all (waterway) locks, bridges, and so forth. Currently, these specifications leave room for interpretation and assumptions. This often means they have to go into debate with contractors after they awarded them the tender for a new bridge or lock. These discussions are a main source of (preventable) overhead cost to both parties and often cause project delays. We are confident that a rewrite in our language can help them achieve a reduction of these problems!

opportunity was born!

I still had my internship left to do after my graduation project, so I had some time to think things through. After a short flirt with working at a large company for my internship at a repair yard of DAMEN Shipyards in Brest (FR), I made up my mind and joined the entrepreneurial ship! While it was a great experience in France (and three other yards across the Benelux!), I also learned that “just working for your boss” is not the right fit for me at this stage.

From all projects I had worked on so far, I never quite felt this much urge to contribute as with the Ratio project. The chance to work on such a thing and earn money while doing it is just too good to pass on! And there always is the inevitable open door that needs busting: there is no better timeframe than after your studies to start something and see where you end up, much wiser whatever the outcome.

Precursor The whole story began during one of my last courses for my Master’s degree, which was Integrated System Design (4CM70) taught by Pascal Etman. During that course, you learn to make use of a modeling technique called the Dependency Structure Matrix or DSM. You use the technique to analyze the structure of a product (hardware) or process. The best part is that you get to apply the technique to real world cases, provided by companies and student teams from the Eindhoven region!

It’s not often that you get the chance to work in a customercontractor setting during your academic studies, so if you’ve got some ECTS left to fill in your program I can only recommend putting it in.

During that course, we were given an algorithm developed by Tim Wilschut as part of his PhD. The algorithm was capable of detecting modules of the components in your system based on the dependency values between components in your matrix. If you take a look at the figure at the end of this article, the mark in the first row means there is a relation between the pump-0 and electric-motor-0.

In short, you use the interaction strength between components to detect ideal modular building blocks with the algorithm.

However, I wasn’t completely happy with the algorithm’s results and I began rewriting Tim’s MATLAB script in Python as a personal programming exercise soon after the course had ended. When discussing the preliminary results and ideas with both Pascal and Tim, they asked me if I wanted to graduate on the improvements I had in mind.

And I did! I was about halfway when Tim asked me if I had an entrepreneurial spirit, since he had set his mind on converting his PhD work into a profitable business and was looking for companions to do so. His PhD’s subsidiary, Rijkswaterstaat, was and is keen on getting the research results converted into a product fit for daily usage. This meant we would have one willing client right from the start. Hence the business

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Est. September 2018 During the past months, we participated in several startup contests – namely the Philips Innovation Awards (PHIA) and TU/e contest. These helped us develop a sane business plan, network of interesting (future) partners and clients, and prizes! We came in second at the PHIA and won the TU/e contest(!) in our category, which granted us a workplace in the Innovation Space in the Matrix building for a year and some much welcomed starting budget.

We chose to use the budget to establish our companies! Sadly, notary services don’t come cheap, especially when you opt for a “mature” setup, which in our case consists of 4 entities.

Namely: A personal holding each to hold your shares and dividends.

• A holding that guards your intellectual property.

• An operating company that exploits the intellectual property.

We opted for this setup because we had won the required budget and were set to make a humble profit right from the start, which most certainly is not the case for all startups.

Currently, we are still in the race in another startup contest: The Golden Lightbulb. Most of these contests require about the same deliverables (e.g. a business plan, a one-pager, a five-pager, a pitch). Somewhat contradictory to the gut feeling you often get with these contests, all three contests named so far are not set on claiming (even part of) your Intellectual Property (IP). The jury, setting, theme, and participating companies change however, making participating in each contest a valuable experience in itself!

Challenge So, without much further adue, the thing about blind men and elephants:

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It was six men of Indostan to learning much inclined, Who went to see the Elephant (Though all of them were blind), That each by observation might satisfy his mind.

The First approached the Elephant and happening to fall Against his broad and sturdy side, at once began to bawl: "God bless me! -- but the Elephant is very like a wall!"

The Second, feeling of the tusk, cried: "Ho! -- what have we here, So very round and smooth and sharp? To me 't is mighty clear This wonder of an Elephant is very like a spear!"

The Third approached the animal, and happening to take The squirming trun within his hands, thus boldly up and spake: "I see," quoth he, "the Elephant is very like a snake!"

The Fourth reached out his eager hand, and felt about the knee.

"What most this wondrous best is like is mighty plain," quot he; "'T is clear enough the Elephans is very like a tree!"

The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear, Said: "E'en the blindest man Can tell what this resembles most; deny the fact who can, This marvel of an Elephant is very like a fan!"

The Sixth no sooner had begun about the beast to grope, Than, seizing on the swingin tail that fel within his scope, "I see," quoth he, "the Elephant is very like a rope!"

And so these men of Indostan dusputed loud and long, Each in his own opinion exceeding stiff and strong, Though each was partly in the right, and all were in the wrong!

-- John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887)

Career

This poem serves as an anecdote to the Systems Engineering challenge we aim to provide a solution for. The parallel we see is that Engineers are more or less “blind” towards other disciplines than their own in their current way of working and communication.

Designing and building a product is often a multi-disciplinary task, where a vast number of components must work together harmoniously to fulfill the product’s goal. When communicating changes to designs and processes, Engineers often express them in terms of their domain and respective jargon while neglecting other domains. This is a major source of miscommunication which leads to components that do not work together as intended when assembling the final product. Subsequent design iterations are then required to solve these issues which we call rework and is one of the major drivers of cost and frustration in the industry.

The common solution to this problem is to write lengthy design specifications or specs, which serve as the blueprint of blueprints during a design process. Specs aim to get the requirements to the product and its components set in stone. The problem with lengthy documents is however, that it becomes increasingly hard to keep things consistent.

“Is component X on page 28 the same one as component Y on 563?”

Solution Our solution differs from other software solutions that all aim to standardize the specification management process.

In our solution, we standardize the syntax that is used in the specification, thereby unifying the language engineers need to use when communicating specs. This means that you have just

one way to write something down, which should be uniformly understandable. The language has lovingly been named the

“What would the impact of switching our drive mechanism from fossil fueled to an electrical one on the specs and design be?”

Elephant Specification Language, or ESL. The difference with other solutions is that they often work with a graphical interface where you create dots and lines for components and dependencies, but where the accompanying text or comments can completely contradict the drawn dots or lines (since it is free text). Also, you never quite know if your network of dots and lines is complete.

The trick in using a fixed syntax is that computers love fixed syntaxes and can therefore process our specification automatically into a number of visual representations. Instead of a self-made network, this generated network is always complete and correct such that you won’t accidentally miss any dependencies in your network between components, functions, and variables. During the processing, it is able to check the specification for its consistency and completeness, warning you of any mistakes.

Moreover, the language allows for specifications of varying depth. E.g. you can roughly specify some components, but go into details on other (sub-)(sub-)(sub-)(etc.)components.

This enables you to follow a typical V-model where you start specifying the global (functional) requirements of the product and break it down into more and more specific sub-components that fulfill the internal requirements on your way down.

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Career

Example Some things are just better with an example. So let’s dive into a specification of a water pump! ESL has been designed to be readable in itself, so you should be fine reading it with the comments as your guide.

So that completes our specification! We understand that it probably comes off as quite verbose material, but that is where our visualizations come in. Based on specifications in this format, we can fire up our visualization to inspect and navigate through the dependencies visually. This currently looks like the included figure!

There you see a DSM with our components, variables and goal requirements on both axis of the matrix (we left out some detail for the sake of brevity). The piecharts represent relations between a combination of those and are colored according to dependency flow type. This means that at a glance, you can see where your component interfaces reside and which components contribute to which functionality! Moreover, when you would start looking at the design of the given components, the dependency types involved would give you a quick insight into what engineering disciplines are relevant and therefore who you need at the drawing board.

Hovering over the dependencies in the interactive version gives you additional information on what it is derived from. While some may seem trivial, quite a lot are inferred from what you didn’t need to write. For instance, the relation between goal-0 and goal-1 is derived from the fact that in order to provide torque to the pump, the power source must deliver power to the drive mechanism.

Also, the impact from exchanging the drive mechanism to another type is straightforward, as you can easily switch between different defined components on any level.

To cover all functionality would be way more than a course’s contents, so we hope to at least have triggered your interest!

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Education

Interview Ron Peerlings

What exactly do you do on the university?

“I am an associate professor in the Mechanics of Materials group at the department of Mechanical Engineering. I guide a lot of Bachelor, Master and PhD Students during their research projects. Next to guiding students, I am the responsible teacher for the third year course ‘Computational Mechanics’.

Last year I was a nominee for the best teacher award of Eindhoven University of Technology, so maybe you know me from that event too.”

What and where have you studied?

“I studied Mechanical Engineering at the TU/e.”

How did you end up at the Technical University of Eindhoven?

“Euhm, well, from a young age on I already knew I eventually wanted to work at the university and teach students. During primary school I loved to play a teacher with my friends. Not all of my friends liked that.

The love of explaining things to others never went away.

After high school it was clear I wanted to go to the TU/e and study Mechanical Engineering.

After my master the choice of doing a PhD was not very difficult. Under the guidance of Marcel Brekelmans and René de Borst I did a very theoretical subject. The title of my PhD thesis was ‘Enhanced damage modelling for

fracture and fatigue’. After I finished my PhD and a six months’ period abroad I started to work at the university. So I have been around on the campus of the TU/e for a long time.”

What do you like the most about teaching?

“I really like that students develop during their courses/research. Especially during the guidance of a master thesis I am sometimes really proud of the students and the development they go through. “

Do you have any (strange) hobby’s?

“Strange hobby’s I do not have, I think. I used to be a fanatic swimmer, but I do not have the time for it right now because of my 4 year old daughter. Because of her my new hobby is visiting indoor playgrounds. The nice thing about that is that my daughter likes it too.”

Do you have some good advice for the students?

“Does it matter what kind of advice?” No. “Ok, well keep in mind your study will become even more fun in the end than in the beginning.

Especially during the master you can follow your own path, which makes you unique. Also do not focus on a single specialism during your study. Take a look at other groups, see the charm of other directions and become a Π- rather than a T-shaped student!”

WRITTEN BY: Maartje Borst

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Association

Venilia: Feminisme De werktuigkundige studievereniging Simon Stevin, een studievereniging voor alle werktuigbouwers op de TU in Eindhoven. Maar waar associeert men deze vereniging eigenlijk mee?

GESCHREVEN DOOR: ChloĂŠ Meeng

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Association

Niet met vrouwen, want initieel wordt er vooral gedacht aan beunhazen, mannen en machines.

Wellicht wordt er binnen de W.S.V. liever gedacht aan extreem prominente toekomstige ingenieurs, maar in ieder geval niet aan vrouwen. Het percentage vrouwen dat werktuigbouwkunde komt studeren is namelijk nog steeds erg laag, al is het de laatste jaren een klein beetje gegroeid.

Niet gek ook dat dit aantal maar langzaam stijgt, want ongemerkt blijven we techniek en leiderschap met mannen associëren. Zo blijkt ook uit een associatie onderzoek dat onder de Nederlandse jongeren nog steeds 47% van de jongens techniek toch écht iets voor hem vindt. Hoe normaal we het bij de Vereniging vinden dat er vrouwen rondlopen, zo verbaasd lijkt de buitenwereld steeds weer als er verteld wordt dat je werktuigbouwkunde studeert. Benieuwd wat je eigen ongemerkte voorkeur is? Doe eens de implicit association test van Harvard.

In het verleden hebben we al vaker gezien dat bepaalde dingen bestempeld werden als écht iets voor hem. Denk hierbij aan stemrecht, educatie, betaalde arbeid, etc. Door het plaatsvinden van de eerste feministische golf aan het eind van de 19e eeuw kregen vrouwen ook kiesrecht en toegang tot universitair onderwijs. Tijdens de tweede golf werden recht op betaald werk en daarmee de economische zelfstandigheid voor vrouwen bereikbaar. Deze bewegingen vonden plaats op internationale schaal. Op kleinere schaal hebben het kleine, maar zeer actieve aantal vrouwen die deel uitmaken van de Vereniging, toch ook voor wat opschudding gezorgd. Het is dit jaar namelijk voor het eerst dat het Bestuur van de W.S.V. voor de helft uit vrouwen bestaat.

Ook is er afgelopen jaar een heus vrouwendispuut opgericht, Je kunt nu dus ook wel spreken over de eerste feministische golf binnen de W.S.V. Wie de Aletta Jacobs binnen de vereniging nu precies is geweest durf ik niet te zeggen, maar laten we vooral onthouden dat afgelopen jaar geschiedenis is geschreven voor de o zo mannelijke studievereniging.

Wanneer en in welke vorm de tweede golf binnen de W.S.V. plaats zal vinden blijft voorlopig natuurlijk nog een vraag.

Dan nog even een kleine tip voor de vrouwen die dit lezen en denken; ‘ik ben echt even helemaal klaar met al die mannen om me heen!’. Wij hebben de oplossing! Sinds juni dit jaar is er een Fins eiland, waar enkel vrouwen welkom zijn. Je kunt hier samen met een klein groepje even helemaal tot rust komen, precies wat elke werktuigkundige vrouw nodig heeft.

Picture 1: Aletta Jacobs

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ME

Tech

UNIVERSITY RACING EINDHOVEN

For 15 years now, URE has been designing, building, testing race cars, purposely built for the Formula Student competition. Since 2010, URE has been making electric cars, which have been four-wheel-drive since 2015. Nowadays, the car weighs only 197 kg and can accelerate from 0 to 100 km/h in 2.3 seconds.

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ME

Tech

SLAM algorithm

There are three vital areas to an autonomous vehicle. To make it simple, they are: ‘seeing’, ‘thinking’ and ‘doing’.

One of the vital areas of the ‘seeing’ step is our SLAM algorithm, which is currently in development by one of our members, Tijs van der Smagt, who is doing his master graduation project at URE. Let’s hear from him: “The URE driverless vehicle sees the world differently than we do. The track is laid out using blue and yellow cones indicating left and right respectively. The rest of the track will be just asphalt or concrete and no obstacles will be present.

With this information in mind, we can design the system in such a way that it will only make a distinction between cones and no cones. This simplification of the world helps to design a system that can run fast using limited resources.

To map the track, the cones will have to be detected. The detector to do so is currently being developed at URE, so we already know what it will look like. It will use a combination of stereo cameras and LiDAR sensors. Both will have independent algorithms that detect cones. Sensor fusion will be applied to combine the found results into one accurate detector. We expect to detect the

cones up to 15 meters ahead and to be able to differentiate between blue and yellow cones with a high precision.

Once the cones are detected, we can start mapping them. This is done using a Simultaneous Mapping And Localization (SLAM) algorithm. There are many different versions of SLAM currently used worldwide, but the most fitting version is a particle filter-based SLAM called FastSLAM. This filter works by simulating many particles. These particles are all estimations of the position of the vehicle and the cones that are detected. In the figure, the particle positions for the vehicle are indicated with pink, and the cones are yellow blue. Every particle is basically a collection of individual Kalman filters for the position of the vehicle and the cones. The particle filter then executes the prediction and update steps for all these Kalman filters at the same time.

During the prediction step, an estimation is made of what the particle and cone positions will be. In the update step, these estimations are compared with the actual measurements. This leads to a weight that can be assigned to every particle. This weight corresponds with how well the estimation matches the actual measurement. Finally, the

particles are resampled using these weights. This resampling takes the lower weight particles, the inaccurate particles out of the set. This ensures that only the accurate estimations, and thus the cones and location of the car remain. Now, we know where we are, and what the track looks like.”

Wheels Another critical high-tech area of our car is within the wheels. For four years now, the race cars of URE have had a unique self-developed four-wheel-driven powertrain. The four motors of a URE race car are placed within the wheels themselves. To transfer power from the motors to the wheels, a planetary gear set known as the ‘final drive’ is used. Let’s hear from Vaibhav Pilli, who is responsible for the final drive this year: “The final drive might be the most important part of the car, as it transfers the power from the motors to the wheels.

When the driver pushes the accelerator pedal, the motors and the four axles attached to them start to rotate up to 18,000 RPM. Of course, this is not ideal for our wheels, so a geared reduction is needed, a planetary gear set to be precise.

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ME

Tech

There is a reason this set is called ‘planetary’, as it starts with a sun gear. This gear is the center of the set and is fixed to the motor axle, meaning that it will still rotate at 18,000 RPM. In direct contact with the sun gear is the large planet gear, which is rotating between the sun gear and the ring gear, which is stationary. This ring gear allows the planet gears to run over it.

Inside the large planet gear, is the small planet gear, which is connected to the carrier.

As the small planet gear is connected the carrier, which is connected to the wheel hub, the wheel will rotate with it, completing the transfer of power. In total, this gear set has a ratio of 1:12; decreasing rotational speed by a factor of 12 while increasing torque by a factor of 12. This means that our 33 Nm per motor creates 400 Nm torque per wheel!

This is the most impressive part of these gears, as these torque levels require them to be super precise. Our gearwheels are created out of a special allow of steel and hardened to increase

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their strength. To obtain the required surface roughness of only 0.2 micrometers, the gearwheels are first produced by Wire EDM, super-finished, and coated afterward to increase surface strength and decrease their surface roughness. All these steps, done together with 5 partners, make the gearwheels some of the most expensive and impressive parts in the car.”

These are just two of the advancements done at URE by different members. Are you looking for a challenge? Enthusiastic students from all years are always welcome to help push the boundaries of engineering! As most of our team members are part-time the team consists of a variety of students from all years and different disciplines. Opportunities exist in the form of part-time assignments, end projects and sometimes even internships. Do you want to challenge yourself and gain valuable practical experience? Visit our website at www.universityracing. nl or contact us through universityracing@tue.nl.

Association

CROSSWORD PUZZLE Do you know all the answers to the questions?

MADE BY: MIRTHE MAMPAEY Across 3. In what position does Tim ride his handbike?

4. Where is the biggest patch of garbage in the ocean located?

5. What comes with the hype of additive manufacturing?

8. Material used to protect the Parker Solar Probe from taking damage 10. The kind of scarcity the UN expects that 14% of the world’s population will enoucnter by 2025.

11. What color are the accents on the hybrid models of Porsch?

12. Shape of the trajectory of the parker solar probe.

14. What do a lot of countries already do to be able to use seawater as drinking water?

16. Chip that needs to be created to test the spark plug concept.

18. Cameras that directly show the readings of the sensor on a screen 19. The constant also known as dark energy.

20. The first gearbox that could manage all gear ratios between 3, 60:1 as minimum and 28,83 as maximum.

Down

1. Lorum ipsum has its roots in a piece of classical latin literature which was very popular during a certain time period. Which period?

2. Part of a jet engine which General Electric printed out of one part instead of 20.

6. By what can newer Tomos motorcycles be started?

7. The temperature of methane to become liquid.

9. The only drawback when driving fast with the Porsch Cayenne.

13. Lenses with the longest focal length.

15. The most fundamental level of the universe.

17. In what mode is the launch control unlocked in the BWM M4?

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Career

ENGINEERING AT PRODRIVE TECHNOLOGIES All-round engineering for all over the world

WRITTEN BY: SJOERD NARINX

Almost all of us Mechanical Engineering students know of Prodrive Technologies, but when asking them about what kind of products Prodrive is designing you will get a rather vague answer. For me this was also the case, so I was happy to be able to get a tour through their facilities in Eindhoven and to talk with Pim Duijsens about what is happening at the headquarters of this worldwide company.

Prodrive Technologies Prodrive Technologies is a Dutch-based company that started with developing electronics for their clients in 1993. A bit later they started to also produce the self-developed electronics.

This way they were able to do all the designing and production in-house, which meant that they were able to make their components even more perfect. But with the production also the checking of the components had to be done, so to guarantee that all the components are good enough to ship to their clients, Prodrive also houses a testing facility.

The company started with making components for clients, but right now they make complete products, from the cables to the

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casing of the product Prodrive makes it all. The markets that they are contributing in, range from Semiconductors to Medical solutions and Automotive to Energy & Infrastructure, which shows how broad the occupation of Prodrive is.

In the last couple of years, the vision of the company started to change and is more and more shifting from designing and producing electronics specifically for clients, towards designing and producing complete systems on their own. This way Prodrives occupation will start to focus on more innovated systems. To stay on top of their competitors newly innovative systems need to be designed, that’s why everyone at Prodrive gets the availability to introduce completely new technologies or capabilities.

Career

A nice way to further explain the shift in vision is a system that they have designed and produced and is currently being used in the production facility in Eindhoven.

I’m talking about an Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV). These vehicles drive around the factory with crates, from one machine to another, while keeping track of the path they are following and manoeuvre around people and other vehicles that cross their path. This way long conveyor belts or more workers are not necessary while keeping the continuous workflow intact. These vehicles have already been perfectioned a lot, that’s why Prodrive itself is already using them, but by letting them drive hours and hours while monitoring them they also are able to perfect them even more. Eventually this kind of vehicles will be sold, but for now, they keep driving for Prodrive.

Pim Duijsens Pim Duijsens is a Mechanical Design Engineer at Prodrive Technologies. Pim completed his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Mechanical Engineering in Eindhoven. His bachelor’s thesis was about the design of an alternative cooling system for CT-scanners. The most promising concept was eventually elaborated in a detailed design and built as a scaled experimental setup. From there it was a logical choice to choose for the master Mechanical Engineering with Control Systems Technology as his specialization track. He graduated with a thesis on the mechanical design of a long stroke actuator unit for a next-generation

Picture 1: AGV’s as they are now used in the factory

EUV reticle stage, he did his thesis in the Constructions and Mechanisms laboratory in collaboration with ASML. After graduating he started working at Prodrive, where he works for 2 years now.

Pim likes the way of working within Prodrive a lot because he is closely involved in almost all parts of the design until the manufacturing of the projects.

He stated that sometimes choices in the design stage are very clear and straightforward to do, but when the parts are assembled some connections are hard to make or install. He then gets feedback from the production facility, which he can use to perfect the design and can even go to them and see what is wrong with it.

Another aspect of the company that he really likes is that when you begin your career at Prodrive, you are not put in one office with new engineers only. He likes that he works in an office with coworkers that have more experience in their profession and in the company and who are also willing to help you when you are stuck with something in your project.

But let’s talk about what kind of projects can you get your hands on at Prodrive, and what challenges can come with them. From the two projects below Pim is working on the wireless charging of a car right now. The other project, a rope-free elevator, is a very innovative one we came across during the tour.

Picture 2: An overview of the wireless charging system

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Wireless charging a car This is a system that is able to charge an electric car wirelessly.

This system consists of a wall box, a ground assembly and a vehicle assembly. The system works like any other inductive charging system, but the electrical power is much higher and therefore the size is way bigger.

The wall box is used to transform the AC that comes from a wall socket to DC that can be stored in the batteries of the car. From this wall box the power goes to the ground assembly, which can be thought of like a big primary coil. The primary coil creates an alternating electromagnetic field, and the vehicle assembly, which can be thought of as a secondary coil, takes power from this electromagnetic field and converts it back into electric current to charge the battery.

Testing goes from if the transformation rates between the two coils are steady and as expected, to what level of efficiency can be reached if the car isn’t parked straight above the charging pad. And to be able to assure the users that this charging system is safe, a safety system is implemented which registrates objects between the charging pad and the receiver in the car and stops the charging if this happens. For mechanical engineers the challenge here can, for example, lay minimizing the room that is needed or managing of the heat that is generated within the wall box and the two coils. Other, more electrical, problems can lie in transforming the input power to usable power for the car and creating a reliable wireless environment.

For more information about this system, you can visit: prodrive-technologies.com/products/wireless-charging-system/

Elevator of the future Next we came across the test setup for an elevator that uses linear actuators and a so-called linear propulsion system, which also could be seen in the lunch lecture of Prodrive. Normal elevators have limited height because the cables that connect the elevator

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Picture 3: The test setup for the elevator

with the counterweight collapse under their own weight from a certain length. But with this technique the height of elevators isn’t limited anymore, because the elevators move as carts between a rail without the use of a cable. The elevator itself has strong magnets which move through a rail of linear actuators, that change the magnetic field of the rail as the elevator goes up or down. By turning the linear propulsion system the elevator can even move sideways, which enables even more ways to use the system. Using this technology a system is being made that has multiple cabins in one shaft that makes a loop.

For more information about this system, you can visit: multi.thyssenkrupp-elevator.com/en/

Interested?

Do you also want to work for or do your graduation project within a worldwide successful company, that leads in technological development and innovation? With many challenges, responsibility and the best engineers around you? Than choose for a function at Prodrive Technologies in Eindhoven.

Lorem Ipsum..

Written by: Roelof Mestriner “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.

Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.”

Not your usual anecdote right? Well, this strange sounding text has been around for quite some time now. It is the first passage of ‘Lorem Ipsum’, a made-up text that is invented by an unknown printer in the 1500s who combined some letters when he wanted to make a type specimen book. This peculiar text has been used ever since for exactly the same reason: determine the layout of the article using dummy text.

The roots

Lorem ipsum isn’t just random text. It has its roots in a piece of classical Latin literature that is over 2000 years old called “de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum” (The Extremes of Good and Evil) which was written by Cicero. This book is a thesis on the theory of ethics, very

popular during the Renaissance. The reason Lorem Ipsum works so good as dummy text, is that the reader isn’t distracted when viewing the layout in combination with a normal distribution of letters that is similar to western languages.

The Committee

The Editorial Committee of W.S.V. Simon Stevin, your favorite content creator, also makes use of Lorem Ipsum a lot. At the moment we are working on a new design for the paperback version of OpenME, which will we published in February 2019. Luckily for us, Adobe InDesign has an auto-dummy text function to fill in the text boxes instead of typing it all like they did in the 1500s.

FORD MUSTANG GT

Test track

WRITTEN BY: JEROME SEELEN

When you think about Americans, you think of fat people and the American cars. Thinking about their cars, means thinking about the real American muscle car. With the Mustang GT maybe one of the most popular at the moment. But why do Americans still love their muscle cars? Why is the Mustang still so popular? To find out I studied the 2018 Ford Mustang GT with a 5.0 liter V8 engine.

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ME

Tech When I arrived at a host family in Australia, they immediately hooked me up with my first task. “Jerome, you have to be Steve’s chauffeur for the upcoming weeks” Normally you do not get that excited by hearing this news, but I was.

Arriving in my Toyota Camry from 2007, I saw three brand new Mustang GT’s on their driveway. From that moment on I was excited to jump in and see what it is capable of. Although I was still the chauffeur of Steve, I could still test the car, because Steve was a car lover too.

My experience Everything starts by pushing ‘the smiley button’. That is what Steve and I called the start-stop button. If you just push it briefly, the electronics turn on and your virtual display opens, which gives you a special feeling immediately. Holding the smiley button for a little longer, the engine starts and it is almost impossible not to smile. The sound of 460 horsepower coming from a 90 degree V8 5.0 liter engine is amazing. Driving it in drive mode is almost like driving a regular car (except the growling engine noise you hear coming from the back of the car).

With its new 10 gear transmission and high torque at low rpm, it drives really satisfying and comfortable. It cruises at 60 km/h in its eighth gear, consuming around 8 kilometers on a single liter of fuel. The rear view camera makes sure that backing up and parking is just as easy as in a normal car. Except its turning circle, which is horrible. But that is the compromise you need to make for stability at high speeds. So, we just accept it.

When arriving at a roundabout and doubting if you could just slip in front of the other car coming, the Mustang gratefully says: yes, yes you can! Revving up to over 7000 rpm, the car shows you what it is capable of. Going from zero to hundred in around 4.5 seconds, you can easily slip in front of that other slow car coming. Looking in your rear mirror you see the car behind you slowly fading away at the horizon. Changing the exhaust mode to quiet again, the car almost makes no sound at all. You can even program it to be always on quiet mode during specific times, for example before 8 a.m. in the morning in order to let your

neighbours sleep a little longer. Changing it to sport or even track mode, the V8 starts screaming and makes the sound you expect from a massive V8.

So the car does exactly what you want in traffic: it is quiet when it needs to be quiet, the engine screams when you want it to scream and it is extremely fast in a straight line.

are a big fat American (you probably know when you are) the real problem starts now. If you go through a drivein of Maccas (McDonald’s) and put your half a liter of diet coke in one of the only two cup holders, your drink is making it difficult to shift. Ford came up with the idea to put the two cupholders just in front of the shift lever. How could you Ford?

Interior

Should you buy one?

The full electronic dashboard is nice First you need to decide which one: and easy to use. It can show you what hardtop or a convertible? Manual or an you need in every situation. Setting the automatic transmission? Lets start with display on track mode makes the revving the last question, because it is already counter big enough for you grandma to partly answered. If you are a big fat see it from three cars behind. Using the American or want to use your Mustang as flippers behind the wheel becomes a lot a daily driver: buy an automatic gearbox. easier then. The steering Do you only want to drive it wheel is full of buttons on a sunny Sunday? Buy it and really easy to use. “Everything starts by with a manual shifter. Do Most of the buttons pushing ‘the smiley’ you want a sunburn whilst you will use every week you feel the wind blow button” and no button is really through your hair? Get a unnecessary (like a convertible. Do you want start-stop button on the steering wheel that 0.2 second faster lap time on the of a Ferrari that you will only use twice track? Definitely buy a hardtop. Do you every drive and only use when you’re use the highway every day to go to work? not using the steering wheel). The Ford Buy a German car with an automatic SYNC-system works easy and speakgearbox and a turbo engine. Do you have command works alright when you are money to buy it? Probably not when you driving. I do not know if it still works are reading this. properly with the rooftop open, that’s left for you to try some day. The seats are So, why is the American muscle car still comfortable and the cooled seats makes alive today and as popular as it was back sure your body doesn’t melt away on hot in the old days? The Mustang is still a summer days. Sitting in the back is of relatively affordable car (in America and course not comfortable, but what do you Australia only, of course) compared to expect? A real muscle car is a two seater! sporty German cars. It’s a really cheap way to have fun and drive a real V8. The Other downsides V8 still sounds marvellous like it did at Without doubt I can say this car has the beginning of its era and for its price, some more downsides. As said earlier, it is the best way to get the most smiles the suspension is still a little rough when per kilometer. you try to take a relaxing cruise. If you

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Tech

OCEAN CLEAN UP

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Tech

Over 5 trillion pieces of plastic are currently littering the ocean in five massive so called ‘garbage patches’. The biggest garbage patch is located in the pacific between Hawaii and California. The great pacific garbage patch has an area of 1.6 million km2, which is three times the size of France. It contains 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic with a total weight of 80.000 tons, which equals 250 pieces of plastic for every human being in the world. Due to the currents that formed this massive patch, it is unlikely it will go away by itself and will only grow exponentially. The plastic is close to fragment into dangerous micro plastics over the next few decades which will cause a massive ecological disaster. A young and ambitious Dutch inventor, Boyan Slat, came with a solution: the Ocean Clean-up.

Written by: Stijn Middelhuis The garbage patches in the oceans are a known problem for several years now and many clean-up projects have already tried but failed to succeed. Why is it this time different? The conventional method to clean up the plastic is to use vessels and nets to fish the plastic out of the ocean. This method would take thousands of years and tens of billions of dollars to fully complete. A faster, more efficient method is needed to succeed this mission. With this new, passive and ingenious system, the plan is to clean up half of the great pacific garbage patch in just five years and only with a fraction of the costs of the conventional method.

So how does it work? The idea of this problem is basically to create a coastline where there is none. An autonomous, energy neutral and scalable system is designed which consists of a 600 metre long floater which floats on the waves. A three metre long skirt is attached underneath the floater to collect all the debris.

Since the skirt is a bit longer in the middle of the floater, it will experience more resistance over there. The system will therefore

automatically adopt a U-shape which collects all the debris. The system is propelled by wind and will float to areas where the plastic is located. Because of the shape of the floater and the fact it moves faster than the plastic, all the plastic accumulates in the system. Sensors attached to the floater can sense if the system is full and a ship will arrive to remove the plastic. The system is designed to collect small pieces from just millimetres up to tens of metres in size, while fish and other sea life is not harmed or bothered.

The first system is launched on the 8th of September from San Francisco and is on its way to the great pacific garbage patch.

This will be the ultimate test for the system to prove it is as good as expected. Over the next few years the Ocean Clean-up will launch 60 of these systems in the pacific to remove a large part of the garbage patches. Eventually the project will be expanded to the other four massive garbage patches in the oceans to eventually get rid of all the plastic rubbish.

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Education

3D PRINTING COMPOSITES WRITTEN BY: MIKE VAN DER VLEUTEN

The previous article about 3D printing gave an overview of different 3D printing techniques, In this article we will take a closer look at a process called ‘Fused Filament Fabrication’.

This is a 3D printing technique that can be used to create objects using a great variety of materials. For my graduation project, I looked at short-fiber reinforced nylon-6 and more specifically: the effect of processing conditions on the orientation of fibers in the printed material. This project was done in the Polymer Technology research group in cooperation with DSM. This company has dedicated an entire department to do research on the development of materials used in 3D printing, and developing applications for the highly specific materials in their portfolio. where on the left a volume element with a random fiber orientation is shown and on the right a volume element where fibers are highly aligned in one direction. The goal of my project was to investigate if the orientation can be predicted based on the processing conditions such as temperature and extrusion velocity, and to eventually investigate the possibility of tuning the local microstructure of a product by varying the orientation.

Numerical method During the fused filament fabrication (FFF) process, a thin thermoplastic wire (filament) is fed into a moving print head that contains a heating element and a converging nozzle. As a result of the internal pressure, the liquefied material is pushed through this nozzle and subsequently deposited on the substrate/ platform in a certain path to create the 3-dimensional object.

Nowadays, the trend to use FFF for the production of end-use products is continuing the search for high performance materials that are both light and strong. In automotive and aerospace, this combination is often achieved by using fiber reinforced composites. Multiple layers of long carbon fibers are laminated and held together by polymer resin, but this technique requires large amounts

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of effort to produce a single object. In 3D printing, fibers can also be added to the polymer matrix material to improve the mechanical and thermal properties.

The discrete fibers that are added to the polymer have a length of approximately 200-300 micron and the orientation of these fibers in the printed object will have a great impact on the mechanical properties of the product. Two extreme cases can be seen in the following figure,

To investigate the effects of processing conditions on the orientation of fibers in the material, a flow problem needs to be solved and therefore a 2-dimensional model of the process was made using the finite element method. The model was made using software that was developed within the PT group instead of commercial software, as the latter often comes with limitations. The particles in the flow are modeled as rigid rods with semicircular ends. To getan

Education

accurate solution when particles come close together, an adaptive refinement algorithm is implemented. The effect of temperature on viscoelastic properties of the material is also incorporated by solving the energy balance and using a temperature dependent relaxation time.

results. It was found that the same trends could be observed when looking at fiber orientation in the extruded material.

Results An example of the simulations used in this project is shown in the figure above.

Extrudate swell In extrusion processes like FFF, a phenomenon called ´extrudate swell´ or ´die swell´ is encountered as a result of the elastic recovery of the polymer at the die or nozzle exit. A the free surfaces (fluid boundaries that are not subject to parallel shear stresses ) in our model this is also the case, so an accurate description of these boundaries including a moving mesh is needed.

It can be seen that only the inside of the nozzle and the deposition on the substrate are modeled. Furthermore, a total of 30 fibers is added to the domain and the movement of fibers trough the flow can be observed by looking at the snapshots that are made at 3 different instances. To quantify effects of different processing conditions, histograms are made of the fiber orientation. The influence of initial fiber orientation, extrusion velocity, ratio of substrate velocity vs. extrusion velocity

and convergence angle in the nozzle has been tested. It appeared that the ratio of substrate velocity vs. extrusion velocity is one of the parameters that has a significant effect on fiber orientation, as can be seen in the histograms: Besides the parameters that were mentioned, a great variety of other parameters have been tested in the same way. However, the most important conclusion is that it is indeed possible to influence the fiber orientation. This is fairly unique, since for other production processes such as injection molding, the fiber orientation cannot be changed locally. The findings in this study provide a framework that can be used for optimizing the strength of products made with FFF in combination with shortfiber composite materials, but further experimental work still needs to be done.

Validation To check the quality of the mesh, a convergence study was done using different element sizes. The trajectory of a single particle was compared for each simulation and based on these results, an optimal mesh size was selected Furthermore, to validate our method, an experimental study was done to compare the simulations with experimental

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Association

IJSZEILEN “Uit de oude doos”

WRITTEN BY: ANOUK BOOTS

Dat de W.S.V. Simon Stevin onlosmakelijk verbonden is met zeilwagens, is iets waar we al lang van op de hoogte waren. Op 9 februari 2005 is er echter ook een groep werktuigkundigen op ontdekking gegaan naar Mikofajki in het noordoosten van Polen om dit fenomeen eens op het ijs uit te proberen. Gelukkig voor ons, hebben ze toen uitgebreid opgeschreven hoe hen dit bevallen is en wat het ijszeilen nou anders maakt dan strandzeilen.

Het gezelschap, bestaande uit zeven ervaren strandzeilgangers, ging vier dagen op pad om een drietal verschillende ijszeilwagens te verkennen. De wagens waar zij beschikking tot hadden waren zeven zogeheten DN’s, één DX en één Caligula. In dit artikel wordt voornamelijk het verschil van de DN ten opzichte van een doorsnee zeilwagen beschreven.

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DN Als eerste de DN, de wagens waar zij het meest gebruik van maakten. Over het algemeen scheelt de techniek van het zeilen op het strand en ijs niet veel van elkaar, vandaar dat ijszeilwagens veel gelijkenissen vertonen met strandzeilwagens. De aanwezige DN’s waren van een iets kleinere ordegrootte dan de zeilwagens die wij met Simon bezitten.

Het zeil De mast hangt bij de DN’s onder een iets grotere hoek met de verticale as vergeleken met een zeilwagen.

Het passende zeil is hier ook op ontworpen: de bolling aan de achterzijde ligt ook onder diezelfde hoek naar achteren. Door deze beide eigenschappen ontstaat er een laag drukpunt op het zeil, waardoor de wagen goed beheersbaar is. Tevens is het niet ongebruikelijk dat de mast flexibel is, zodat het zeil zich nog beter naar de wind kan zetten. Het zeil heeft een oppervlak van 6,25 m2 en is wit van kleur, met enkele doorzichtige stukken om te kunnen zien of er obstakels aan de lijzijde (de andere kant dan waar de wind vandaan komt) van de wagens zijn.

Op het zeil staat altijd ‘DN’, een afkorting van de krant ‘Detroit News’. Deze krant had in 1937 een prijsvraag opgesteld, waaruit de DN naderhand als klasse ontstond. Onder ‘DN’ staat op het zeil nog een afkorting van het land van herkomst en ook nog een nummer om de

Strandzeilwagens: Aangezien wij vanuit Simon voornamelijk met strandzeilwagens te maken hebben en een strandzeilwagen in grote lijnen overeen komt met een ijszeiler, volgt hier een korte introductie over de onderdelen van zeilwagens.

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De achterloper. Deze is in veel gevallen gemaakt van hout, waarbij de buigzaamheid van het materiaal gelijk wordt benut als vering.

De helmstok. Met de helmstok wordt gestuurd. In sommige gevallen is ook een voetstuur aanwezig, waardoor beide handen beschikbaar zijn om de schoot (zie 7) te bedienen.

De mast. De functie hiervan mag duidelijk zijn.

De stagen. Deze houden de mast overeind.

De giek. Deze houdt het zeil ook naar achteren toe strak gespannen.

Het zeil.

De schoot. Via deze lijn wordt de giek meer of minder naar het midden van de wagen getrokken om de positie van het zeil te regelen.

identiteit van de wagen kenbaar te maken. Dit is nodig volgens het reglement om deel te kunnen nemen aan regatta (wedstrijden). De hele wagen is in principe van hout geconstrueerd.

Stuurinrichting De wrijving van de wagen met het ijs is nihil, uiteraard doordat het oppervlak van de schaats op het ijs vrij klein is, in tegenstelling tot de wielen van strandzeilwagens. Zeker als er nog maar twee van de drie schaatsen het ijs raken. De stuurrichting bestaat uit een roteerbare voorschaats, die middels stuurstangen of -kabels via een helmstok te bedienen is. Dit alles is monteerbaar door eenvoudige bevestigingen met een palletje en ringetje of splitpen. Deze bevestigingen kom je op meer plekken op de wagen tegen. Vanwege deze

universaliteit zijn veel kleine problemen als die zich voordoen, snel op te lossen.

Giek Wat verder opvalt bij de wagen, is de lage positionering van de giek. Het voordeel van deze lage positionering is dat het gehele zeil lager geplaatst kan worden, waarmee het moment dat de wagen om tracht te duwen verminderd wordt.

Voor de bediening is het echter minder praktisch. Als je de schoot volledig aan wilt trekken, moet je soms nog verder onderuit gaan liggen met de giek leunend op de schouder. Dit bemoeilijkt het gijpen of overstag gaan, want je moet behoorlijk horizontaal liggen of soms zelfs de schoot laten vieren om de giek veilig je hoofd te kunnen laten passeren. Dit is tevens de voornaamste reden waarom een helm gedragen dient te worden.

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Overige details De DN’s gestaagde wagens en de stagbevestiging maakt weer gebruik van de eerder genoemde splitpennen. Een leuk detail om te vernoemen, is dat op de achterlopers stukken stof vast getaped zitten. In eerste instantie werd gedacht dat dat was gedaan om de achterlopers niet te beschadigingen. Uit de harde realiteit bleek dat deze stukken stof er gewoon zaten om niet met je verijzelde schoen uit te glijden, wanneer je trachtte in te stappen na het aanduwen van de wagen.

Een ander detail is dat je de wagens op een soort van rem kunt zetten, door een soort klos onder de voorschaats te draaien. Deze rem was dus niet te gebruiken om de wagen tijdens het zeilen af te remmen, maar voorkomt dat de wagen bij het draaien van de wind niet automatisch vanuit stilstand weg zou zeilen. Omdat de wagen zeker een aantal kilometers vrij baan zou hebben, zou deze dan ook niet te stoppen zijn. Enkele kilometers ruimte is ook geen overbodige luxe gezien de snelheden die behaald kunnen worden: tijdens races zijn snelheden van 90 km/h niet ongebruikelijk.

De DX Behalve de DN’s heeft het reisgezelschap ook nog de beschikking gehad over een tweepersoonswagen, genaamd de DX. Dit was een zeilwagen met een polyester kuip. Omdat de totale massa samen met bestuurders van de wagen dus hoger ligt dan bij een normale DN, heeft de DX dan ook een grotere mast en zeil.

Het voordeel bij deze wagen is dat één persoon de wagen kan besturen en de andere kan filmen of fotograferen.

Caligula De laatste aanwezige wagen was de Caligula, welke opviel door zijn grote omvang en propeller. Met deze wagen konden de begeleiders van het reisgezelschap zich zelfs tegen de wind in naar elke plek op het meer begeven in relatief korte tijd. Het was een soort servicezeilwagen.

Applied Micro Electronics “AME“ B.V. AME is an independent developer and manufacturer of high quality electronic products located in the top technological region of the world (Brainport Eindhoven).

Our goal is to create innovative products that exceed customer expectations. We accomplish this by integrating product development and manufacturing and keeping a clear focus on the product and its function.

Esp 100 | 5633 AA | Eindhoven recruitment@ame.nu +31 40 26 46 400

Driven by technology, we strive for the best solution combining the disciplines of electrical, mechanical, software and industrial engineering.

Through creativity, passion, ambition, motivation and a highly educated level of our employees AME secures its goal of being a profitable company.

Power Conversion

Career Join our teams Driven to exceed expectations and to excel in creating innovative solutions, our team of experts in continuously looking for future best-in-class colleagues within the technological disciplines of applied physics, electrical, mechanical, software and industrial engineering.

Sensing

Internet of Things

Internships

If you are interested in working with a talented, ambitious and experienced AME is the ideal work environment to team of professionals using the best develop hands-on experience while tools available and would like to work completing your studies. You will be in a fast growing organization full involved in challenging real-world of career opportunities then you are projects and work with experts from a most welcome to apply for a job or multitude of technological disciplines. take a look at our opportunities by We invite you to get in touch with us visiting our website. to discuss any internship openings.

WWW.AME.NU

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Bachelor Final Project CVT application in a fully electric endurance race car InMotion is a team consisting of more than 50 students from the University of Technology Eindhoven and Fontys University of Applied Sciences. InMotion’s goal is to solve the single problem that still keeps people from using an electric vehicle: charging times. One of the challenges is to choose the best transmission for this car. In this article, the possibility to use a Continuous Variable Transmission. (CVT) will be analyzed.

Written by:Jelle Heijne

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Introduction InMotion aims to reduce charging times to roughly the same amount of time it takes to fill up a petrol car. We will showcase the potential of fast charging by competing in the Garage 56 class during the 24h of Le Mans with a fully electric endurance race car. This car will be built in the upcoming year. The focus will be on the design of the battery pack to ensure the car can charge fully in 7.5 minutes.

Adding a transmission can provide high torque in the acceleration phase and makes it possible to use the motor on the more efficient operating points. However, it also adds complexity and weight, which are essential in endurance racing. In this article, the possibility to use a Continuous Variable Transmission (CVT) will be analysed.

InMotion’s previous car: “The Fusion” uses a direct drive configuration. To get a relevant and clear insight in the benefits a CVT could provide, a schematic overview can be seen in Figure 1.

Figure 1: A CVT with a final range of 0.9 - 1.8 and a final drive ratio of 1.5

Traction diagram In cooperation with Bosch Transmissions, a traction diagram was made for the two different configurations, this is shown in Figure 2. This gives a general idea of the torque and maximum capability for the two different configurations. There are two limitations for the applied wheel torque; the traction limit and the required cruise.

From the diagram it becomes clear that there is still much room left for increasing the wheel torque before wheel slip occurs.

Figure 2: Traction diagram - speed vs. wheel torque

A transmission could enable the possibility to increase the wheel torque in the acceleration phase for faster acceleration. The required cruise stands for the wheel torque necessary to counter the rolling resistance and air drag to keep an constant speed.

The blue line represents the maximum wheel torque in case the direct drive is used. There is no transmission and therefore the wheel torque is equal to the motor torque.

The peak torque of the YASA 750 electric motor is 790 Nm. Since the car uses two motors, the total peak torque is 1580 Nm. Since the peak torque can be reached over a wide range of rpm’s, the line dips only at the end.

The green line represents the second configuration as described in Figure 1. The transmission enables the wheel torque to be much higher than the motor torque.

The maximum reduction of the CVT multiplies the wheel torque by 1.5 x 1.8, which leads to a torque that even exceeds the traction limit of the tires. By shifting in ratios over the vehicle speed, the torque stays relatively high when compared to a direct drive.

The two brownish lines describe the rotational speed of the electric motor. Because of the reduction of the transmission, the rpm of the electric motor can be much higher. This is amore efficient operating point of the motor.

Concluding, it seems quite beneficial to use a CVT in our car. On low speeds, torque can be multiplied by a reduction and peak power is reached at a lower speed.

In addition, the car is able to drive on a more efficient operating point of the motor.

The CVT and direct drive are both tested for an acceleration from 60-250 km/h. This is the most relevant for Le Mans, where the lowest speed is around 60 km/h in corners. The result is shown in Figure 3. The acceleration with CVT is much higher due to the higher wheel torque.

Acceleration from 60 till 250 km/h with direct drive takes 20.05 seconds, while with CVT it is only 11.29 seconds.

To get a more in-depth analysis and insight in the performance on the track, the CVT should be implemented in a drive cycle model.

Figure 3: traction diagram - speed vs. wheel torque

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Figure 4: Vehicle velocity over the distance of circuit La Sarthe, Le Mans

Implementation of CVT in the drive cycle A drive cycle describes the vehicle dynamics of the car over a certain chosen track. Since InMotion wants to compete in the 24h of Le Mans, the track of La Sarthe is chosen. The drive cycle describes the movement of the vehicle over the track. In Figure 4, the speed at every location of the track is shown.

There are two different ways to implement CVT in the drive cycle model. This is dependent on the characteristic one wants to optimize. The model could be either optimized for maximum performance or maximum efficiency. The difference in implementation is the shift strategy of the CVT. When performance is the desired parameter, the shift strategy from the traction calculation can be used. When efficiency is the desired parameter, the most efficient operating point for each power should be chosen. This can be described by a path in the efficiency map of the motor, called the Optimal Operating Line (OOL).

First, the shift strategy for maximum performance will be discussed and then for maximum efficiency.

of the drive cycle simulation and then run again. In this way, the weight trade-off can be analysed: a transmission adds weight, but makes it possible to have a lighter battery pack. The outcome of the simulation will determine which is more important.

Results Speed As is shown in the graph of Figure 5, the vehicle velocity is almost always higher when using CVT than direct drive. Only the minimum velocity is the same, since this is the maximum braking velocity. After a corner, the acceleration is faster; the line of the CVT is steeper. Also the top speed is higher, because the motor is in a more efficient operating point at top speed.

Energy drawn from the battery In the graph below, the power that is drawn from the battery

Performance based To increase performance, the shift strategy of the traction calculation can be used. This strategy starts at the maximum reduction of 1.8 for maximum torque multiplication and therefore maximum acceleration. The gear ratio stays the same until a vehicle velocity of around 160 km/h, where the motor reaches its maximum rpm. Then the CVT slowly starts to shift to a ratio of 0.9 at top speed to keep the rotational speed of the motor at its maximum.

Since a transmission makes it possible to be in a more efficient operating point of the motor, The energy needed from the battery pack may vary. To take this into account, the mass of the battery pack is dependent of the outcome

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Figure 5: Vehicle speed if the car would have a direct drive or a CVT configuration

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battery pack, including cooling, packaging, BMS, etc. The pack consists of pouch cells that have less energy density than cylindrical cells, but are more fit for fast charging.

Transmission

Amount of Laps

Mean Lap Time

Battery weight [kg]

Direct drive

206

4:30.4

697.50

CVT

220

4:03.1

342.95

All in all, using a CVT not only increases the performance of the car, but it also makes the car lighter, even though you are adding weight.

Efficiency based

pack is shown. As can be seen, the direct drive configuration needs more power from the battery pack and also over a longer time interval, since the car is slower. The area under the graph gives the total amount of energy needed from the battery and is therefore also an indication for the capacity of the battery pack. Quite a significant difference is found, the total energy for direct drive is 27.09 kWh per lap, while for CVT it is only 20.55 kWh per lap.

For optimizing the efficiency, the most efficient operating per power must be known. This is indicated by the Optimal Operating Line. The result is a rough line through the efficiency map, the line can be smoothened to create a perfect path. The benefit of a CVT is that it has an infinite amount of gear ratios and therefore this path can be followed exactly. The efficiency map with OOL is shown in Figure 7.

Figure 7: The power loss of the electric motor and efficiency map + OOL

The green line describes the path that should be taken over the efficiency map to ensure maximum efficiency of the electric motor.

Next steps

Figure 6: Power drawn from the battery pack with a CVT or direct drive

Amount of laps in 24 hours Considering the necessary weight of the battery pack for both configurations. The amount of laps on Le Mans can be calculated. The battery weight is the total weight of the full

The next step is to implement the efficiency based shift strategy in the drive cycle model. Furthermore, a CVT can be used as a starting point for other transmissions, since a discrete transmission is essentially an approximation of a CVT. However, these transmissions are less complex and heavy and could therefore be a reasonable option for InMotion’s new car.

Next to mechanical engineer I am also manager Human Resources. If you want to join our team for the second semester or for an internship or BEP (Bachelor End Project), just send me an e-mail: hr@inmotion.tue.nl!

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Interview Mark Hooglugt student. Mark got in touch with this contact and was almost immediately accepted to work on a project there. He was quite lucky in this since not everyone gets their first choice when studying abroad. After finding a place to sleep with the help of someone who already lived there, he was ready to head out to Canada.

During the master everyone gets the chance to study abroad. One of the many people who took this opportunity was Mark Hooglugt. Time in Kingston His destination was Canada but Now that we know how Mark ended up in Canada how did he get there, what did he it’s time to learn what kept him busy Kingston. do there, and how does he reflect To start I asked what project he was working on on his time there now that he is at the university. The project was focused on computational simulation of turbulent flows back? I sat down with him to find through rough channels. What makes this kind out. of simulation interesting is that it comes closest Destination

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The first thing to think about when going abroad is where to go. This choice will be different for everyone of course but your professor will also have a large impact on your final decision.

Some professors will want to send you to the best university in a specific field to learn from the best while another professor will see the experience as more important and send you to country you have always wanted to visit. Mark’s professor was Hans Kuerten and would best align with the latter. He had one contact in a university in Kingston, a small city in Canada about a three-hour drive east of Toronto where about a quarter of the population is a

to reality. For this simulation the immersed boundary method (IBM) was used. There are several models that fall under this method but for this project the effectiveness of the volume of fluid (VOF) and the direct forcing (DF) method were compared. Both models have a certain accuracy of course so to compare these models the point at which their results start to diverge needs to be found. At first glance it may seem that the most accurate model is favorable, but this model will also require more CPU time.

This means that the extra CPU time also needs to be taken in to account and the models should also be compared at a constant CPU time.

Since the effects of different IBM methods need to be found there is no room for other inaccuracies. To this end direct numerical

simulations (DNS) where used were the NavierStokes equations directly get discretized and solved numerically. This is a very accurate method but is also skyrockets the CPU time.

This was still possible due to a powerful cluster Mark could use that generated half a terabyte of data every day.

A project this size will never go smoothly and Mark also ran into some roadblocks. At one point the cluster he was working on got an update that could not run some of of the existing code. There was also piece of code that could not be used yet since the PHD’er working on this code hadn’t finished yet. These hiccups resulted in Mark not being able to compare the two methods yet. He was able to leave a working VOF code however which is ready to be tested by the next person who picks up this project.

Student life in Kingston Aside from information on his project Mark also talked quite a bit about how life was in Kingston.

As said before Kingston has a large number of students but unlike in the Netherlands Canada is way to large to keep living with your parents while going to university. This means that all of the students live in Kingston where most of them lived in one part of the city full of student homes, which was called “the ghetto” around town. Here you can find a house party almost every night where Mark had to get used to the “bring your own booze” concept where his six pack was certainly not enough before heading out into the town. The food during a night out is also quite different in Canada. Where in the Netherlands a lot of people enjoy a kapsalon before heading into a club, the Canadian students eat some poutine. Poutine is a dish consisting of fries and cheese which is then drenched in gravy. One of the biggest parties Mark went to was a St. Patrick day celebration which he described as “climbing on houses and drinking Guinness. Awesome.”.

After a night of beer and poutine some sports never hurt. To this end, and to meet new people, Mark took up ice hockey which is Canada’s favorite pastime. In Eindhoven we only have one decent ice rink but the smaller city of Kingston dwarves this number with over twenty rinks, some of which are even maintained by the government and can be used for free. At these rinks you could simply show up with a stick, skates, and gloves and join the fun, which they called shinnying. You may have noticed that a helm was not mentioned and this is because Mark didn’t have one. One time he wished otherwise though, because another player slashed Mark’s face with his skate, leaving Mark needing some stiches. After this Mark started playing more carefully, which took most of the fun out of the game.

When in another country there are always some sites you have to see and that is also the case in Canada. Mark went over to see Niagara Falls and Toronto. Good ways to get to these locations are by joining the international students Facebook, which most universities have. A lot of internationals want to see the country they are in so by joining a group like this it is very east to rideshare to various location. These groups are also an effective way to get invited to events you may have not heard about. Mark only found out about this group after two months but would advise anyone to join as soon as possible. One thing to keep in mind when going abroad is that in some countries you need an international driver license if you want to rent a car so you are not completely dependent on ride sharing.

All in all, Mark will never forget his four months in Canada. Between the people he met, the memories he made and especially the poutine he can’t wait to go back and visit Canada. He would also strongly advise everyone to seize the opportunity to go study abroad once it arises!

Written by:Tjalle Dijkstra

The Parker Solar Probe

Nasa’s new hot topic

On the 12th of August 2018, coincidentally on a Sunday, the Parker Solar Probe was shot in space with the revolutionary mission to examine our closest and most well known star from a distance closer than ever before. The project, organized by NASA and named after astrophysicist Eugene Parker, costed 1.3 billion Euros and is meant to withstand the heats of the Sun for a duration of seven years, within it is supposed to pass the Sun for a total of 24 times. With every time it enters the orbit of the Sun, NASA hopes to collect more information and new insights of how the energy is behaving inside the Sun’s atmosphere and how the solar storms on the Sun’s surface could impact life on Earth. The trajectory will be an oval shape with the Sun and Venus as its pivot points, taking advantage of the gravitational force for taking a turn. The seventh and last time it will pass Venus will not be before October 2024, more than five years from now. After its mission it will rapidly run out of energy and burn up near the sun, as it loses its ability to aim its heatshield.

When approaching the Sun the heatshield is supposed to aim at the Sun at all times.

If the vulnerable interiors of the probe are exposed to direct sunlight, irreversible damage will be done within tenths of seconds. During the trip, solar radiation could reach an intensity that is 500 times as much as is caught in Earth’s outer atmosphere, emphasizing the importance of the shield’s controlling mechanism.

The 115 millimeter thick layer of the carbon composite is enough to maintain a comfortable temperature of 30 degrees in the interiors. Since there are few to

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none particles in space, the ambient temperature near the Sun of around 1400 degrees Celsius can barely transmit heat to parts that are not exposed to direct sunlight.

But how is it able to examine the Sun when hiding behind its heatshield? For the Faraday cup, the shuttle that is used to measure electrons flowing in the Corona, Earth’s most advanced materials were used. Tungsten (Wolfraam) is mainly used to protect the shuttle from taking damage, as its melting point takes place at 3422 degrees. For manufacturing the material

conventional lasers would not even do the job. Dangerous acids were used instead.

Since the shield is capable of surviving temperatures that are significantly higher than the interior can handle, the shield will continue circling around the Sun long after the shuttle is retired.

Now that the shuttle has been travelling for quite some time, NASA has already received some data, which include images of within the Sun’s atmosphere. Perfectly according to plan, from October 31 to November 11, the Solar

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Probe passed the Sun’s atmosphere for the first time. With a record-breaking speed of 3240 km/h, Parker flew by the Sun at a unprecedented distance of 27.1 million kilometers away from the Sun’s surface. To put that into perspective, the distance from Earth to the Sun is about 150 million kilometers.

The obtained data was sent to earth, but even this radio signal took a few weeks to arrive at NASA, which is not surprising given the fact that the signal had to travel more than 120 million kilometers. The obtained photo can be seen below.

While the first ever taken image of the Sun from up close might not seem as revolutionary to the average person, scientists have been waiting for something like this for ever.

With the current image, and the images that have yet to come, they are confident to decipher most of the mysteries that

currently have not yet been solved. When the expected, and desired data is finally obtained, we on Earth hope to have the knowledge on how to improve our way of life.

These pictures have been taken from quite the distance still.

During its mission, the Parker Solar Probe will ultimately come as close as 6.16 million kilometers, less than half of the distance currently. Every 150 days give or take, the Probe will fly by the Sun. With different circumstances and altitudes the acquired intel will continuously help improve the knowledge as we know it regarding the Sun and hopefully, near the end of its journey, the Parker Solar Probe can be remembered as a successful space mission that has significantly improved life on Earth.

Written by:Freek jansen

“While the first ever taken image of the Sun from up close might not seem as revolutionary to the average person, scientists have been waiting for something like this forever. ”

Photo: Bart van Overbeeke

EINDHOVENSE STUDENTENRAAD

What can we improve?

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Education

Another subject that currently has our attention is student housing. Partially caused by the growth of our university, it is becoming increasingly difficult for students to find an affordable place to live in the city. A group that especially experiences problems because of this shortage are international students, as they do not have the possibility to stay at their parents until they finally find a room. We are currently in contact with the university and the municipality to investigate potential “As ESR we find it very important solutions to the housing problems that students to be able to maintain the excellent experience.

The Eindhovense Studentenraad (ESR) is one of the fractions in the University Council. The work of the University Council has a direct influence on you as a student. By discussing the policy of our university with the Executive Board and other staff members, we have a direct influence on many topics, ranging from what our campus looks like to exam regulations and the height of study caps.

One of the most urgent topics at our university right now is the large influx of students. As ESR we find it very quality of our education despite the These current proposals important to be able to maintain the excellent large growth in student numbers. � range from a committee that addresses house quality of our education despite the large growth in student numbers. owners that ask too high rents for the offered This means that we will push for sufficiently rooms, to more contracts between the university small project groups and a sufficient amount and housing corporations such that students of staff to maintain intensive education. Last will be able to find a room sooner. year the University Council created a plan in In order to fully represent your opinions as consultation with the Executive Board for the students, we find it very important to receive investments of the money that came available input from the students of our university. after the basic grant (basisbeurs) was abolished.

One of the most prominent features of this Are there any matters that you think the plan is that there will be extra investments for university should handle differently? Do you more temporary staff and teaching assistants, experience any problems that you believe the which will further aid small-scale education. University Council can help you with? Or would Additionally, investments will also be made in you like to receive more information about the video lectures, extra trainings for teachers and topics that the University Council is currently busy with? Then send a mail to esr@tue.nl or further digitalization of our education. subscribe to our newsletter!

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Bachelor Final Project Design of a miniaturised methane slip sensor for Otto engines Most cars and trucks use gasoline or diesel as a fuel, which causes a lot of CO2 emission. An alternative fuel option would be to use Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), which consists of mostly methane. In her Bachelor Final Project done in the Microsystems group, Esther van der Aa looked at the design of a miniaturised methane slip sensor that measures the amount of unburnt methane in the engine.

Written by: Robbert Louwers

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LNG is better for the environment than gasoline or diesel, since it produces less harmful substances during combustion, which is why it is being used more and more as an alternative fuel. However, for the methane, which the LNG mostly consists of, to become liquid it needs to be cooled to cryogenic temperatures (-162 OC). The cost of these cryogenic installations combined with the energy density of the LNG, which is only around 60% of that of gasoline or diesel, causes LNG to not be used on a large scale yet.

placed inside the engine, as it cannot withstand the high temperatures. Only the fibre is placed in the engine, and the measurement module is placed somewhere else, increasing the measurement time.

Introduction The reason that Esther looked at a design for a sensor to measure the amount of unburnt methane in the engine is that methane is a greenhouse gas, just like CO2. The methane that is unburnt and escapes the system is called methane slip. However, since methane absorbs heat more effectively, this methane slip is 25x more harmful to the environment than regular CO2 emissions. By measuring the methane slip and communicating this to the Engine Control Unit (ECU) the air-fuel ratio can be adjusted, causing more methane to be burnt during the combustion and thus causing less methane slip.

Selecting In a previous project, the option to place a spectroscopic sensor in the engine was investigated. This sensor uses an infra-red spectrum to the absorbance or transmission of substances at several wavelengths. Since every gas substance has its own wavelength, each substance that is present in a mixture can be linked to its corresponding wavelength. One of the main reasons to not use a spectroscopic sensor is that other hydrocarbons also absorb IR radiation in the same spectral region as methane.

This would cause the sensor results to be less accurate.

Measuring with multiple selective sensors would be a solution, but it would require the use of multiple expensive high-resolution spectrometers which is not ideal to be used in combustion engines. These spectroscopic sensors would use a hollow optic fibre to conduct the measurement making it very likely that measurements are conducted with mixtures from previous measurement still present in the fibre. Flushing the optic fibre every time would severely slow down the process, reducing the response time of the sensor. Another disadvantage of this concept is that the module which performs the measurements cannot be

So, Esther decided to develop a new concept to measure the methane slip in her BFP. The concept that she developed was to measure the discharge between the two electrodes of the spark plug. After ignition a second discharge of the spark plug can be used to determine the composition of the fuel left after combustion. This is caused by the so-called breakdown voltage, which is the voltage necessary to start the discharge. The breakdown voltage depends on the gas, and can thus be calculated for methane. To measure the concentration of methane left after combustion, the discharge current is used, since these two depend on each other. With this information the air-fuel ratio can again be adjusted to cause less methane slip. The advantage of using the spark plug sensor is that the engine does not need many adjustments, that it is a fast measuring method and that it has the potential to be very selective.

Conclusion To test if this concept is feasible, a measurement setup and plan have been developed. The actual testing still has to be done in a future project, but to give some idea about the developed tests, a short elaboration on it will follow.

The experiments will be conducted with a gas sensor and gas sensing module, shown in the figure below. The sensor consists of a thin film doped in tin oxide layer SnO2, over an embedded heater layer which is necessary for the reaction mechanisms to occur. To test the spark plug concept a polydimethylsoilixane (PDMS) chip will be created, with the exact same dimensions as the gas sensor.

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Photograph by: Lorem ipsumw ipsum

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The SkyActiv-X An emission-free engine

WRITTEN BY: KARSTEN SLAKHORST

The principle point of focus of most car manufacturers is to lower the CO2 emissions. Mazda has a Sustainable Zoom-Zoom 2030 view where they are committed to reduce its corporate average ‘Well-to-Wheel’ CO2 emissions to 50% of 2010 levels by 2030. That could only be achieved by new technologies. Powered by gasoline, the SkyActiv-X SPCCI engine promises not only improved environmental performance but also improved power and acceleration.

With the arrival of emission-free engines, the future of conventional engine, like diesel and gasoline engines, will not be bright. These engines emit substances which are harmful for the environment and contribute to global warming.

That is why consumers and companies will be stimulated to buy vehicles with emission free engines, like electric-or hydrogen engines, by tax benefits or other stimulating measures. The electric motors have a rapid acceleration by high torque but are currently limited by their relatively low range. Thereby they are an important competitor for gasoline engines, which are also known for their high acceleration and high amount of revolutions. Therefore the gasoline engine has more power compared to a diesel engine. Due to the high amount of revolutions the efficiency of the gasoline engine is only 25% compared to 45% of

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diesel engines. So the efficiency has to be increased to make the gasoline engine more attractive. That could be achieved with the new Mazda Skyactiv-X engine.

engine will ignite the same as an diesel engine and therefore the efficiency of the gasoline engine will be increased.

Engines

The Skyactiv-X engine is distinguished by the Spark-Controlled Compression Ignition(SPCCI) technology. With SPCCI an air-fuel mixture will be injected in the cylinder and compressed to a compression ratio of 16:1. That is just below the required level for compression-ignition detonation. To increase that level a little bit fuel is injected around the spark plug which results in a richer mixture around the spark plug. The richer mixture will be ignited by the spark plug and creates a pressure wave, from the middle, through the air-fuel mixture. The pressure will be increased from the center point so that a stable ignition in the cylinder could take place. When the pressure is increased

The current generation of gasoline engines are mixture engine where the fuel is mixed with air into an explosive mixture. That mixture is injected into the cylinder and detonated by a spark plug. In a diesel engine the fuel is injected under a high pressure and mixed in the cylinder with air. The air is compressed which results in a high pressure and temperature. The fuel will spontaneous ignite by the high end compression temperature, also known as compressed ignition. In a Skyactiv-X motor the gasoline-air mixture will be denoted by an increasing pressure and temperature without a spark plug. So the gasoline

SPCCI

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in the entire mixture the temperature and pressure are at the critical point where compressed ignition takes place. The compressed ignition takes almost immediately place after the spark ignition. So the timing of the compressed ignition is determined by the timing of the electrical spark.

compressed ignition cannot be reached. At high engine loads the air-fuel ratio does not satisfy the requirement of the SPCCI. There is relatively too much fuel in the cylinder so when the spark plug denotes the entire mixture instead of the rich mixture. In these cases the conventional combustion takes place.

Because of the timing of the ignition can be controlled engine knock can be prevented. Engine knock occurs when an uncontrolled combustion takes place before the piston reaches it top dead center(TDP). The uncontrolled combustion takes place when the temperature is higher than the required level for compressed ignition. By this early pressure development on the plunger the crankshaft will tend to turn in the opposite direction. So the timing of the spark plug has to be adjusted so that the combustion takes place at the right time. In that way the engine knock cannot take place thus and the temperature cannot be too hot. On the other hand, the temperature should not be too low, because that results in ignition problems.

With the SPCCI technique a gasoline engine could even emit less CO2 than an electric engine. Thereby is assumed that most electricity in the world is generated with fossil fuels. These fossil fuels emit a lot of CO2 and other harmful substances for the environment. On average an electric engine uses about 20 kWh per 100 km. If that electricity is produced by a coal power plant, the CO2 emissions is equal to 200 g/km. But nowadays electricity is also produced by more environmental power plants like windmills. Therefore the emission of generating electricity is 128 g/km on average. A Skyactiv-X engine emits on average 142g/km. The difference between the emission of an electric engine and a gasoline engine with SPCCI technique is just 10%.

During test drives in August 2017 there were some small shocks by the transition between the spark ignition and the compressedignition, but those are taken out in a few months’ time. Thereby you perceive as a driver almost nothing of that under the hood something very special is taking place.

When adjusting the timing of the spark plug there has to be ensured that there is a smooth transition between the spark plug ignition and the compression ignition. Only then can the engine operate 80% of the time very efficient. Even if a vehicle drives at low speeds, for example in the city, the fuel consumption and CO2 emission could be reduced by 30% and the engine will run on a super lean fuel mixture. A super lean fuel mixture has an air-fuel ration of 65 to 1. So the technology ensures that the Skyactiv-X engine will be as efficient or even more efficient with fuel consumption than a diesel engine.

On the other side the SPCCI technology could not be used at low engine temperatures and at high engine loads. When the engine is quite cold, the required pressure and temperature for

The SPCCI technology in the Skyactiv-X gasoline engines combine the best features of the diesel and gasoline engines.

Mazda has found a solution for the smooth transition between the spark ignition, which creates the pressure wave, and the compression ignition. By means of the compression combustion in the cylinder the emission of CO2 will be reduced by 30% so that the gasoline engine can even compete with electric engines.

In 2019 will this technology be implemented in the Mazda 3.

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TINY DEVICE GREAT POWER “More than a tech job”

Meet Pieter Smorenberg, a 2017 Delft University of Technology graduate who recently found himself back at university, this time explaining to students how technologically fascinating his job is. Originally from Amsterdam, Pieter couldn’t have guessed that he would find so many technical and social opportunities in Veldhoven at ASML, the fast-growing tech giant.

Pieter studied precision and microsystem engineering, and now works as an applications engineer in customer support at ASML. He also spends some of his time as one of over 400 ‘ASML Ambassadors’, giving guest lectures at his alma mater university or promoting STEM among school-aged children in the region.

“The more I tell people about working here, the more things I realize I

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appreciate about the company,” he says. “A lot of people don’t realize just how big ASML is in the semiconductor industry. You realize it when you visit the campus in Veldhoven. You see the big tower, the cleanrooms, the huge gardens and parking lots; it’s impressive. And then at the complete other end of the scale, almost all of the metrics we work with here are practically at an atom level – no other company is producing such advanced

chip-making equipment.”

ASML is the world’s leading provider of semiconductor lithography equipment, in an industry worth $438 billion. All of the world’s top chipmakers are our customers, including Samsung, Intel, and TSMC. Pieter has certainly found more than he expected in Eindhoven. “Coming from Amsterdam and Delft, I was a bit uncomfortable about moving to

Career

Eindhoven. But actually it seems like everyone is moving here. A lot of my friends from university are here, and there’s a lot going on that you only discover after you get here. It’s not a ‘small city’. It’s a melting pot – people come from all over the world to live here.”

Pieter has also found more than a career at ASML. “There’s so much going on in our company, technically as well as socially. We have annual technology conferences where you can learn about what’s going on in your department, and across the company. This is really unique to ASML. You can develop your network, and learn a lot about what other people are working on, and get ideas for yourself. I’m like a kid in a candy store at these conferences.”

Celebrating our technology isn’t the only way we have fun at ASML. “I sometimes go for drinks with the ‘Young ASML’ group for young ASML professionals,” Pieter says. “You get to meet colleagues from all kinds of different departments.

It’s a really open-minded atmosphere, because everybody is there for the same reason: to share a good evening with each other.” The ASML campuses are like small cities – more than 12,000 people work just at the Veldhoven campus alone.

Young, old, male, female, LGBTI+, living abroad, you name it – it’s easy to feel at home at ASML.

As a customer support engineer, Pieter also gets to travel a lot, listening to ASML’s customers and helping them to achieve their technology roadmaps. During his travels he experiences other cultures first-hand. “You learn a lot – socially and culturally as well as technically. It’s been an eye-opener for me. We’re diverse, in terms of education, background, and nationality, but we’re all working together as one team because we all have the same goal: make this incredibly complicated technology a reality.”

Upon finishing your technical study, deciding on your next step can be challenging. Participating in the ASML Business Course might be a smart move! Rise to the occasion to enhance your management skills in a management game, to grasp our mind-boggling technology through presentations and in the ASML Experience Center, and to ask engineers about their life at ASML. Of course, you can explore what ASML has to offer aside research and development, work on an ASML Case and orient to a job during interviews.

Register before March 31 and boost your career with the push of a button! www.workingatasml.com/businesscourse

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Association

Hephtig:

Skiën

Met lange latten van de berg af duiken in de vrieskou terwijl het hartstikke gevaarlijk kan zijn, klinkt super toch? En dat blijkt, want skiën is een super populaire sport waarbij de één geniet van zweven over de poedersneeuw en de ander zijn leven op het spel zet door met 120 km/u van de berg af te racen om de snelste tijd neer te zetten.

GESCHREVEN DOOR: Wouter de Kruijf

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Al duizenden jaren lang maakt de mens gebruik van lange latten onder zijn of haar voeten als vervoersmiddel, maar er is een hoop verandert in die tijd. Tegenwoordig vind je talloze video’s online over hoe je wel of niet moet skiën en waar je allemaal op moet letten om het veilig te houden op de berg. Maar wat het beste werkt, is natuurlijk zelf naar de bergen rijden om het te ervaren!

Geschiedenis

In wat nu Zweden en Noorwegen is, werd 7000 jaar geleden al geskied. Toen waren ski’s natuurlijk puur praktisch en werd het niet gezien als vermaak. Skiën kwam zelfs al voor in de Noorse mythologie, goden als Ullr en Skaði hadden bijvoorbeeld ski’s als attributen.

In de middeleeuwen werden oorlogen gevoerd op ski’s en zo werden ski’s nog honderden jaren gebruikt. In de oorlogen tussen Rusland en Zweden en zelfs tijdens de Tweede Wereld Oorlog waren ski’s een belangrijk vervoersmiddel. De ski’s waren lang, dun en van hout, je schoenen zaten met rubberen touwtjes vast aan de ski’s. Veel controle over je ski’s had je dus niet. Ski’s werden al helemaal niet gebruikt om van de berg af te glijden, maar vooral om je al langlaufend van A naar B te brengen.

Het skiën dat we nu kennen, is in de 19e eeuw uitgevonden door Sondre Norheim.

Een skifanaat die constant de limieten van zichzelf en zijn ski’s opzocht. Al gauw merkte hij dat het aansturen van zijn ski’s met slappe, rubberen touwtjes moeilijk ging. Hij verving de rubberen touwtje met gedroogde wortels die flink stugger en steviger waren. Gelijk had hij veel meer controle en besturing over zijn ski’s, hiermee kon Sondre hele andere bewegingen maken en zelf andere skitechnieken gebruiken.

Dit was het moment dat het moderne skiën uitgevonden is!

Verschillende ski’s Verschillende mensen houden van verschillende skistijlen, zo heb je er dus ook een heel aantal.

De één heel toegankelijk terwijl de andere zo gevaarlijk is, dat er jaren training aan voorafgaat voordat je het überhaupt mag of kan doen. Voor al deze varianten gebruik je weer een andere skitechniek en -spullen. Het belangrijkste dat verandert, is het profiel (de vorm van de ski van de zijkant gezien) en de sidecut (de vorm van bovenaf gezien) van de ski. Deze twee eigenschappen bepalen grotendeels hoe je ski’s reageren op je bewegingen en op de sneeuw waarover je skiet.

De meeste mensen gebruiken een carving ski, wat letterlijk snij-ski betekent. Deze ski’s worden door amateurs op de piste tot professionele slalom-skiërs gebruikt. Door de sidecut van deze carving ski’s snijden ze in de sneeuw zodra je een bocht maakt. Het profiel van de ski zorgt ervoor dat je in de bocht over de hele lengte van je ski contact hebt met de sneeuw, dit heet camber. Met genoeg gewicht op je dalski zullen je ski’s dan vanzelf een agressieve bocht maken, waarin je een hoop snelheid kan houden. Aan het eind van je bocht zal het voelen alsof je ski’s je omhoog willen lanceren, deze energie en kracht kan je gebruiken om je ski’s de andere kant op te gooien en jezelf weer in de volgende bocht te storten!

De echte “bro’s” onder ons gebruiken de twintip: een ski met, zoals de naam impliceert, twee punten. De ski’s zijn een stuk minder stijf dan een carving ski’s, maar ook veel lichter. Dit maakt ze minder stabiel bij hoge snelheden en tijdens het maken van bochten. Ze worden daarom veel gebruikt in het snowpark, waar ze ook voor gemaakt zijn. Met de dubbele punt kan je makkelijk voor- en achteruit skiën, wat veel

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creativiteit biedt. Omdat de ski een stuk lichter is, is het mogelijk om je ski’s alle kanten op te gooien, ideaal voor de salto’s, 360’s en andere tricks. De flexibiliteit van de ski, dat voor de onstabiliteit zorgt, geeft ook gelijk iets unieks aan de twintip, dat is de pop! De pop van de twintip helpt je om je ski’s van de grond af te krijgen, wat natuurlijk weer helpt met je prestaties in het snowpark.

Zoek je een keer de poedersneeuw op of ga je grote tochten off-piste maken? Dan is een brede allmountain ski of poederski hetgeen dat je nodig hebt.

Deze ski’s kunnen bijna twee keer zo breed zijn als carving ski’s en zijn vaak een stuk langer. Het profiel van de ski is zo gemaakt dat niet heel de ski contact heeft met de sneeuw als je over harde sneeuw skiet.

Dit is gedaan door de voor- en achterkant eerder omhoog te laten komen. Dit profiel heet een rocker, en kan gecombineerd worden met camber voor een ski die voor verschillende doeleindes kan worden ingezet, maar een full rocker komt ook voor.

Je ski’s voelen licht aan als je over de harde sneeuw skiet, omdat ze niet over heel de lengte contact hebben met de sneeuw. Maar wanneer je de poeder induikt, hebben de ski’s heel wat extra contactoppervlak en zweef je als het ware over de sneeuw. Hierbij zet je niet al je gewicht op de dalski, maar verdeel je het gewicht eerlijker over beide ski’s en rijg je je bochten netjes achter elkaar. De sneeuw die je samenperst onder je ski’s, gebruik je om je ski’s uit het poeder te “tillen” om de volgende bocht te initiëren. Je volgt dus het ritme van je ski’s en explosiviteit is een stuk minder belangrijk.

Ski-records •

•

•

•

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De Italiaan Ivan Origone heeft de hoogste snelheid op ski’s behaald, dit was een ongelofelijke 254,985 km/u. De Zwitser Elias Ambühl heeft het snelheidsrecord achteruitskien op z’n naam staan: 131,23 km/u. Dit is harder dan dat veel mensen ooit vooruit zullen skiën.

De grootste horizontale afstand afgelegd in de lucht door een skiër is maar liefst 252 meter door Robert Johansson in 2017.

Fred Syversen heeft per ongeluk het wereldrecord hoogste klifsprong op zijn naam staan. Terwijl ze een film aan het opnemen waren, sprong hij van de verkeerde klif en dook 107 meter naar beneden! Door de poedersneeuw onderaan de klif bleef hij leven en is hij er met wat lichte verwondingen van afgekomen.

Bij het professionele slalom skiën worden g-krachten hoger dan 2.0 G aangetikt, terwijl de amateurs de 1.5 G net zullen raken.

ME

Tech

FROM STORM TO SPIKE In 2016, STORM Eindhoven successfully travelled around the world in 80 days on its self-developed electric motorcycle, STORM Wave. By doing that, the team realised the ultimate dream that it has been working on for 3 years. After travelling 23,000 kilometres through 16 different countries across Europe, Central Asia and the United States, the team showed the entire world that electric vehicles are truly ready to conquer the world.

The adventurous 80-day-world-tour was a once-in-a-lifetime journey, after which a couple of STORM alumni decided to continue working on the vision with which the STORM team once started. They decided to utilize the unique skills gained in the STORM project and apply these skills to support other companies in developing high quality electric vehicles. As a result, SPIKE was founded late 2017.

SPIKE SPIKE saw that a lot of companies are attempting to design and commercialize new sorts of electric vehicles or electric vehicle components, but often lack the time, skills and knowledge to do this in a fast and reliable way. Especially the batteries that are used in these vehicles are often not robust, not reliable and not safe, which significantly lowers the quality and sustainability of these vehicles, while potential alternatives to these batteries are often very expensive due to the need for a customizable solution.

That’s why SPIKE aims to provide full solutions to its customers by supporting in the design, development and production of electric vehicles and its associated components. SPIKE’s main product includes a battery module that is extremely safe, reliable and cost efficient to use, while they’re designed to power a broad

range of different applications. This means that the flexible battery design can be easily adjusted, and the modules can be connected in any orientation to meet all power, voltage and capacity requirements.

Electric motorcycle One example project SPIKE has been working on the past year includes the full development of a prototype electric motorcycle for Dutch-Kenyan motorcycle brand Kibo. Kibo is the first and only brand to introduce a motorcycle specifically designed for riding in Africa. Their first motorbike, the K150, represents the perfect combination of an off and on-road bike that offers the strength and stability to provide a safe and reliable motorbike.

Kibo approached SPIKE with the question to develop a prototype electric motorcycle based on their combustion engine K150 frame that could be used to pilot-test how electric motorcycles can be introduced in Nairobi, Kenya. In this project, SPIKE took care of the entire development of this prototype, including the electric powertrain design and integration. This motorbike is also the first application to utilize the SPIKE battery modules.

From 2019 onwards, SPIKE will rapidly grow its business by working on much more exciting electric vehicle projects, while at the same time expand the battery production facility to meet the growing demand of its customers. SPIKE is currently located at the TU/e innovation Space facility in Matrix and due to the growing number of projects, SPIKE is also looking for expansion of the team, which could be as a (part-time) job, internship or graduation project. So, if you’re willing to contribute to our vision and like to work on awesome vehicle projects, please walk by or get in touch.

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STERRENHOEKJES Het beste van het Lustrum

46ste jaargang (46.1) • Robin tijdens de Euroreis: “Your behind window sweeper is still on.”

• Bart tegen Bas: “Jij loopt de hele tijd prominent te doen met je taalgebruik. Ik val reuze mee. Eigenlijk ben ik gewoon een zieke knor.”

• Niki aan het einde van een lange vrijdag: “Jongens, zouden jullie alle stukjes condoom willen opruimen?”

(46.2) • Robin: “Als je een Chinees hebt die moet brokken, heb je gewoon Brokk-o-Lee.” • Jasper: “Diadeem, dat is toch zo’n ding dat je in je steekt om niet zwanger te worden?”

• Sylvia: “Ik heb zaad tussen mijn tanden!”

(46.3) • Chloé: “Nu eet ik wéér ui, ik wilde één dag gewoon niet stinken.”

• Ben komt terug van de bouwmarkt: “Nu weet ik hoe vrouwen zich in een kledingwinkel voelen.”

• Niki: “Waarom heb jij een zweepje thuis?” Inge: “Ja, van mijn ouders.”

(46.4) • Sylvia: “Ik wilde helemaal niet, maar het was best wel lekker.”

• Wouter: “Het was niet dat ik heel zat was, het was gewoon te veel bier.”

• Niki loopt naar het Prothok waar vervolgens gegil ontstaat, vervolgens komt hij terug naar de Simonkamer. Niki: “Jeetje, ik kwam daar en ze begonnen allemaal te gillen, want ze zochten nog galadates.” Ben: “Als ze al voor jou gaan, dan zijn ze wel heel wanhopig.”

(46.5) • Bas en Sylvia in de Ikea. Sylvia: “Waar kan ik hier lid worden?” Bij de kassa, legt de kassajuffrouw uit wat de voordelen zijn van de lidmaatschapspas. Sylvia: “Heb je nou geen spijt dat je niet lid bent geworden?” Bas: “Tsja…”

Sylvia: “Hah, spijtknor!”

• Ruben: “Hoor ik dat nou goed? Is Bart een homo?” Inge: “Nee, een vogel.”

• Tijdens de strandzeilmidweek pakt Anton de playboy om de bbq mee aan te wakkeren. Willem: “Waarom doe je dat?

Dat blad is al heet genoeg.”

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47ste jaargang (47.1) • Tiemen (over een colafles, achter de bar van De Weeghconst): “Dan heb je van die kleine gaatjes, maar daar wil je hem eigenlijk niet in steken, want anders gaat hij spuiten.”

• Bart: “Ik ga vanavond na het eten gewoon naar huis.”

• Chloé: “Bart, jij neemt mij vanavond mee en dan gaan we naar huis.”

• Tim: “Overal ligt stront. Oh wacht, dat zijn Ken en Wouter.”

(47.2) • Guus: “Zijn jullie mij nu alweer aan het doen?” Sylvia: “Nee, nog steeds.”

• Robin: “Wat moet er in kwartiel 1 gedaan worden?” Sjors: “Sjaars.”

• Bart (over een volumeknopje van een internetradio): “Hoerenzooi, ik krijg dat ding niet meer omhoog!”

(47.3) • Loes: “Ik heb nog vlees in m’n gat zitten.”

• Wouter: “Ik heb echt zin in iets in mijn mond.”

• Chloé: “Waarom wordt ik uitgenodigd voor een Ladies Night?” Sjors: “Waarschijnlijk omdat ze denken dat je een vrouw bent.”

(47.4) • Bart: “Linda is dus heel strak.”

• Bart tegen Sylvia: “Ik vind het wel leuk om jouw eerste keer te zien.”

• Luuk probeert te paaldansen op Stratumseind. Sjors tegen een agent: “Kun je hem oppakken wegens ontzettend slecht dansen?” Agent: “Nee, maar wel omdat hij lelijk is.”

(47.5) • Chloé: “Haha, jouw plak in mijn gezicht Sebas.”

• Sylvia: “Dan slaan we meteen twee klappen in één vlieg.”

• Ardin tegen Jelle tijdens het actieve leden diner: “Ik wil je meest geile face zien tijdens het likken.”

48ste jaargang (48.1) • Anton: “Is een BH eigenlijk niet ook gewoon een borstzak?”

• Daniël: “Niki, kom hier. Ik moet je echt even motorboaten.”

• Erik Homburg komt een emmer halen in de Simonkamer.

Bart: “Moet je kotsen?” Erik: “Ja, ik zit tentamens na te kijken…”

Association

(48.2) • Esther: “Je moet je doos binnenstebuiten keren, dan is ‘ie mooi bruin.”

• Daniël: “Zullen we anders de langste meter bier ooit maken?”

• Hoofdredacteur tegen Onderwijscommissaris: “Er zijn wel weinig sterrenhoekjes, dus als je wilt kun je nu nog iets doms zeggen dan zet ik het erin.”

(48.3) • Sjors: “Normaal gesproken is zo’n strandzeilweekend wel een goede bron voor sterrenhoekjes, maar nu niet.” Sebas: “Dat komt omdat er nu wel slimme mensen mee waren!”

• Sebas: “Heeft er iemand de laatste tijd nog wat doms gezegd?” Niki: “Dan moet je je ALV-notulen even doorkijken!”

• Daan: “Bart, wat vind je ervan als Uri Rosenthal naar het symposium komt?” Bart: “Nee man, dat is toch die gek met die lepels?” … Stilte … Bart: “Oooooh nee, dat is Uri Geller!”

(48.4) • Sjors: “Roken mag al niet op de ALV, daar kunnen we ook wel aan toevoegen dat je niet met je mond vol mag eten.”

• Wouter: “Je baard gaat sneller groeien als je veel seks hebt.

Sjors, je hebt ons iets te vertellen volgens mij.” Sjors: “Nou Wouter, volgens mij heb jij ons meer te vertellen.”

• Kevin: “Bodywarmers zijn gevoerde vestjes, ziek prominent.”

(48.5) • Esther: “Ik kan toch zelf betalen want ik heb Wouter gevonden!”

• Jerome: “Ik heb deze hele week al opwarmmaaltijden gegeten, volgend jaar ga ik echt koken!”

• Sjors schudt een fles cola. Wouter: “Oh, daar zat nog best wel veel zuurkool op.”

49ste jaargang (49.1) • Badmeester over Wouters rugslag: “Je faket het een beetje.”

• Noah: “Ze zeggen geld moet rollen, maar eigenlijk moet geld wapperen. We zijn toch geen paupers?!”

• Sifra: “We moeten golven maken, dan worden die vissen zeeziek!”

(49.2) • Bart: “Eigenlijk is Simon Stevin gewoon een fusie tussen het ESC en de Bruna.”

• Wouter: “Mogen docenten ook meedoen?” Willem: “Het is Eindhoven Studentenstad en niet Eindhoven Docentenstad, dus ik denk het niet.”

• Niki met een winkelwagen vol pils: “Dit is gewoon een ongeleid projectiel van 70 kilo.” Yannick: “Het is net Niki.”

(49.3) • Moeder van Sem: “Die kale jongen hè, is die eigenlijk al klaar?”

• Olaf: “Wie verzorgt hier de thee? Die moeten ze echt vierendelen!”

• Sifra tijdens een ALV: “Wat is een A.P.P.?”

• Lex: “Dat is een app.”

(49.4) • Noah: “Er moet vanalles geregeld worden, maar ik kan helemaal niet regelen…”

• Esther: “Ik vind microsystems wel cool, maar ze zijn allemaal zo klein.”

• Mirthe tijdens een muziekquiz: “Ik ken alle nummers, maar alleen de artiest en de titel niet.”

(49.5) • Ruben: “De vrouwen zijn ook weer terug van een reisje, nu komen de verhalen.” Anouk: “Het is alleen maar fout gegaan met parkeren.”

• Loes: “Roep maar als jullie me nodig hebben, ik ga op een paal zitten.” Pascal: “Gewoon doen waar je goed in bent.”

• Kim: “Ik heb echt heel erg het gevoel dat ik iets vergeten ben, maar ik weet niet wat.” Nicky: “Ja je studiepunten…

Die liggen nog in het paviljoen.”

50ste jaargang (50.1) • Bestuurslid 35ste: “ID is wel echt een dingetje geworden hè?” Max: “Ja, dat is tegenwoordig een studie.” Bestuurslid 35ste: “Dat meen je niet?!”

• Omroep Brabant over Simon Stevin: “Donderdagmiddagborrels zijn al twee keer uit de hand gelopen.”

• Harmen: “Ik heb zin om te strandzeilen.” Sjors: “Ik heb zin om te tappen.” Tom: “Ik heb zin om een ME’er in elkaar te rammen.”

• Danique: “Moet zo mijn best doen dat de spetters in mijn gezicht komen?”

• Noah: “Ik heb spierpijn in mijn benen omdat ik te lang moet staan tijdens het buizen.”

• Fenne tijdens thermodynamica: “Zuiger? Dat is gewoon Milf toch?”

• Derek tijdens de BV: “ZeilwagenCie is niet interessant.”

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NANOGRAM The aim in this puzzle is to color the whole grid in to black and white squares. At the top of each column, and at the side of each row, you will notice a set of one or more numbers.

These numbers tell you the runs of black squares in that row/column. So, if you see ‘10 1’, that tells you that there will be a run of exactly 10 black squares, followed by one or more white square, followed by a single black square. There may be more white squares before/ after this sequence.

PUZZLES MADE BY: MIRTHE MAMPAEY

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SUDOKU Everyone probably already knows the rules of this popular game. But for those who don’t, this is how it works. The classic Sudoku game involves a grid of 81 squares. The grid is divided into nine blocks, each containing nine squares. Each of the nine blocks has to contain all the numbers 1-9 within its squares and each number can only appear once in a row, column or box.

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KAKURO The object is to fill all empty squares using numbers 1 to 9 so the sum of each horizontal block equals the clue on its left, and the sum of each vertical block equals the clue on its top.

In addition, no number may be used in the same block more than once.

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CONTEST TIME Submit your answer and win your own 3D printer!

Contest 1 online

Contest 2 Alternative maze

In the summer, people went to all kind of places. The Chairman went to Rome, the beautiful capital of Italy. Finally enjoying his deserved spare time and preparing for the upcoming academic year. Right now Rome feels like a small distant memory, because the holidays are rather far away. Maybe this puzzle can give him a throwback to the beautiful city.

You start at the black spot in the maze and go into an direction vertical of horizontal, you can choose it yourself. If you went in a certain direction you have to change from direction by arrows perpendicular to your movement. If you come from the left you cannot go directly to the left again, but with detours you can achieve the same. The exercise is really easy, find the shortest way out. Good luck!

The question is: What are the missing numbers and why?

Poland

1

Austria

2

Finland

3

sweden

1

France

2

Denmark

3

Spain

2

Germany

2

Switzerland

3

Italy

3

Submit your answer in the Simonkamer (Gem-N 1.61) or send an e-mail to redactie@simonstevin.tue.nl with your name and the solution. The prize will be raffled from the correct submissions and we will publish the winner in the next online contest on www.openME.nl Make sure to send in your answer before the 11th of April!

The same amount of letters in the country and the capital.

Out of all the submissions there can only be one winner. The winner from contest 1 online is Roelof Mestriner. He can pick up his prize in the Simonkamer.

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