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PROFESSIONAL ENGINEERING

Issue 4, 2020 • www.imeche.org

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INSIDE NASA’S MARTIAN ROVER DRIVERLESS CARS ON TRIAL HOW COVID-19 WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING

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ENGINEERING UNPLUGGED

How the 5G revolution will change the industry

Issue 4, 2020 • www.imeche.org

PLUS

FUELLING FUTURE FLIGHT / MEET THE NEW IMECHE PRESIDENT / SUPERCHARGE YOUR CAREER

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Solid Solutions

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CONTENTS Issue 4, Volume 33. July/August 2020

3 From Birdcage Walk – President-elect Peter Flinn gives an update on the IMechE governance, finance and code of conduct reviews

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The forces shaping engineering 5 How the coronavirus crisis is changing engineering 7 Clever technology to help us while we’re home working 9 How big data can reduce costs on the shop floor 13 Experts give their views on solving the skills crisis 15 Big numbers reveal the biggest stories in engineering 17 The IMechE’s plan for diversity and inclusion 19 Your Voice – readers share their views on STEM Ambassadors, Drax, carbon capture, and electric vehicle charging infrastructure

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FEATURES

22 Here comes the big 5G The fifth generation of mobile internet is expected to transform the way we live and work. We examine some of the new opportunities opening up for engineering 28 Getting 5G on track The automotive sector stands to gain a lot from 5G connectivity. We visit the Millbrook Proving Ground, which is setting itself up as a testbed for the technology 32 Roving the red planet NASA has updated the technology used in its latest Mars rover to equip it for its role in exploring the red planet’s geology

38 Changing gear Incoming IMechE president Terry Spall outlines his plans for his year in office as the far-reaching reviews of the Institution’s governance, finance and code of conduct begin to bear fruit 64 Weird Engineering Building human habitation on the Moon or Mars will require some ingenious solutions

INDUSTRY PULSE

The heartbeat of your sector 41 Should we burn rubbish that can’t be recycled? 45 When it comes to electric flight, distributed propulsion could have a lot going for it 47 Three technologies hold the keys to progress with electric cars 49 Where next for wearable sensors? 51 Why construction firms must adopt digital technologies 53 Why standards are more essential than ever in the digital age 55 Cloud manufacturing promises increased flexibility 57 Keeping the railways on track in the wake of coronavirus

SUPERCHARGE

Your engineering career 59 How Daniel Jacobs found his ideal career on the Isle of Man 60 Ask the engineers: which industry should a student choose? 63 How Rob Jeffs at Rolls-Royce saved his colleagues from having to read ‘soul destroying’ process manuals Professional Engineering • www.imeche.org

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EDITORIAL Email profeng@thinkpublishing.co.uk SUBS

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Wyndeham Southernprint, Poole. Copyright Think Publishing 2020

ABOUT IMECHE The Institution of Mechanical Engineers is the professional body overseeing the qualification and development of mechanical engineers. It has 120,000 members in 140 countries. Visit imeche.org for more information about membership and its benefits, or email membership@imeche. org.uk. Views expressed in Professional Engineering are not necessarily those of the Institution or its publishers. Chief Executive

Dr Colin Brown FIMechE FIMMM President

Terry Spall FIMechE

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PEmagazine @ProfEng profeng@thinkpublishing.co.uk

BIRDCAGE WALK

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Professional Engineering is published by Think on behalf of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. PE, Think, Capital House, 25 Chapel Street, London NW1 5DH 020 3771 7200

FROM BIRDCAGE WALK President-elect Peter Flinn explains how the Institution is implementing the outcomes of the Governance, Finance and Code of Conduct Reviews These are unusual times as we all progress from one video-conference to another and use words like ‘Zoom’ and ‘furlough,’ which barely existed in our vocabulary just a few weeks ago. That being said, the work of the Implementation Group continues apace. This group of eight members and the CEO, as the name implies, are managing the implementation of the three major reviews completed last year – the Governance, Finance and Code of Conduct Reviews. The overall aim is to create a wellmanaged and flexible Institution. My own involvement in these activities began in October 2018 when the Finance Review team was formed. We reported our findings in April last year and we are now well advanced with implementing the changes that were recommended. These revolved around stronger management of the Institution’s finances and greater clarity of financial results. The 2018 Annual Report, for example, addressed the latter point and under normal circumstances you would now have been reading the 2019 edition, now delayed as a consequence of Covid-19. The Finance Board was formed during 2019 and is bringing focused and more experienced management to the Institution’s finances. We have also set up a new board for PEP Ltd and operating boards for each of the PEP subsidiaries. As you will have read elsewhere, 2019, which has still to be reported formally, saw a substantial turnaround financially from 2018 – we made a small operating surplus in the Institution itself, the PEP limited companies did well and the free reserves increased to close on our six-month target. The latter was particularly helped by the sale of a property in Old Queen Street that the Institution owned. These actions have fortunately provided the vital cushion which we now need given the current financial shocks affecting both the Institution and its members.

In 2020, we are continuing to improve the way our finances are managed with particular emphasis on replacing the multiple financial information systems, policies and processes which the Institution has been using, all of which is scheduled for completion this year. There is a new accounting system being implemented; we have strengthened and reorganised the finance team; and the support to PEP businesses has improved. I have also been working with a small group to develop the Institution’s approach to its longer-term corporate strategy. The challenges faced by society, many of which can only be solved by engineers, will affect us for decades to come so we need to take a long-term perspective in setting the direction for the Institution.

The points I’ve outlined will strengthen the Institution once we’ve navigated our way through the current issues created by Covid-19 While there has, for many years, been an annual planning cycle, we have not had a proper documented strategy setting out our general direction. During the course of this year, we plan to remedy this by setting up a Strategy Committee for this key governance activity and to develop at the least the outline of a long-term plan which can then be debated across the organisation. I firmly believe that the points I’ve outlined above will strengthen the Institution once we’ve navigated our way through the current issues created by Covid-19. In the meantime, I hope you and your families are coping well. Professional Engineering • www.imeche.org

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T HE F ORC E S SHAPING ENGINEERING

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ENGINEERING AFTER COVID-19 The devastating spread of Covid-19 touched every aspect of our lives. Here’s how engineering could look after the pandemic Collaboration

The engineering response to the sudden demands of the coronavirus was inspiring. Whether building ventilators, making personal protective equipment or creating new hospital capacity, companies and institutions from across the spectrum came together in a spirit of collaboration. Collaboration forged new connections that will carry over into the post-pandemic world, said IMechE member and Oxford professor Mark Thompson, who led the Oxvent ventilator project. “The crisis has provided the ideal conditions within which an engineering perspective can flourish, because it provides wider adoption of the supportive and

collaborative principles which engineers work by,” he said. “I think everyone will carry forward with them the experience of how they responded. In that sense it will irrevocably change the way that the networks are put together.”

Need for speed

Engineers demonstrated their full capacity when restrictions were lifted, creating prototypes in days and complete devices in weeks. Of course, fast-track routes will be tightened after the pandemic, but with other pressing challenges – climate change, for example – governments have no excuses for constraining work. “What we’ve achieved in about four or

five weeks would normally take about two-and-a-half years – really quick decision-making, engineering requalification of components, supplychain sourcing,” said Sam Turner, chief technology officer for the High Value Manufacturing Catapult, a leading member of the Ventilator Challenge UK.

Home-working

A Professional Engineering survey found that 18% of respondents reported no impact on their efficiency while working at home, with a similar number reporting no negative impact on their ability to perform technical engineering tasks. Engineering companies may take the opportunity to maintain home-working for some staff.

New focus

After the pain and suffering caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, governments must take steps to prevent similar outbreaks. There will be increased demand for engineering that fights, prevents and treats diseases, such as ventilators, anti-bacterial surfaces, temperature monitoring devices and other high-tech solutions. Professional Engineering • www.imeche.org

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REMOTE WORKING Engineers working from home need access to the same level of computing technology as they would have in the office. Tanya Weaver reports

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Transistors, the minute electronic switches that process data, are found in everything from our phones to our cars, and with the proliferation of smart devices there will be even more of them in the future. Engineers have squeezed more and more transistors onto a single computer chip. For instance, an Intel chip today has more than one billion transistors on a millimetre-sized piece of silicon. These transistors enable the central processing units (CPUs), which are often referred to as the ‘brains’ of a computer, to process instructions. But many modern computers also feature graphics processing units (GPUs), which can be present on a graphics card or embedded on the motherboard. While the CPU is composed of just a few processing cores that enable it to handle a handful of operations in a serial or linear process, a GPU is composed of thousands of cores that can handle tens of thousands of parallel streams of processes at a time. This makes them ideal for rendering the complex 3D graphics required in gaming, which is what they were invented for. Since then semiconductor manufacturers have opened up the parallel processing capabilities of GPUs to generalpurpose computing. For instance, in terms of engineering software, GPUs have helped accelerate CAD, which could often be bottlenecked by the CPU. “These first GPUs enabled CAD users

to work more smoothly with their digital models,” said Andrew Rink, who leads global marketing strategy for AEC and manufacturing industries at NVIDIA. “For instance, it eliminated the stuttering that often occurred when panning, zooming, or rotating. This not only provided a better experience when working with design software but also helped users become a lot more productive.”

Ray tracing

One of the biggest trends in recent years that GPUs have enabled is realtime ray tracing. Ray tracing brings realistic lighting, shadows and effects to rendered graphics, and now any changes made to the 3D model can be viewed interactively in real time while users are working on their models. Software vendors that have worked with NVIDIA and other GPU manufacturers, predominantly AMD, to support GPUaccelerated ray tracing include Catia with its Catia Live Rendering, SolidWorks with its SolidWorks Visualise 2020, Siemens with its NX Ray Traced Studio, Autodesk with its VRED 2021 and, most recently, Luxion which has introduced GPU acceleration for the first time in KeyShot 9.0. With the rise in simulation-driven design, GPUs are now also being used for simulation acceleration. For instance, AMD recently announced its Radeon Pro VII GPU for use in demanding simulation-driven design applications. Meanwhile NVIDIA’s realtime engineering simulation tools are

being used by Ansys in its CAD-embedded realtime CFD tool, Ansys Discovery Live. And recently Altair announced that two of its tools, Altair AcuSolve and Thea Render, are now supported by NVIDIA GPUs to boost engineering simulation, which it claims is four times faster than on a CPUonly configuration. A final trend that GPU manufacturers have put substantial investment into, and one that is prevalent with the Covid-19 pandemic, is remote working. The challenge here is for users to access the same highperformance technology they rely on from their office workstations. AMD has introduced its AMD Remote Workstation technology whilst NVIDIA has launched virtualisation software called NVIDIA virtual GPU, which even supports those users who

‘Everyone can access the same technology wherever they are and have a seamless experience just like when they were in the office’ work on compute-intensive workloads. “The mobile workstations powered by NVIDIA Quadro GPUs now are pretty much reaching the performance levels of desktop machines, which certainly wasn’t the case five years ago,” said Rink. “With most employees working remotely, everyone can access the same technology wherever they are and have a seamless experience just like when they were in the office.” Professional Engineering • www.imeche.org

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DATA DRIVES EFFICIENCIES Get a grip on your firm’s data and you can drive down shopfloor costs, writes Tanya Weaver INDUSTRY 4.0

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Within factories, long gone are the days of manually recording information about machinery. With increased digitalisation, large volumes of data from these assets now inundate a business every day. “Machinery is generating terabytes of data on a daily basis. When data volumes become so big, they can’t be stored on a laptop or flash drive. Often, huge distributed systems are used to collect and process that data,” said Parvez Alam Kazi, head of product at technology company Smartia. But it’s not the amount of this so-called ‘big data’ that’s important, it’s what is being done with it that is. Through the use of analytics, companies can now gain insights from this data and it’s into this market that Smartia launched two years ago. The vision, according to Kazi, was to develop scaleable artificial intelligence (AI) solutions to help companies within the manufacturing and engineering sectors to transform big data collected from their production equipment, machines and sensors into actionable

insights that could lead to production efficiencies and cost savings. The result is MAIO, an industrial intelligence platform, which collects industrial data from various assets and then, through artificial intelligence and machine learning, users can analyse this data and use it to build smart applications. For instance, applications for the remote monitoring of a process or an asset on the factory floor.

Predicting maintenance needs

“Of course, there is also predictive maintenance, which is a buzzword in the industry, but with AI it becomes possible to predict when maintenance of machinery needs to be carried out. For example, the application built through MAIO will tell users that there is something wrong with the machine and it might fail in a month’s time. So it’s forecasting what might go wrong and then they have enough time to plan and schedule maintenance,” explained Kazi. “We have also worked with big companies like Rolls-Royce, for example, who we helped solve an inventory problem

at one of their facilities where they have large volumes of inventory. Through the use of AI we helped them reduce that inventory by almost £1m.” But MAIO is not only aimed at manufacturing companies the size of RollsRoyce. From the start, Smartia was very keen to develop a scaleable and tailored solution to enable small firms to adopt it without specific skills or a big budget. “With MAIO, companies can start small with just one particular area of their factory or facility, and can have up to five users and one terabyte of storage. Once the value has been seen, they can connect their entire factory and then scale to multiple factories. “So it’s a very simple product not only in terms of technology but also in terms of the business model that makes it adaptable and very easy to implement in any facility. Of course there are complexities, but we’ve made it as plug and play as possible,” said Kazi. Smartia also recently collaborated with technology company Lenovo. By combining its MAIO software platform with Lenovo’s hardware technology, it can provide a complete, ready-to-use AI solution making it even easier for users to get onboard.

Professional Engineering • www.imeche.org

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In each issue, we’re surveying engineering industry leaders on a key topic

How can we solve the skills crisis in engineering?

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Bekki Phillips

Tom Bouchier

Nick Russell

“This is a slightly different answer to what I would have given four months ago. Our first priority is protecting our existing apprentices and businesses’ desire to upskill workers in the face of major cost pressures brought on by Covid-19. “We need companies to maintain their commitment to the engineers of the future so that they have the talent and capacity they will require as the economy hopefully kicks back into life again. Employers, who are paying into the Apprenticeship Levy, should be looking at creative ways in which they could spend the money they’ve put in, including personal development courses and putting more mature workers through an apprenticeship where they can develop new skills, knowledge and behaviours. “Longer-term, we need to continue the employer-led approach to training. What we offer shouldn’t be prescriptive or what government feels it should be; instead it should be developed and evolved from constant consultation with companies and finding out exactly what they need.”

“Alongside upskilling those already working in manufacturing, we must provide pathways for those seeking to enter the industry. The most effective way to secure the future of UK businesses is to provide a stream of enthusiastic and automation-literate employees, capable of engaging with the latest technology. “There has to be a concerted effort to engage young people, and the best way to do this is to continue to provide strong apprenticeship programmes. The key is to take a cross-party approach, because the health of UK industry is too important to be politicised. We must look at how funding can be used to foster growth – tax breaks could go to OEMs to enable them to improve training and prioritise apprenticeships.”

“Our entire thinking around teaching, learning, curriculum design and assessment needs to change, from lower education to the workplace. We need to shift from a largely knowledge-based society to one focused on creativity, evaluation and adding value, allowing people to demonstrate how they think and learn, rather than what they know and remember. “Crucially, the curriculum needs refreshing. Rather than learning theory through traditional, and comfortable, subjects, a cross-curricular programme evaluated through process-based assessments and experimentation could cultivate essential skills, such as problemsolving and having the confidence to fail. “Engineers need to be prepared to interact in person with potential employers and, later, colleagues and clients. At the tertiary level, this means complementing theory with social skills and creativity. In the workplace, it means being able to demonstrate your ideas, substance and drive.”

Managing director of In-Comm Training

Managing director of FANUC UK

Director at engineering consultancy Perega

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Vicki Ashton

Head of human resources at JDR Cable Systems “A critical enabler to a sustainable talent pipeline is attracting bright and enthusiastic apprentices, which makes good relationships with local schools, sixth-form colleges and universities essential. Every initiative needs to inform, inspire and educate. One of the best ways to learn what works is to knowledge share with your peer group. “Among the most memorable experiences for a student is to take them through the entire project lifecycle from design through to construction, commissioning, operation and decommissioning. An initiative like that requires the involvement of the end-to-end supply chain. Networks regionally and nationally are also important, whether it’s a local working group or an initiative like the National STEM Ambassador scheme.” Professional Engineering • www.imeche.org

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HOW ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING REVOLUTIONISES RAPID PROTOTYPING Andrea Landoni, 3D Printing Product Manager, Protolabs Europe

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ften the demands of modern manufacturing mean that individual parts and prototypes have to be produced practically overnight. Additive manufacturing (AM) allows us to meet these demands with almost no limitations on geometry and material selection. The benefits of AM have never been more essential than they are now. As industries move to respond rapidly to the dangers and challenges presented by Covid-19, AM’s speed and flexibility has stepped centre stage. 3D printing (3DP) has been key to aiding car manufacturers, for example, to suddenly switch to producing ventilators or fashion companies to create PPE in place of handbags and suits. From the start, AM claimed the crown as the most flexible production method going. And whilst 3DP is still considered a gimmick by the general public, new developments mean the possibilities are almost limitless. A wide choice of materials, high speed, and the extensive possibilities for postprocessing and measurement make 3DP an indispensable tool for making prototypes and small series – and an invaluable one in the fight against Covid-19.

Material choice The various AM processes, be it the Multi Jet Fusion process, stereolithography or direct metal laser sintering, have led to an explosion of possible materials that can be processed using 3DP. The range extends from plastics to elastomers, such as silicones, and metals. Common to all processes is that the workpiece is created layer by layer and in most cases has to be additionally held by supporting structures. The wide range of materials also means that prototypes produced by means of AM can be used in almost any field. Workpieces made of the particularly heat-resistant metal Inconel 718 by means of direct metal laser sintering are used, for example, in the aerospace industry. Copper shaped by the same process can be used if good electrical conductivity is required. Most recently, AM, with its wide range of materials, came to the rescue when 3D printed valves for life-saving emergency

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ventilation masks were urgently needed. AM saw these parts rapidly manufactured and delivered to Lombardy, Italy, a hot spot in the fight against the virus. High speed and creative freedom 3DP also enjoys such high regard within manufacturing due to the comparably high speed for rapid prototyping. Where injection moulding requires creating a mould suitable for the respective workpiece then a great deal of time and technological effort to produce injection moulds tailored to the component, the desired part can usually be produced directly via 3DP with relative ease. The only thing to be considered here is that the respective shape is optimised for AM, and more precisely for the specific 3DP technology being used. If, for example, there are overhangs, it is advisable to keep these as small as possible by using obtuse angles. By doing so, the required supporting structures can be kept as marginal as possible and the required material and the resulting costs are lower. AM offers more flexibility than injection moulding or CNC machining. Tunnels located in the workpiece can be implemented during additive production, enabling geometries that cannot be realized any other way. This is especially beneficial in the production of prototypes, giving engineers and designers a great deal of freedom in the design of parts. Though the demands on prototypes can vary, it is important that parts made by 3DP are checked after production and reworked if necessary. Most suppliers of 3D printed

parts offer special testing and inspection services for this purpose, which identify even the smallest tolerances – sounding the alarm in the event of excessive deviations. For example, at Protolabs, a specialist in the production of prototypes, 3D laser scanning technology and coordinate measuring machines can be used for this purpose, if required. With coordinate measuring machines, the physical geometry of an object can be precisely calculated by a sensor detecting points on the surface along three spatial axes. The volumetric accuracy here is (2.1 + 0.4 l/100) µm. With 3D laser scanning technology, the workpiece is scanned with a laser and compared directly with the CAD file used. The accuracy here is 0.01 mm at a sampling rate of 32,000 measurements per second. Think freely Rapid prototype production is increasingly vital. Ideas can go from brand new to essential for an entire industry within days. AM already provides cross-industry support in this area and can help in unlikely places by quickly providing prototypes. Whether for individual parts for use in essential goods or valves for emergency ventilators, AM allows the imagination of designers to realise the previously impossible. And this is exactly what the digital transformation is all about: to be able to think freely in every possible direction. Find out more at protolabs.co.uk

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THE NEWS IN NUMBERS The biggest stories in engineering in numbers

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1.6m

$2.6bn

10kW

9,000

Tonnes of carbon dioxide could be saved by the world’s largest concentrated solar plant, being built in Dubai

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Of energy could be produced by nuclear fission reactors being considered for a human base on the Moon

3,000GWh

Of lithium batteries a year could be produced by Britain’s first gigafactory, being planned by AMTE Power and Britishvolt

Paid to SpaceX by NASA for developing the Crew Dragon, which had its first manned test in May

Job cuts planned at Rolls-Royce owing to the coronavirus pandemic

£16.2bn

Net worth of engineer Sir James Dyson, now Britain’s – and Singapore’s – richest man

186 miles

Length of road being upgraded in the Birmingham area to enable testing of autonomous vehicles

£5bn

Cost of the Galileo satellite navigation project, a European alternative to GPS, which could be scrapped

26%

Drop in carbon emissions in some countries as a result of Covid-19 lockdown measures

A HISTORY OF ENGINEERING IN 100 OBJEC TS

STEPHENSON’S RAILWAY PASS Free train travel… if you are George Stephenson. This pass is one of six similar tokens held within the IMechE’s archive collection. Tokens such as these were presented by a company to an individual and entitled the holder to free travel on that company’s rail services. The tokens in our collection were all

presented to George Stephenson, many by virtue of his involvement with the railway company through serving positions such as director, engineerin-chief and civil engineer. As well as this pass from the Whitehaven Junction Railway (for which Stephenson was the engineer-in-chief) we also hold passes

presented by the following companies: the Yarmouth and Norwich Railway, the Eastern Counties Railway, the Leicester and Swannington Railway, the Midland Counties Railway and the Grand Junction Railway. Dating from the 1830s and 1840s, the tokens signify the boom of small private rail companies.

l The tokens have been

digitised and 3D versions of them can be viewed at: https://archives.imeche. org/archive/artefacts

Professional Engineering • www.imeche.org

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OUR PLAN FOR DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION

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The IMechE is developing a strategy to make the organisation more diverse and inclusive INSTITUTION UPDATE

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The Institution is developing a Diversity and Inclusion strategy as part of a longerterm goal to enhance its activities for staff and members globally, with the aim of bringing about positive change and greater effectiveness. Dr Mark McBride-Wright from EqualEngineers was appointed to work with the Institution’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee to help develop and deliver the Institution’s D&I strategy over the next three months. Mark has considerable expertise in working with leading engineering organisations who are keen to ensure the profession attracts and retains people from diverse backgrounds and we are pleased to have him on board. “I am delighted that IMechE is working with EqualEngineers to continue our work in the diversity and inclusion arena which we hope will cultivate a vision and sense of belonging for all stakeholders of the Institution,” says Joanna Horton, director of member operations. “We need to ensure all people with the requisite skills and experience feel the engineering profession is open to them, whatever their background.”

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Clear action plan

The initiative launched in June and covers: l Communicating and discussing issues around diversity and inclusion with members and staff of the Institution and the wider community. l Developing a report outlining the D&I strategy for the short term and long term (three to five years) covering IMechE employees, members and volunteers globally. l An action plan with clearly marked priorities and appropriate next steps. l Defined Diversity KPIs linked to the IMechE operating plan.

The first stage of the project is now complete. Twelve focus group discussions with members, volunteers and employees took place in June. We had a good mix of people from different backgrounds and members that have never engaged with the IMechE before. The discussion was framed around three questions Where are we now? Where do we want to go? How are we getting there? All the sessions were very positive and supported the belief that change is going to

happen and there was a good discussion on what needs to change and improve. Feedback will be collated into a set of recommendations that will feed into the overall D&I strategy and support the implementation of the recommendations from the independent reviews linked to Governance, Code of Conduct as well as value and behaviours. We are on a journey, and there is still much to do. Contact us at diversity@imeche.org Professional Engineering • www.imeche.org

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YOUR VOICE

We want to hear from you. Get in touch by email at profeng@thinkpublishing.co.uk or tweet us @ProfEng

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Why we need STEM Ambassadors now more than ever

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At this difficult coronavirus time we are all grateful for those who are looking after us. So many doctors, nurses, carers, lab technicians, police, fire-crew, paramedics. But all depend upon science, technology, engineering and maths, STEM. STEM is a vital part of conquering coronavirus and also in the recovery of the economy after the pandemic has ended.As members we are all involved in some part of the recovery. But we will all get old and retire so we need to encourage the young to take up a STEM career to continue the advances we have helped to achieve. Many thousands of members are STEM Ambassadors, but we need many, many more to help us in schools and colleges. You can help in many ways, by: attending careers fairs; helping with mock interviews; visiting STEM clubs for a few sessions; giving talks on your career, achievements or on hot topics like the environment; or by developing pupil challenges. At this difficult time you can also help to encourage children to study at home, guide them to the teaching websites, set them challenges that will stretch their knowledge, publish your stories, etc. You can also use social media to do this. You could use the Institution’s web pages and social media accounts, STEM Learning, teachers’ forums, the sites used by young people, etc. But always adhering to the Institution’s policies and guidelines for keeping vulnerable people safe, especially from abuse. I strongly recommend that members apply to become STEM Ambassadors so that their motives are verified and clear to all. Please help us to help the next generation succeed. Derrick Willer MBE

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Don’t raise this sunshade

I must disagree with Anthony Best regarding the desirability of using dust from an asteroid to shield the Earth from solar radiation to reduce global warming (Your Voice, Professional Engineering No 2, 2020). Global warming is the result of anthropogenic CO2 emissions accumulating in the atmosphere, and the only long-term option is to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to as close to zero as possible. Solar irradiance is relatively stable (0.1% variation over a solar cycle) and contributes little to the present (or recent past) rise in the global average surface temperature. Best states that emissions reduction policies are having little effect on global warming; that may be because there have been no global reductions in emissions. From 2009 to 2018 global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels increased by 14% (2% from 2017 to 2018). The UK and many western countries

have achieved some reductions, mainly by closing coal-fired power stations and exporting their industries to China, India and other developing countries. Although a ‘sunshade’ would help alleviate global warming, its development would take years to achieve and would drain resources from the primary task of reducing emissions. Also, it would not reduce the acidification that is occurring as excess CO2 dissolves in the oceans. Many oceanographers believe this is already causing problems for phytoplankton and other aquatic species that are at the base of the food chain. Robin Trow, Snodland, Kent

‘Although a “sunshade” would help alleviate global warming, its development would take years to achieve and would drain resources from the primary task of reducing emissions’

Drax has always been a leader

The introductory words of the article “Capture that carbon” are a disgrace (Professional Engineering No 2, 2020). When Drax power station was built it was lauded in the pages of our Institution’s then magazine as the biggest, most advanced coal-fired power station in western Europe. As a fairly new member at the time I too felt great pride in this British achievement. I am sure that many, if not most, members felt the same way. A notable feature was the bringing of coal underground from the Selby coalfield direct into the station, without the cost or the associated pollution of surface transport by road or train. It so happens that about 20 years later I visited Drax as part of an IT management project and they were still keeping up to date by installing exhaust gas scrubbers. Probably you are all too young to remember these things, whereas I’ve been retired for over 10 years. However, just a Professional Engineering • www.imeche.org

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little research effort on your part would have enabled a positive article about a station that was the biggest and best of its day still seeking to be ahead of the game. Instead you insult your fellow engineers as builders of “western Europe’s most polluting coal-fired power station”. By the way I used to design dieselengined HGVs. Should I hang my head in shame? Philip Wedgwood, Ramsey, Isle of Man

Practical skills are still essential ART PRODUCTION CLIENT

The leading headline on the front cover of our latest magazine (Professional Engineering No 3, 2020) reminded me that throughout my long career I was always grateful that the person who first designed the drawing board got it exactly right first time; otherwise, he/she would never have had anything to go back to! Reading the subsequent article on NMITE also reminded me of starting my engineering apprenticeship in 1955 with two years “on the job training” working alongside skilled craftsmen, so that when I moved on into engineering design I carried with me the sights, sounds, feel, and distinctive smells of fabrication, welding, foundry, pattern shop, machine and erecting shops, which always kept my feet firmly grounded in transforming ideas into practical workable reality. It was good to read about the NMITE initiative, helping to encourage a new generation of engineers with modernday skills to meet the challenges of our changing world, as evidenced in this month’s leading articles in connection with this dreadful virus. Harvey Holmes, Billingshurst, West Sussex

The game’s up

Eur Ing Gareth Halliwell reckons that the word circle in his newspaper signalled the reduction of engineers to the status of skilled labourers (Your Voice, Professional Engineering No 2, 2020). For me, this was reached with the report that British Gas was asking the Oxford English Dictionary to remove the term ‘gasman’ and replace it with ‘gas engineer’. Whilst applauding their attempt to remove sexist bias, if one of our largest engineering employers is so ignorant about the status of professional engineers then the game is truly up. Peter Finch

Steam pioneer remembered

Early last year, you carried a letter which mentioned an appeal in respect of a memorial to Denis Papin FRS, the 17th-century French steam pioneer who invented the ‘pressure cooker’ and who was also the first man to enable a piston to move by steam in a tube. As a result of the funding appeal, the memorial was unveiled under the west Entente cordiale: Derek Rayner and Jean-Paul tower of St Bride’s Church, Fleet Street, Nicolas unveil the Papin memorial plaque London in February. This location was chosen since it’s part of the church which was there at the time when Papin was alive and it’s through which many of today’s visitors pass when visiting the famous church. It was believed for a long time that Papin died a pauper between 1712 and 1714 and that he’d been buried in an unknown grave. However, steam enthusiast Martin Clarke, an expat now resident in France, discovered the record of Papin’s death in the recently digitised ledger of St Bride’s Burrials [sic] and Marriages. This indicated he was buried in the Lower Ground cemetery on 26 August 1713. This location no longer exists, having been swept away by progress, and so the choice of a suitable place beneath the church’s west tower was very appropriate. The unveiling ceremony was performed by IMechE member Derek Rayner of Old Glory magazine, assisted by Jean-Paul Nicolas, secretary of the Circuit Vapeur Denis Papin, Chitenay, in France. The memorial was dedicated by the Rev Alison Joyce, rector of St Bride’s, and those also in attendance included Martin Clarke plus invited guests from France – mayors from towns associated with Papin – Rupert Baker of the Royal Society and the sculptor, Tom Young. Derek Rayner, York

Time to back carbon capture

The piece about carbon capture and storage (CCS) is timely (“Capture that carbon,” Professional Engineering No 2, 2020). The authorities have repeatedly blown hot and cold about this technology, while the green lobby has often dismissed it as a means of avoiding the switch to renewable energy. Both have failed to understand or been reluctant to acknowledge the enormous scale of energy systems and, therefore, the magnitude of the transformation required. A senior official at the then Department of Energy and Climate Change assured me in 2011 that we would have the first new nuclear power station online by April 2018. My reply that the history of building nuclear power plants and the lack of the necessary skills meant that it was far more likely to be at least 2020 before there would

‘Carbon capture and storage has suffered in accordance with the well-established pattern. It is high time its potential were established’

be any new nuclear generation was met with a look of withering scorn. It has been a deeply seated failure of our governmental system throughout many decades to understand science and engineering. It is interesting that the current health crisis has suddenly brought scientific expertise into the forefront of government. But CCS has suffered in accordance with the well-established pattern. It is high time its potential were established for all the reasons given in your article. David Odling, Altrincham

Lead the charge on EV charging Should we not be developing a national electric vehicle charging infrastructure? In southern Warwickshire, there are several locations for electric vehicle charging but there is a problem; most are not smart charging points and there are mainly two charging points at each location. Surely locations will need MANY charging points, particularly at motorway service stations, as few drivers will want to wait on a long queue to recharge. Ken McDougall, Warwickshire

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5G, 1

The fifth generation of mobile internet is expected to transform the way we live and work. For engineers it will mean new opportunities and endless possibilities. By Rich McEachran

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30 OCTOBER 2020 Join Professional Engineering and the IMechE for EngRec Live 2020 a virtual careers fair for engineers, students and recent graduates. Who will be attending? Major employers, engineering consultancies, OEMs, universities, institutions and government agencies

BOOK YOUR PLACE NOW!

Connect with employers

l Get your CV in front of engineering recruitment leaders l Learn about career opportunities l Attend seminars/talks and Q&A sessions with key industry leaders l Apply for jobs on the day

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rones inspecting bridges, wind turbines and tunnels were once a flight of fancy for the engineering sector, but now they’re helping the profession to reach new heights. “You’ve got moving parts and you can be surrounded by hazardous materials and machinery. If the risk of sending someone up scaffolding or underground to inspect the tiniest of cracks can be offset by technology, then this can only be a good thing,” says Tariq Ahmed, a mechanical engineer who has worked on several large infrastructure projects in the UK and the Middle East. A drone flown close to a structure will use a combination of high-resolution photography and light detection and ranging (lidar) and thermal detection instruments to spot erosion, cracks in pipes and hidden water leaks. While this is safer than sending an engineer to carry out an inspection, there can be delays in the transmission of the data. “Most drones use SD cards. Generally, the drone operator will have to upload it to cloud software where technicians and engineers can then access the data remotely, so they can analyse it and make the necessary maintenance decisions. This could take 5 to 10 minutes or it could take 30 to 45 minutes, it depends on how much footage you’ve got,“ says Ahmed. “But when you’re talking about structural safety, you’d rather there wasn’t any delay at all.” Step forward 5G. The successor to 4G is expected to give rise to a swathe of connected drones that will be able to transmit data and high-definition footage wirelessly in a matter of single-digit milliseconds. Or at least that’s the hope. In reality, it may be some time before drones are flown on cellular networks. According to the mobile telecommunications trade body, the GSM Association, regulators will need to provide unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with access to spectrum. Licensing mobile spectrum, it argues, will help to support connectivity as UAV usage levels increase. There’s also the issue of consistency. A paper by Sebastian Euler, a researcher at Ericsson, shows that cellular networks can safely support the connectivity of UAVs up to an altitude of around 120m. However, a group of researchers from the University of Klagenfurt, Austria, and Lakeside Labs have found that a 5G connection will often drop to 4G and that upload speeds weren’t always faster on 5G. Presenting

their findings in a paper published in April, they concluded that the drop off in signal strength happened more frequently at 100m than at 30m. To put this into context, if an engineering team were to fly a drone on a 5G cellular network tomorrow to transmit live footage of a bridge being built, then they’d likely experience low transfer rates – far from ideal. The good news is that, as 5G is deployed more widely, the upgrades to the infrastructure that are required will iron out any problems due to latency.

New opportunities

The fifth generation of mobile internet connectivity has been in the news a fair bit. Unfortunately, this has less to do with any excitement surrounding the technology and more to do with health concerns. To cope with the demand for 5G and to deliver a consistent and strong signal, more base stations and mobile masts will have to be installed. Conspiracy theorists are convinced that the radiation emitted by 5G technology is accelerating the spread of the Covid-19 virus and a number of stations and masts have been going up in flames as a result. Media regulator Ofcom has carried out safety tests in the UK that show that

5G base stations’ emissions are just “tiny fractions” of the level that’s deemed safe. The conspiracy theories detract from the technology’s real potential: that it will improve all parts of life and work, from making kitchen gadgets smarter to eliminating the lag when gaming online to optimising production of goods in factories. “5G is going to help mould a new era of internet-enabled intelligence, leaving no product or industry untouched. The higher bandwidth and low latency will transform existing applications and is likely to create new ones that we haven’t yet imagined,” says Shawn Carpenter, senior product manager at Ansys, a provider of engineering simulation and 3D design software. Carpenter points towards the automotive industry as one of the likely key beneficiaries of 5G. “Existing networks aren’t sufficient,

The higher bandwidth and low latency will transform existing applications and is likely to create new ones that we haven’t yet imagined Professional Engineering • www.imeche.org

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especially for wide-scale roll-out of vehicleto-vehicle [and vehicle-to-infrastructure] communication,” says Carpenter. “Exchanging data en route and at speed demands connectivity more advanced than 4G can cope with.” With 4G, the latency tends to run to between 20 and 50 milliseconds; with 5G the time it takes for a data signal to be sent and then arrive is around 10 milliseconds and, sometimes, as quick as one millisecond. With some consumer applications, the change in latency might be indistinguishable, but in mission-critical situations – such as an autonomous vehicle braking in the event of an accident – every millisecond makes a difference. As 5G is rolled out, Carpenter expects to see development of vehicle-related innovations ramp up, which will create new opportunities for engineers. Last year, Uber partnered with mobile network provider AT&T to explore how 5G can help turn the concept of a flying taxi from a pie in the sky to a tangible possibility. Given the safety concerns about autonomous and futuristic vehicles, 5G will have to pass stringent testing and validation, though. “The speed and effectiveness of this testing and validation will be key to companies and their engineers getting the edge,” argues Carpenter. Beyond the automotive industry, 5G will enable engineers to develop faster and smarter devices for other professions, including dentists and surgeons. For example, the healthcare industry will be able to carry out more intricate operations using 5G-powered haptic gloves without a surgeon needing to be in the theatre – the gloves would be connected to a robotic intermediary.

Remote operations

Super-fast data connections and download speeds and reduced latency are a major part of the allure of 5G, but there’s more to the technology than this. It’ll support companies and engineering teams to collaborate more flexibly. “When you’ve got half your team in an office and the other half off-site, communication is definitely a headache. Yes, you can use messaging channels like Slack, but you often need to share files either by cloud software or email,” says Ahmed. “The process is clunky and inefficient. Sometimes it feels like you’re not operating at your full capacity.” Ahmed is convinced that, once 5G

impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the changes it’s bringing about. These sectors will already be leveraging new ways of working and will be re-adapting in order to meet anticipated, increased demand [on operations] in the future,” he says.

Delivering on promises

has been rolled out, companies and engineering teams will no longer be held back. Instantaneous access to data and information will mean greater collaboration and better decision-making. Marek Suchocki, Autodesk’s infrastructure industry engagement lead, agrees. He cites the example of building information modelling (BIM) and says that, with many stakeholders involved in a construction project, 5G will be able to streamline the capturing and sharing of data.

Better design decisions

Combined with sensors, artificial intelligence, machine learning and cloud computing, 5G-powered BIM promises to be able to improve project delivery and design decisions being made, reducing the likelihood of engineering faults occurring and material being wasted. Stakeholders will be able to collaborate on, and interact with, a model – potentially in virtual reality – in real time without needing to be in the same room. Suchocki adds that, given the coronavirus situation, companies in the architecture, engineering and construction sectors should be well prepared for the remote working opportunities 5G will present once it has been rolled out. “The world is learning to adapt to the

5G might only hit its peak in 2038. Identifying how to exploit the technology to maximise the benefits might be the biggest challenge

While there has arguably never been a time like the present for companies to realise the potential of remote working, they shouldn’t get ahead of themselves. With many 5G auctions – their purpose is to sell off spectrum to mobile operators – still to take place, it will be a few years before 5G is widely available around the world. Some auctions in Europe have even been delayed owing to Covid-19, while Vodafone in the UK asked the government to cancel an upcoming auction and split the spectrum between mobile network operators at a cheaper rate. This, it argued, would help the networks to cope with the unprecedented demand being placed on them by millions working from home. Even once spectrum has been allocated, designers and engineers will need to ensure that 5G can live up to its hype. Carpenter believes that multiphysics simulation of 5G infrastructure will be key to this, especially addressing early design exploration challenges. “Simulating 5G radio and related technologies by analysing electromagnetics, semiconductors and electronics cooling is a critical enabler,” says Carpenter. “By adopting multiphysics simulation, you can reduce the time it takes to develop and deploy the kind of 5G infrastructure, including base station antennas, that will be needed.” Tools, such as simulation-based digital twins, he adds, will be crucial in providing engineers with operational insight, reducing the number of maintenance events and helping 5G infrastructure to deliver a consistent signal. Although 5G is only in its infancy, research is already under way in China into the sixth generation of mobile internet connectivity. It’s tipped to be launched commercially in 2030, but it could be that many of the endless possibilities of 5G won’t have been realised until towards the end of the next decade. “The University of Surrey has forecast that 5G might only hit its peak in 2038, so there’s plenty of time to explore its potential,” says Suchocki. “Identifying how to exploit the technology to maximise the benefits might be the biggest challenge.” Professional Engineering • www.imeche.org

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How do you test, trial and introduce such transformative technology? This testbed is leading the pack. By Joseph Flaig

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mid the gentle country lanes of rural Bedfordshire lie some much more challenging tracks. Alpine routes wind through trees and over hills. Rough off-road sections test the durability of even the toughest vehicles. This is not the Center Parcs holiday village – that is just to the south – but Millbrook Proving Ground, the UK’s premier automotive test facility. Established in the mid-1960s by General Motors, the centre has 70km of track, with every type of surface imaginable. The hilly and off-road sections join to a vast, high-speed loop to put vehicles through their paces. And now, standing at the side of the track, are 59 masts beaming ultra-low latency 5G mobile data across the site, fed by 19km of fibre. The infrastructure is part of the AutoAir 5G testbed, a project aiming to develop the mobile data technology and explore its applications for the automotive sector and beyond. The next-generation network will enable huge advances in vehicle connectivity and autonomy, but – as with 4G – its full capabilities will not be reached for years. Some of its ultimate applications

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are not even at the drawing board stage, says AutoAir project director Peter Claydon, but engineers from the testbed and its customers are starting to tap that boundless potential. This is where the future of 5G could be determined.

‘Not the usual suspects’ The AutoAir project is led by two Peters – Claydon, a radio engineer involved in wireless infrastructure since the start of 3G, and Stoker, Millbrook’s chief engineer for connected and autonomous vehicles. The Airspan Networks-led testbed launched in February 2019, less than a year after receiving an initial year’s funding of £7m. It joined the controlled urban testbed for connected and autonomous vehicles at Millbrook, which started in 2017 and saw major investment in facilities, including a large simulation suite. Although the urban testbed included ‘ideas’ for connectivity, they were not realised until the start of the 5G testbed. Airspan provided the infrastructure, installing a hyper-dense network across the site that is ‘saturated’ with small cells.

The ultra-reliable, low-latency, highspeed network has attracted many different customers, who often visit for testing, leave to develop new iterations and then return. “They’re not the usual suspects, the vehicle makers at this point,” says Stoker. “We tend to find that we’re dealing with software developers, AI authors, ‘machine learnists’… who might not necessarily have a great grasp in automotive engineering as a background, so we have to help them get on the tracks.” Engineers have eagerly embraced the efficiency advantages on offer. Vehicles transmit near-instantaneous data from the track, enabling immediate analysis. Issues are solved on the fly, and the timeframe for test reports is massively shortened. This way of working will soon transfer to manufacturers and regulators, letting them monitor real-world data to improve vehicles and traffic systems.

Fast data, fast cars One of the testbed’s most impressive features was instigated by consortium partner Blu Wireless, which came to Stoker with a challenge: “What we’d like to do is

MILLBROOK, 1 The AutoAir network provides ultra-fast download speeds to high-performance cars racing around the Millbrook track

Autonomy means autonomy. 5G could bring extra safety, security and continuous improvements, however, as well as infotainment for passengers achieve a download speed of 1 gigabit per second (Gbps) at 160.” Stoker says: “Now, being a dyed-in-thewool car guy, I would immediately convert 160 to 100mph, because people these days talk in kilometres. But no, it was 160mph.” The infrastructure was installed and McLaren supplied the car, which was driven around the Millbrook loop to enable such high speeds for a sustained period. The 1Gbps challenge was a success, and one immediate beneficiary is the rail sector. “One of the big problems with communicating with trains is handing over from one access point to the next,” says Claydon. Infrastructure is expensive, so might only be installed over one mile – not significant on a typical railway line. If there are any issues with the transmitters, the window for testing becomes even tighter. At Millbrook, on the other hand, “you can drive around and around the high-speed bowl as many times as you like. You can do a 100-mile ‘train journey’ if you want,” says Claydon. After proving that the technology can work, Blu Wireless is now trialling it with First Group trains between Clapham Junction and Basingstoke.

Engineers make changes on the fly over the high-speed network

The high-speed connectivity also enabled a trial with the East of England NHS, which installed high-quality video cameras on its ambulances for tests at Millbrook. The vehicles relayed live video to a hospital consultant at a remote site, enabling diagnosis and prescription of medicines. Time is of the essence with medical conditions such as strokes, so the system could save lives. Such connectivity will be available relatively soon, but what comes after could have an even more significant impact on the future of transport – autonomy. Just six days before the launch of the

5G testbed in February 2019, autonomous vehicles made national headlines after a government announcement. “The UK has a rich heritage in automotive development and manufacturing, with automated and electric vehicles set to transform the way we all live our lives,” said the then automotive minister Richard Harrington. “We need to ensure we take the public with us as we move towards having self-driving cars on our roads by 2021.”

Moving target With that target now just months away, it seems very unlikely to be met. “It’s a bit further down the road, I think, than everybody initially expected,” says Stoker. Companies working at Millbrook are nonetheless at the leading edge, aided by the world-leading connectivity on offer. Of course, autonomy means autonomy – self-driving cars must control themselves and interact with other vehicles without reliance on external technology. 5G could bring extra safety, security and continuous improvements, however, as well as ‘infotainment’ for passengers. Professional Engineering • www.imeche.org

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High-speed data will augment vehicles’ sensors. An autonomous car needs to know for itself if the vehicle in front of it has stopped, but it will ‘see around corners’ thanks to vehicle-to-vehicle and mast-to-vehicle messages arriving in mere milliseconds, leaving plenty of time for braking distance even if a road blockage is out of sight. Another potential application could be tele-operation of driverless cars in the event of an accident or sensor failure, especially if the vehicle has no safety driver – or even, one day, no steering wheel. Start-up Imperium Drive is testing the technology at Millbrook, remotely controlling cars over the network from hundreds of metres away. The instantaneous analysis already enjoyed by engineers at Millbrook will transfer to regulators, letting them keep a close eye and collect data from incidents. 5G connectivity will also enable 4K video transfer between autonomous vehicles, such as tightly-packed lorries in autonomous ‘platoons’ to reduce fuel use.

The 70km Millbrook track has been fitted out for 5G 1 59

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Once we get some more fertile imaginations on it, it’s just boundless really. We haven’t even discovered 1% of what we can do

Front of the pack

With so many applications in transport and beyond, the 5G work at Millbrook will inform governments and operators on best practice and help secure the UK as a world leader. It is difficult to overstate the scale of a nationwide roll-out. 5G waves have higher ‘path loss’ than other radio waves and so do not travel as far, requiring a denser network of transmitters. Tricks practised at Millbrook will make it more efficient, however. Thanks to work by consortium member Telefonica O2, the testbed network is one of the first to trial ‘slicing’ and ‘neutral hosting’ of masts, allowing multiple operators to share one set of hardware – unlike 4G, where each operator needs a mast. Mobile companies, transport authorities and car manufacturers could each pay for a portion of infrastructure in future. Lower frequencies are also likely to be ‘refarmed’ as 5G frequencies. Millbrook has also shown how seemingly small changes can have a big effect. Blu Wireless boosted the network frequency from 60GHz to 70GHz, to prevent oxygen absorbing too much of the signal. Doing so doubled the range. That is “very significant,” says Stoker. “You could, in theory, halve the infrastructure… if you scale that up to national coverage, by adjusting the

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Peter Claydon (top) and Peter Stoker lead the 5G testbed at Millbrook

frequency in which all this operates, you can make massive savings.”

‘Nobody gets hurt’

As the two Peters talk from home during the coronavirus lockdown, 5G is in the news for less positive reasons. New masts are smouldering around the country, following arson attacks linked to the dangerous and untrue conspiracy blaming the technology for Covid-19. The people complaining will probably stop when they experience the benefits, says Claydon – and even the experts don’t know all of them. Future work at Millbrook holds many

exciting possibilities, and Stoker is eager to get back to the track after lockdown. He brings up something he would “love” to try, called ‘augmented testing’. “If you have a vehicle that’s learning how to deal with potential collision scenarios, the last thing you want to do is to have a real truck come around a blind bend in front of it. “What I’d rather do is do the whole scenario in simulation first… with a virtual vehicle, a virtual truck and a virtual track. Nobody gets hurt, no metal gets bent.” After proving the collision avoidance on the virtual vehicle, developers could replicate the scenario with a real vehicle on track – but still using a virtual truck, simulated in real time over the network. The virtual and real scenarios could then be correlated to improve the system further. This innovative idea is a perfect example of the technology’s transformative potential. “We haven’t even started to scratch the surface of what’s possible,” says Stoker. “The tests and trials that we are doing illustrate the capabilities, but, once we get some more fertile imaginations on it, it’s just boundless really. We haven’t even discovered 1% of what we can do.” Professional Engineering • www.imeche.org

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There’s some advanced engineering in NASA’s latest Mars rover, which will set out to investigate the planet’s geology. By Jennifer Johnson

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MARS, 1 NASA/JPL-CALTECH

here is almost certainly no life on Mars – at least not life as most sci-fi fans would envision it. Humanity’s understanding of the red planet has advanced significantly since Sojourner, the first of NASA’s robotic exploration rovers, touched down there in 1997. Images captured before the landing indicated that there weren’t any little grey humanoids residing on the Martian surface. Upon closer inspection, nor did there even appear to be any less-complex creatures scurrying around. But there is some

evidence to suggest that there were wet, Earth-like conditions on Mars billions of years ago. Such climates may have persisted long enough to support the development of microbial life. If rovers were to unearth tiny fossils, or even traces of cells preserved in rocks, we could know that there was once other life in the universe. Humans have wondered about the existence of extraterrestrials for as long as we’ve observed the night sky. Finding traces of a Martian microorganism could satisfy this most intrinsic of

NASA's Perseverance rover will trek across Mars, surveying the surface and collecting geological samples

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team had it right and we didn’t repeat their engineering. It’s a case of the better the devil you know. We know there are some problems with Curiosity, we know there are inefficiencies, but we know how to work with those.”

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curiosities. However, there are other, more strategic, reasons for dispatching robotic ambassadors to visit our planetary neighbour. Chief among them is to learn more about its atmosphere and geology so that we can prepare for eventual human exploration – and, with any luck, colonisation.

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Trialling new technologies

In July, NASA will send its fifth rover, the car-sized Perseverance, to survey the state of the red planet. The mission will introduce a new drill that can collect and store samples of rocks and soils and stash them aside in a cache on the Martian surface. A future mission could subsequently ferry these specimens back to Earth for further analysis. The rover will also trial and demonstrate new technologies that could potentially be of use for future explorers, be they humans or robots. Perseverance will embark on its journey equipped with seven instruments in total, among them an advanced pair of “eyes” for surveying the Martian surface and a suite of environmental sensors. Two zoomable cameras, known as Mastcam-Z, mounted on the rover’s “head”, will provide key visual data to allow scientists to select which rocks to study. The rover’s operators – who pre-plan each driving route and movement of its robotic arm – will view these stereo images through 3D goggles that will let them survey the Martian topography in detail. The rover will also play host to the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilisation Experiment (MOXIE), a demonstration

project that aims to produce oxygen from Martian atmospheric CO2. If it’s successful, MOXIE’s technology could one day be used by astronauts on Mars to burn rocket fuel for the journey home to Earth. While much of Perseverance’s scientific hardware is new and novel, its fundamental design owes a lot to its predecessor: the Curiosity rover, launched in 2011. At roughly 10 feet long, 9 feet wide and 7 feet tall, the new vehicle shares the approximate dimensions of its older counterpart, although, at 1,025kg, Perseverance is 126kg heavier than Curiosity. “We didn’t make incremental enhancements over Curiosity,” Rich Rieber, the lead mobility systems engineer for NASA’s Mars 2020 mission, told Professional Engineering. “We assumed the

While the rover is still operational and venturing around the planet long after the end of its two-year mission, it’s doing so atop some heavily rock-damaged wheels. NASA has known about these defects for several years, as Curiosity’s onboard cameras illustrated progression from dents to holes and cracks in the treads. Given Perseverance’s extra weight, Rieber and his colleagues realised its wheels would need a radical overhaul to make them more robust. They started the redesign process by 3D printing around 70 different tyre designs, each with different tread (or grouser) properties. It took roughly a year and a half for engineers to figure out the optimum tread configuration: 48 gently curved grousers in place of Curiosity’s 24 chevronpatterned ones. Next, the prototypes had to undergo rigorous durability testing. The six wheels now fixed on Perseverance – and bound for Mars – are made of flightgrade aluminium and measure 52.5cm in diameter. “When the Curiosity team discovered the wheels were having problems, they assembled what we call a Tiger Team to study that problem,” says Rieber. “I’m proud to say that if you go back to the original parameters of damage that the Tiger Team set out for Curiosity, our wheels were tested over 60km and did not

How NASA improved on Curiosity with the Mars 2020 Rover

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Every mechanical assembly that will make it to Mars has been tested in a thermal vacuum chamber in extreme hot and cold conditions

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could be and we evaluate that wheel box for safety.” While each piece of Perseverance’s software and hardware has undergone a thorough series of tests here on Earth, there will always be some unknown factors lurking on the Martian surface. At this point, Rieber isn’t concerned about the rover’s physical ability to withstand the alien environment so much as its inbuilt algorithms’ capacity to respond to it. Every mechanical assembly that will make it to Mars has been tested in a thermal vacuum chamber in extreme hot and cold conditions. Components have also undergone atmospheric pressure tests and various worst-case structural experiments. A replica of the chassis, for instance, was placed in a centrifuge and subjected to extreme G-forces as part of its development. However, the rover’s automatic navigation algorithms will only face their greatest trial once the mission is already under way.

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Engineering staff look on as crane lifts rocket-powered descent stage away from the Mars rover after a test

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Overly conservative?

sustain a bit of damage per that definition. Looking at a graph that has no data on it is extremely boring, so we actually had to change the definition so we had something to measure.”

NASA/JPL-CALTECH

Navigation system

Another of Curiosity’s quirks is its slightly overcautious autonomous navigation system. If, for instance, the rover sees two rocks that it identifies as perilous, it will only choose to move between them if it has more than adequate space. Algorithms allow the robotic explorer to analyse the images it captures during a drive to

calculate a safe passage for itself. This means that it can rove around beyond the area that human route planners on Earth have evaluated ahead of time. “Curiosity’s designers treated the rover as a disc and created a 2.5m radius around the rover. That’s a 5m diameter circle in which there can be no hazards. That’s very conservative,” Rieber says. “We’ve overhauled our algorithm so it’s more aggressive compared to Curiosity. We’re estimating where each wheel will be and we have the rover think of each wheel as a box. At every 20cm interval along a potential drive arc, we evaluate where each wheel

“We can’t perfectly recreate the Martian environment. We don’t have orbital imagery that can resolve 10-20cm sized rocks, so we don’t know where all the rocks are,” Rieber says. “We can’t iterate across an infinite amount of terrain types or terrain shape. We just need to develop a bunch of evidence that makes us feel confident in the algorithm. We know it’s going to be safe, the issue is whether it’s overly conservative in determining that something is unsafe.” For now, the images and specimens captured by NASA’s rovers are the closest humans can get to touching Martian soil. With each new mission to the red planet, we learn more about its austere and hostile landscape. Just a few decades ago, the prospect of sending a robot to Mars to act as a proxy scientist would have seemed unthinkable. With the help of Perseverance and its predecessors, we can now imagine a day when there is (human) life on Mars. Professional Engineering • www.imeche.org

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CHANGING GEAR Incoming IMechE president Terry Spall has big plans for his year in office

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erry Spall’s career in engineering began in the late 1970s, with an apprenticeship with Leyland Truck and Bus. He has spent the past 25 years working for MIRA in a variety of posts, including playing a leading role in the creation and delivery of the £300m MIRA Technology Park, which was awarded the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in 2018. Spall’s long association with the IMechE began with the regional teams in the North West and Birmingham through their Automotive Division Centres. He progressed to be chair of the Automobile Division Board in 2007, and was a member of the Trustee Board between 2009 and 2014. He has played a key role in the development of Formula Student over the past two decades, including being its chief judge and part of the core team that created the new FS-AI competition. In May, he began his term as president of the IMechE – and recently he spoke to Professional Engineering about his plans for the year ahead.

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One of your first challenges is to implement the proposals that come out of the ongoing governance and finance reviews – how big an effect will they have on the Institution?

“It will transform the governance of the Institution. The review teams did a very thorough job, analysing thousands of member survey responses on many aspects of governance. Over the last year, I have been leading a team tasked with converting the recommendations into implementable solutions. We are now starting to roll out many of these changes which are designed to transform the Institution, creating a new governance structure that will allow the IMechE to flourish and better serve its members and the wider public for the decades ahead. As president, sadly I will no longer be leading this group but rest assured I will be keeping a close eye on progress and helping them where I can.” What particular areas of engineering would you like to focus on during your term?

“I will be taking a great interest in automotive and in particular future mobility, not just because that’s my home turf, but because of the metamorphosis that is happening right now! The auto sector has always been a massive contributor to the global economy and it is important that we do what we can to ensure it continues to deliver and prosper as it transitions to electrification and automated driving.”

WILL AMLOT

What role can the IMechE play in tackling the skills crisis in engineering?

“I do want to talk about the next generation of people coming through. What, or perhaps who, is going to inspire the next generation and what role should we play in this? How are we going to make sure we are capturing the young people who have the ability and ensuring they have the opportunity to

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become engineers? OK, we’ve got things like Formula Student, but that’s when they’ve already decided to become engineers. Further upstream you’ve got capable young people, who could become really top-notch engineers, but they decide to do something else. I’ll be certainly working with government on this and lots of other like-minded organisations who want to ensure young people who have the ability have the opportunity. It is an amazing profession, full of talented people who deliver world-changing projects and are so often misrepresented and understated.” Could the IMechE be working more closely with government for the good of engineering as a whole?

“I think, although we’re right on the doorstep of Westminster, we’re not close enough to Westminster. We need to be if we’re going to make a difference and really start to promote engineering. With where we are now in the post-Brexit world, it’s like a blank canvas for us to go out there and to really make our case as to what we can do for the country. Once Covid starts to be referred to in the past tense, the government will be focused on how we rebuild our economy. Hopefully there will be a stronger appreciation of the wealthcreation potential of engineers and a realisation of the fact that we’ve got an insufficient number and we need to build a stronger pipeline of talent.”

What’s going to inspire the next generation and what’s our role to play in this? How are we going to make sure we’ve got the best people coming into engineering? What would you like to have accomplished at the end of your year as president?

“I am ambitious by nature but I have also grown to be realistic too. I’d like to think that in a year’s time we will have completed our governance transformation, we will have a vibrant Institution valued by its membership and respected worldwide. A move to realign the Institution to improve member relevance will be very much in evidence. Members will have read about our positive engagements with government. And, despite Covid, I would hope that our financial prudence now will ensure we emerge in good shape. “I suspect the post-Covid world will never be the same as the pre-Covid world and we will have gained a reliance on virtual means of engagement, which is a positive, but I feel there will always be a need for engineers to meet and converse and I hope the Institution is once again fulfilling its purpose in facilitating that by the time I hand over office.”

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30 OCTOBER 2020

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Opportunities for employers to take part in our new virtual careers event for graduate and young engineers

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Join Professional Engineering and the IMechE for EngRec Live 2020 a virtual careers fair for engineers, students and recent graduates Who will be attending? IMechE Student and Young Member network, including STEM and university students, recent graduates and those in the early parts of their careers.

Why should employers take part?

l Real-time interaction with prospective candidates l Opportunities for seminar slots, exhibition stands and branding l Boost your profile within the industry

To find out more about sponsorship opportunities, please do get in touch with us at IMechE@thinkpublishing.co.uk

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PUTTING REFUSE TO USE Jennifer Johnson looks at the pros and cons of burning rubbish

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ENERGY Less than 1% of municipal waste generated in Sweden ends up decomposing in a landfill site. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the country has one of the cleanest records in the world when it comes to this particular metric. The UK and France, by comparison, send a respective 28% and 22% of their collected refuse to landfill sites, where it releases methane and

pollutes groundwater as it breaks down. However, Sweden doesn’t strictly recycle the remaining 99% of its rubbish. It incinerates about half of it to generate heat and power across its 34 waste-toenergy (WtE) plants. Once the combustion process is complete, all that remains is ash, flue gas and heat – which is made into steam that drives a turbine to create electricity. The energy efficiency of modern incinerators

varies widely, with most estimates falling somewhere between 15% and 30%. These figures improve drastically when the residual heat in exhaust steam is captured and distributed to households via district heating networks. More than one million Swedish homes are kept warm thanks to the country’s comprehensive rubbish incineration and heat recovery schemes. In an era when public concern about pollution – especially the plastic variety – Professional Engineering • www.imeche.org

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has reached an all-time high, incinerators appear to provide a practical alternative to landfill disposal. But critics point out that the facilities are no panacea when it comes to the separate, albeit related, fight against climate change. The level of carbon dioxide emitted through the combustion of one tonne of waste depends on what the waste is made up of. If plastics (themselves made from fossil fuels) dominate, then the CO2 emissions from incinerators can be higher than from traditional gas-fired power stations. Some environmental groups are also concerned that excessive use of WtE plants could hamper recycling and circular economy efforts. Sweden and Denmark both invested in incinerators in response to landfilling bans in the early 2000s. At the time, sceptics were concerned that building too many incinerators would incentivise the combustion of recyclable materials. This led countries that had made significant incinerator investments – including Germany and the Netherlands – to import waste from abroad while upping their domestic recycling efforts.

Burning recyclables

“Many reports acknowledge the high percentage of recyclables in the residual waste that is used as a feedstock for incinerators,” said Janek Vähk of the NGO Zero Waste Europe. “Countries burning more than half their waste risk

Supercritical steam

Recyclable materials should be separated out before waste is burnt

contradicting the EU’s new recycling target, which states that 65% of waste must be recycled by 2035. Those countries have to scale down incineration.” However, proponents of waste incineration state that WtE plants can still provide a necessary service to society by treating refuse that cannot be recycled. If all recyclable materials are sorted and separated, incinerators could still be fed by sanitary waste, waste polluted with substances of concern or waste that is degraded after several rounds of recycling. Calculations from the Confederation of European Waste-to-Energy Plants (CEWEP) show that there will still be 140m tonnes of residual waste that will

Low-carbon, low-cost, scaleable and on-demand electricity is one of the great prizes in the race to decarbonise our energy systems. That is one reason why there is growing interest in the supercritical carbon dioxide (s-CO2) cycle. When CO2 is heated above 31.10C at 73.9bar it has the density of a liquid yet retains gas-like characteristics. In its supercritical state, CO2 offers tremendous opportunities for power generation with efficient heat transfer and a substantially smaller-sized power block, while operating at pressures that are much lower than supercritical steam. The process can operate in a closed-cycle formation in which a wide variety of suitable energy sources, such as nuclear or solar, can be used to heat the closedloop CO2 system through a heat exchanger. In the semi-open cycle, fossil fuels are combusted directly with oxygen and excess CO2 is removed from the cycle for sequestration or reuse. Supercritical CO2 also offers potential as a refrigerant. The Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore has been a pioneer in research on s-CO2 power generation and it has developed a state-of-the-art Brayton test loop to address research issues that have been impediments for technology deployment. The challenge for India is to develop a pilot plant and scale it up sufficiently to become an attractive technological option and not wait for demonstration plants elsewhere, for example the NET Power facility in the US. Successful development of the s-CO2 technologies will not only help in reducing the carbon footprint but also to a great extent replace the distributed captive power generator market.

need treatment in 2035. According to CEWEP, the current WtE capacity in Europe is 90m tonnes, meaning that there may be a case for incineration after all. “The waste input into WtE plants is determined by consumer behaviour and local waste management systems,” said Dr Ella Stengler, the managing director of CEWEP. “Proper waste separation at source and efficient collection are the best way to ensure that all the waste that can be recycled from the technical, environmental and economical perspective is recycled and that only waste that does not fit these criteria is delivered to the WtE plants.”

Search for sustainability

In the long term, WtE plants will still have to reckon with the inevitable CO2 emissions that come from combustion, as well as other air pollutants linked to the process of burning waste. Carbon-capture technologies could offer some help in this area. A small handful of WtE facilities have figured out how to capture carbon and offer it to other industries. One plant in the Netherlands started supplying CO2 to greenhouses last year, for instance. Incineration isn’t the only way to produce energy from waste. It’s just the most common method in use today. There’s some evidence that pyrolysis and gasification could treat waste more sustainably – but the byproducts of these processes would also be combusted to create energy. Organic wastes can also be broken down inside an anaerobic digester to create fertilisers and biogas. Professional Engineering • www.imeche.org

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GREAT DISTRIBUTION

Joseph Flaig examines the merits of distributed propulsion for electric flight

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AEROSPACE Much has been written about electric planes, but it remains to be seen whether they will ever be commercially viable. Amid the strain of the Covid-19 pandemic, Rolls-Royce and Airbus cancelled flight tests of their E-Fan X airliner, a promising project that could have provided vital data on issues such as thrust management and electric systems at altitude. The converted BAe-146 plane would initially have had one electric motor alongside three conventional jet engines. Airbus chief technology officer Grazia Vittadini said E-Fan X had “shattered preconceived notions of what is possible in future flight” and had offered insights into hybrid-electric propulsion, other avenues for carbon emission reduction – such as hydrogen – and regulation. “Among the many great achievements from E-Fan X has been the generator – about the same size as a beer keg – but producing a staggering 2.5MW,” said Vittadini’s Rolls-Royce counterpart Paul Stein. “That’s enough power to supply 2,500 homes and fully represents the pioneering spirit on this project.” Electric flight has seen other setbacks

in recent months, such as the battery system fire that damaged the prototype of the Eviation Alice regional aeroplane in January. There is a pressing need for alternative methods of flight, but a single approach has yet to take the lead.

Snowballing improvements

One promising candidate is distributed electric propulsion. Instead of one jet engine on each wing, why not six electric motors, each powering propellers? Electric flight is expected to only be suitable for regional routes without massive improvements to energy storage, so distributed propellers could be a solution. “I think for smaller aeroplanes it is maybe the only means to really make a step in the order of 10% forward,” said Dr Martin Hepperle, researcher at the German Aerospace Centre (DLR). The approach is so promising thanks to the “snowballing” improvements that are possible when flying with many independent propellers, said Hepperle. First off is extra lift. Each propeller leaves a wake behind it as air is accelerated to generate thrust. The wake blows over the wing, generating extra lift. This enables a reduction in wing size,

roughly 10% narrower than would otherwise be required. This in turn brings its own benefits. “This means 10% less friction drag, which is a big amount for aircraft. You are normally talking about half a per cent,” said Hepperle. Thanks to their independent nature, thrust can be distributed between the propellers to provide direction. This allows a size reduction for the vertical tail-plane at the rear, perhaps by half. “This means less drag and weight,” said Hepperle. “It’s like a small snowball rolling down the hill and it gets bigger and bigger. The aim is to find as many positive effects as possible.” Other advantages of distributed propulsion include extra redundancy – and therefore safety in the event of a motor failure – and potentially increased efficiency for each propeller. Of course there are challenges when planning such a radical departure from the status quo. Electric aircraft using distributed systems are not immune to the inherent fire risks, as demonstrated by the blaze that destroyed one of two prototypes of the 36-engine Lilium Jet in February. Noise from the propellers could be another issue. Professional Engineering • www.imeche.org

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KEYS TO PROGRESS

Faster uptake of EVs relies on three key technologies, writes James Scoltock

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Development work centres on batteries, in-wheel motors and P4 electric drives

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There is no stopping the rise of the electric vehicle. There are three technologies that could be key to progress. You can’t mention EVs without discussing batteries. Most electric vehicles rely on one of the many chemistry make-ups that fall under the lithium-ion umbrella and use liquid electrolytes. But though the technology is becoming cheaper per kilowatt hour, able to supply a significant amount of range from a single charge, it’s unlikely to be the technology that truly democratises EVs. The industry is looking at solid-state lithium batteries to achieve that. Solid-state batteries, as the name suggests, use solid electrolytes, which are demonstrably safer and support greater energy density, opening the door to larger capacities and greater vehicle ranges. The technology hasn’t been perfected yet. But work continues, with firms and research bodies looking to develop it.

In-wheel motors

Motor technology is arguably the most mature component of an electric vehicle. Motors are highly efficient, simple, and able to produce vast amounts of power and torque, meaning they can be scaled easily depending on application.

Current logic means they are usually integrated centrally, but there are firms that think that shifting them into the wheels would be a better fit, especially as we look at commercial vehicle applications and move into an age of autonomous vehicles where interior design could be shifted to a more social layout. There are still many arguments as to why in-wheel motors aren’t a good idea, unsprung mass being one, but there are notable benefits.

Steer by wire

Protean Electric has demonstrated the technology’s manoeuvrability advantages, with a system that offers a limitless 360° steering capability. The steering capability is possible because of a rotating interface that sits above the corner module’s main arm. The top of the rotating interface is fixed to the vehicle; the lower interface is fixed to the module arm. The electric steering-by-wire unit is located above the interface, so that the axis points to the bottom of the wheel. From the lower rotational interface,

There are many arguments as to why in-wheel motors aren’t a good idea, unsprung mass being one, but there are notable benefits

control cables for the motor, hydraulics and pneumatic ride height controls are channelled down the module arm and are connected to a second static interface within the hub and into the wheel motor unit. As the arm module rotates through 360°, the full component set rotates with it. As a result, the connections and cables are not twisted or stressed. So in urban environments, for delivery vehicles or autonomous taxi pods, in-wheel electric motors could offer a flexibility that centrally placed motors may not be able to.

P4 electric drives

Cost reduction is incredibly important for OEMs if they want to begin the process of shifting people from combustion engine vehicles to EVs. Using a P4 electric drive architecture could be critical. P4 systems integrate the inverter and electric motor into a compact transmission module that applies torque to the axle, sending it directly to the wheels, and can recover energy directly under braking. The integrated approach saves money, and makes offering either front-wheel drive or all-wheel drive far simpler and more cost-effective. GKN estimates that by 2026 annual production of P4 electric drive systems will reach 13m units, and most of the growth in e-mobility over the next decade will be powered by P4 systems. Professional Engineering • www.imeche.org

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THE INTERNET OF BODIES

Wearable devices are on the up in the fight against disease. By Joseph Flaig BIOMEDICAL

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More of us are using wearable biomedical devices than ever before. According to an Accenture survey, roughly 9% of people in the US used wearables in 2014. That rose to one-third four years later, with the figure surely climbing. Engineering and medical researchers have developed and taken advantage of new technology including stretchable materials, smaller sensors, mobile data and accelerometers to create a diverse array of devices, from patches to pills, contact lenses to glasses. While many more are in development, the most recognisable wearable devices today are watches and bracelets, such as the Apple Watch or FitBit. At first, we expected wrist-mounted wearables to monitor heart rate and movement, perhaps with one or two other parameters. Thanks to some advances, however – and increased demand from an ageing population – new devices are doing much more.

Optimising treatment

For years, if you wanted your blood pressure taken it would either be done in your GP’s office or at home using a digital blood pressure monitor with a large cuff placed around the upper arm. Now, much more discreet and portable devices are entering the market. The HeartGuide from Omron, for example, condenses the inflatable cuff down and fits it within the strap of a smartwatch. The clinically validated blood pressure monitor uses more than 80 new patents and miniaturised components for traditional oscillometric measurement, letting users take readings throughout the day. These can be transferred to a mobile application and on to a doctor. Atrial fibrillation, which causes an irregular and often abnormally fast heart

As governments seek to prevent the spread of the virus... people who would never normally wear a device might suddenly find themselves being asked to

New wearable devices have more sensing capabilities than ever before

rate that can lead to strokes, is another condition being monitored by new devices. The Apple Watch 4, for example, includes a photoplethysmogram sensor. The system monitors blood volume by illuminating the skin and measuring changes in light absorption as it is reflected by blood vessels. The collected data provides insight into a range of cardiac health issues. More companies are offering similar services, with wearable devices linking to smartphone apps and doctors. With the remote monitoring benefits available, how long will be it until we are all joined up in an ‘Internet of Bodies’? One thing that could push us in that direction is the Covid-19 pandemic, as governments and companies seek to prevent the spread of the virus or similar diseases. People who would never normally wear a device might suddenly find themselves being asked to. As the UK started to consider an end to the lockdown in May, for example, tech company Tended launched a ‘social distancing’ bracelet for people working in construction, manufacturing, infrastructure

and logistics. The device, aimed at “accelerating the transition back to safe working,” uses an ultra-wideband proximity sensor to automatically notify workers if they come within a set distance of each other – 2m, for example.

Social distancing

Tended said the device also “provides employers with an overview of any social distance breaches and how long employees have been in contact with others”. Such an overview enables ‘contact tracing’ in the event that an employee becomes ill, but also raises potential concerns about privacy and security. The Lincoln firm said personal details are not included in ‘distance breach’ data and employee data is only shared if someone reports a diagnosis of Covid-19, but successful trials could pave the way for more pervasive technology from others. One thing is for certain – with the increased accessibility of advanced wearables and the ongoing threat of disease, many more of us will join the Internet of Bodies in the coming years. Professional Engineering • www.imeche.org

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SWITCH ON TO BIG DATA

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Construction firms need to adopt digital technologies to improve their productivity and efficiency. By Rich McEachran CONSTRUC TION & BUILDING

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Constructing a building or other infrastructure without business intelligence and data insights can be thought of as a bit like driving a car whose brakes have failed. You can follow all the safety procedures, but this doesn’t mean faults won’t occur. Just like data and machine-learning algorithms have the potential to help predict brake failures, data can predict faults in the construction phase of a building or piece of infrastructure and across its lifetime. There’s an opportunity for construction companies to tap into streams of data, which can enable them to deliver projects more efficiently and safely. To get to this point, however, there need to be some sweeping changes. Over the past few years, the money being poured into construction technology has been soaring. Real estate firm CREtech puts investment during 2018 at $6.1bn (£5.24bn), roughly double the amount invested during the previous 12 months.

Outdated systems

Despite the positive numbers, for a long time construction companies have been holding themselves back by relying on outdated technology and legacy IT systems. And while there are clear signs that some in the industry are changing their ways, there

are others that are either reluctant to embrace digitisation or unaware of the benefits new technologies can bring. “The big challenge is the adoption of change – changing the use of practices and equipment,” says Ian Barnes, head of business at Sitech, a provider of Trimble machine control systems. “Construction has an ageing workforce, which can make it difficult to encourage the switch from analogue ways of working to the full-digital age of big data and connected worksites.”

Cultural change

So how can senior leaders be encouraged to embrace new technologies? This can be achieved by taking a learning-based approach, argues Barnes. Whether it’s through seminars that discuss how the technologies benefit project managers and engineering teams or realtime demonstrations, educating the senior members of a company can bring about a cultural change. While any company can invest in the latest technology and innovation, there needs to be a clear idea of how any data is to be collected. And, once it has been, how it’s going to be leveraged. “According to one report [FMI’s 2018 Construction Outlook], around 96% of all data goes unused in the engineering and construction industries,” says Richard Cookson, director of customer

success at Procore. “This is obviously a real issue, given that data and analytics are essential to help businesses improve their productivity and operational efficiency.” He adds that construction companies should be taking a single-platform approach to implementing software, rather than having data stored in different systems. If data is shared with all those involved in a construction project – from the engineers working on a site to the procurement team responsible for ordering spare parts – then there are going to be fewer silos and it’ll be easier to find and deal with any faults quickly. “Big data [and business intelligence] can be a huge asset when it comes to being able to make more informed decisions,”

‘Big data [and business intelligence] can be a huge asset when it comes to being able to make more informed decisions’ says Barnes. “The more information you have, the greater insights into a site, the environment, the finished build you get. With this insight, decisions can be made at speed and with more accuracy. “It creates confidence in decision making, forecasting and reporting, and this benefits all those involved.” Professional Engineering • www.imeche.org

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In the age of digitisation, standards are more essential than ever, writes Jennifer Johnson

Security issues

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Standards are the backbone of much of industrial progress. Mass production of any kind would be impossible without guidelines to ensure that processes are uniform and products are consistent. By some accounts, the world is in the middle of a fourth industrial revolution. This era is marked by the increasing automation and interconnectivity of production technologies. As robots and algorithms gradually come to replace human labourers, it might seem natural to question the role of standards. After all, won’t factory operators simply be able to hand over quality assurance tasks to machines? Ben Sheridan, head of digital manufacturing standards at the British Standards Institution (BSI), points out that smart technologies still need a rulebook. “The reason standards are important is because you have interfaces between parts, machines, processes, companies and people. Standards govern how those interfaces behave,” he explained. “What happens when you digitalise things is that the number of interfaces grows enormously. Therefore, standards are increasingly important.” The BSI was founded in 1901. An international equivalent, the ISO, was set

colliding with traditional assembly lines. At present, it’s not entirely clear what the future of standards development will be. For now, manufacturers still rely on continually updated versions of existing standards. Among the most important and widely used is ISA-95 – which was first released by the International Society of Automation in 1995. It aims to govern the development of an automated interface between enterprise and control systems.

up in 1946. Today, there are tens of thousands of standards to help businesses of all sizes in all sectors manage their processes and deliver consistent services. The development of an ISO standard takes about three years. Standards are developed by a technical committee – an international group of experts from industry, academia and government. This approach is said to be “consensus based” in that the input of all stakeholders is taken into consideration.

Survival of the fittest

Expert committees are also assembled by the BSI for the creation of its British Standards. However, Sheridan believes that the speed of technological development may necessitate a more agile approach – one that mirrors the more rapid process of selection favoured by the tech industry. “In the ICT world, people can write what looks like a standard on their computer and make it available,” he said. “What happens is, through the process of natural selection, the best one gets chosen. This is what happened with the creation of the HTTP protocol, which drives the world wide web. It was written by one person, but it was so good that the industry adopted it.” With the increasing digitisation of manufacturing, the modern model of the bootstrapping Silicon Valley tech start-up is

In practice, ISA-95 sets out common terminology so that manufacturing and IT staff can collaborate on integration projects. According to a 2018 McKinsey report, the standard helped to address the complexity that arose as a result of globalised production and distributed supply chains. But, the report says, it “does not address the myriad data and security issues brought on by countless connected devices”. By all accounts, traditional manufacturing is on the verge of disruption by the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), the name for a network of interconnected devices that can collect, share and analyse data. The IIoT can enable improved operational safety, predict when key equipment needs maintenance and help organisations realise new operational efficiencies. Ultimately, it promises to connect people, data and processes from factory floors to corporate offices. It also presents a new set of challenges for standards bodies. “There is the definite potential for digitalisation inside and outside of the factory that actually breaks ISA-95,” Sheridan said. “We can now connect things that could never be connected before. There are opportunities within that, but

‘There are risks as well, because you wouldn’t want all of your data to be open to everybody in your supply chain’ risks as well, because you wouldn’t want all of your data to be open to everybody in your supply chain.” Standards will, as always, have to evolve as manufacturing does. Regulation will always be a few steps behind invention and innovation. But the advent of digitisation means that this gap may have to close. Professional Engineering • www.imeche.org

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CLOUD COVER Cloud manufacturing promises to reduce costs and increase flexibility. Dr Jody Muelaner explains

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MANUFAC TURING Digital and online technologies are transforming manufacturing, or so we are told. It can sometimes seem like there are a dizzying array of new buzzwords with little tangible benefit. This isn’t helped by a lack of clarity in just what differentiates the various models and technologies. Although the technologies all have a different emphasis, they all involve cooperation and sharing of resources using a digital network. This overarching trend is often referred to as Industry 4.0 and its key enabling technologies include the internet of things (IoT), cloud computing and artificial intelligence. Cloud manufacturing (CMfg) is a model of how Industry 4.0 can improve resource utilisation, reduce overhead costs and increase flexibility by enabling resources to be efficiently shared between facilities and organisations. This can mean reducing capital expense by switching to pay-as-yougo manufacturing services. Ultimately, it could improve the optimisation of industry, enabling operations to be carried out where they will be most efficient in terms of cost, resource, energy, waste management and so forth. It will enable greater specialisation and division of manufacturing, with firms being more able to concentrate on their

core business when they can easily access whatever manufacturing services they need. The core aim of cloud manufacturing is to enable resources and capabilities to be available for on-demand use, resulting in sharing and high utilisation. This is realised by intelligently sensing and connecting resources into the internet. IoT technologies will allow the resources, such as machines, software and systems, to be automatically managed and controlled.

One overall solution

The resources and capabilities are effectively virtualised, so they can be accessed as a manufacturing cloud service (MCS). It then becomes possible for users to search for a service based on their precise requirements which may include cost, quality and delivery time. Users can combine various manufacturing services. There are three types of users who can benefit from cloud manufacturing: Providers own and operate manufacturing resources and capabilities. They benefit from increased utilisation and may operate at any scale, from an individual professional to a multinational. Consumers purchase resources and capabilities, using the cloud manufacturing platform to quickly and efficiently find the best providers.

Operators provide the online cloud manufacturing platform which connects the consumers with the providers. From the consumer’s perspective, cloud manufacturing means instant quotes and hassle-free supply of parts. A CAD model can be uploaded to a website and the price to manufacture it will be available in seconds. One exciting aspect of cloud computing is that it will dedicate much more of the manufacturing resource to prototyping and small batches. This will allow designers and entrepreneurs to iterate, improve and try out new ideas. This can only be a good thing for creativity and choice. It will also mean that small businesses won’t have an economy of scale

Small businesses won’t have an economy of scale disadvantage, which should drive a much more efficient industrial economy disadvantage, which should drive a much more efficient industrial economy. Cloud manufacturing is still an emerging technology. Although some companies such as Protolabs offer highly virtualised manufacturing services, we are still a very long way from being able to access the shared resources of global industry. Professional Engineering • www.imeche.org

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David Shirres assesses the outlook for the railways in an era of social distancing RAIL

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As with everything, the coronavirus crisis has had a huge impact on the railway network. An immediate effect of plummeting passenger numbers after the lockdown was the end of franchising agreements and their replacement by emergency measures agreements. It remains to be seen what this means for the future of the industry. For frontline staff, new ways of working included maintaining social distancing, banning whistles, removal of train catering and extra cleaning. Some trains were put into warm storage and new ways of working were devised for train maintenance and production. Additional precautions were also required for infrastructure work including the use of masks where two-metre separation is not possible and the provision of additional site accommodation to maintain social distancing. Precautions were also taken to protect the work itself such as mandatory isolation of specialist staff who could not easily be replaced. There was little disruption to major bank holiday work and the reduced traffic presented opportunities for additional engineering work. Being able to route all traffic via Northampton made it possible to close a 19-mile section of west coast main line for two weeks in May to undertake major work in Kilsby tunnel and elsewhere.

Should trains be empty?

When trains get busier as the lockdown is eased, maintaining social distancing will present far greater challenges as, with the current two-metre rule, trains are full when only 15% of seats are occupied. Normally such trains would be considered empty. While such low occupancy may be feasible in the early recovery phase, it is surely unsustainable in the later phases for which

As the lockdown is eased, maintaining social distance will present far greater challenges as, with the two-metre rule, trains are full when only 15% of seats are occupied there is an urgent need for the smarter controls referred to in the governmentâ€™s Covid-19 strategy. The two-metre rule is understandable given that, when someone is speaking, coughing or sneezing, saliva droplets can burst from their mouth at speeds of around 50m/s. However it is not a worldwide norm. The World Health Organization recommends a one-metre distance and other countries, Germany for example, have a 1.5-metre rule. Moreover, any assessment of social distancing on trains should consider the risks of running empty trains that passengers cannot board, such as crowding at stations. An assessment of airline-style seating and coach ventilation might enable a reduction in the two-metre distance. Compulsory use of face coverings might also allow more passengers on trains. This would do little to protect the wearer from the virus but may prevent anyone with the virus infecting others. Research by the University of Edinburgh suggests this reduces the distance travelled by an exhaled breath by more than 90%. Face covering in trains is obligatory in Spain, France and Germany. It is recommended in

Scotland while in England it is compulsory to wear a face covering. The passenger railway faces an uncertain future with social distancing likely to be required for many months and followed by a post-Covid dip in passenger demand. However, it is important to consider the long term.

Shift from road to rail

Although it does not have the immediate impact of the coronavirus, climate change is potentially more damaging. The lockdown has also highlighted the benefits of clean air. These issues demonstrate the need for a significant modal shift from road to rail, as is also shown by the Department for Transportâ€™s document Decarbonising Transport: Setting the Challenge. Modal share of travel by distance is 76% by road and 8% by rail (DfT 2016 figures for England). So a 10% shift from road to rail would overwhelm the current network by doubling pre-Covid passenger numbers. Therefore any post-Covid dip in passenger numbers does not affect the long-term requirement for rail investment, and in particular HS2, which must be part of the plan to tackle future threats. Professional Engineering â€˘ www.imeche.org

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‘I consider myself extremely fortunate to have found an ideal career in such an ideal location’ Daniel Jacobs, principal supplier development engineer, Swagelok

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BEGINNINGS I have always had a fascination with how things work and how things are made – so a career in engineering was pretty much on the cards for me from very early on. I grew up in South Africa after my parents emigrated from England in the early 1980s, but my English roots were always calling me back. After completing my schooling, I spent a few years working in a hardware store selling irrigation equipment. Opportunities were limited and it wasn’t until later in my early twenties that I started my engineering career. In late 2004, I was offered a job on the Isle of Man. It wasn’t quite what I had envisioned, but I decided it was too good an opportunity to miss. So I left South Africa. That move turned out to be one of the best decisions I have ever made. 2005-07 Family business, Isle of Man In February 2005, I joined my uncle’s startup company, based on the Isle of Man, as a general production assistant doing basic engineering-related work, such as technical drawings, and assisting with the design of a hand-held golfball finder. It was a decent start, but funding eventually ran out before we could get production up and running. The company closed its doors in 2007.

2007-09 HNC in mechanical engineering The closure of the company forced me into a sort of gap year and after meeting with one of the lecturers at the Isle of Man College I decided to enrol for an HNC in mechanical engineering to obtain a formal qualification. It was tough trying to juggle part-time education and hold down a job, but I made it work and passed through most subjects with distinction. I even won two academic awards, including Most Outstanding Overall Student, one of my proudest achievements. 2007-12 Swagelok Shortly after the start of the academic year I applied for and earned a temporary contract with Swagelok, as a general production assistant in their Isle of Man factory. A permanent position in the quality engineering group was offered to me a few months later. There was a lot to learn in a short time. One big challenge was promoting the continuous improvement culture to sustain systemic process improvements. Results were critical when any process changes were implemented. The customer-facing aspect of this role drove an urgency to get things done.

2009-12 BEng degree in aerospace manufacturing Swagelok was very supportive of further education. The company funded the remainder of my HNC studies and supported my studies towards earning my BEng degree in aerospace manufacturing at Liverpool John Moores University, which I earned in 2012 with honours. 2013-17 Senior product engineer In 2013, I was promoted to senior engineer in Swagelok’s product engineering department, sharing responsibility for the overall design of a new series of pressure regulators that we had inherited from a recent company acquisition. This role involved plenty of hands-on engineering during the validation and implementation phases of the project. Working with a focused, diverse team was very rewarding.

2017-PRESENT Principal supplier development engineer

In 2017, I was offered the chance to take on the role of supplier development engineer at Swagelok, which was a great opportunity to gain broader exposure to other cultures, industries, companies and processes. I now have the responsibility of all quality and technical-related issues for our inbound European supply chain. The variety of industries that I get involved in can be daunting at times, but I enjoy the challenge. Not being a specific industry expert in any one field can be an advantage when trying to problem solve – it provides a fresher perspective. While the Isle of Man was not my initial intended destination, it has certainly been very easy for our family to call this our home. The quality of life, job opportunities, and career progression here are fantastic.

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Are you stuck in a career rut or planning your next move? Or maybe you’re a student struggling to decide on an indaustry. In each issue, we’ll put your burning questions to our panel of seasoned engineers

JOHN DOWNES ASKS:

Get in touch Do you have a careers question for your fellow engineers? Email

profeng@thinkpublishing.co.uk

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What industries do you suggest for a student considering a career in mechanical engineering?

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Certainly not automotive. That is set to shrink drastically with self-driving cars. Just imagine to yourself what if you didn’t need a car – just call one when you want to travel and it will arrive at your door. Also not aerospace. The current crisis is making it very plain how much of what we habitually go into the office or factory for that can be done equally as well from home. Also how much we travel overseas, for that can be done remotely too. Look strongly at the additive manufacturing sector, the foodprocessing sector, renewable energy and electrical power generation. Those are set to remain stable and grow. Ivor Mansell

CLIENT

First, go for something that excites you (that’s why we’re engineers; we obviously don’t do it for the money!). Second, find an industry that’s growing and has a sustainable future. Third, select a sector that’s present (and hopefully thriving) in the area of the world you want to live. Personally, I’d also recommend something that’s morally compatible – where you can be proud to tell a stranger at a dinner party what it is you do! Mehdi Raza Any industry that utilises multiple materials, processes and technologies is best. For example, automotive uses metals, plastics, composites, fabrics, paints, lubricants, etc – one can always find a niche technology later using that as a springboard. Mark

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with your name and question and we’ll put it to our expert panel

Attend careers and recruitment fairs and get an understanding of what’s on offer and what would be of interest to you personally – passion for a job always appeals to recruiting engineers.

to either of those would probably serve you well. Emerging technologies like fuel cells and next-generation batteries, micro grids etc look like challenging and exciting areas at the moment. J Neff

Ian Hughes

I would suggest a company in the battery-powered vehicle industries, wind, wave and solar energy production etc. Also the recycling industry and waste reclaiming (such as removal of contaminants from oceans). Craig R

I think any industry that you feel you can contribute to. The beauty of mechanical engineering is that it is a broad-based discipline. It depends on your individual passions. For example, a colleague I knew at university had a goal of being a race engineer in Formula One. He achieved his goal because he knew what he had to do to get there. Brian Burgess Secure (career-wise) such as rail, defence, utilities. Moderately safe, such as consultancies, aviation, automotive. Challenging, such as F1, Dyson. Humanitarian, such as biomedical, lowtech charity projects at home and abroad. Carol Goodall Mechanical engineering is a huge subject area, with skills that can be equally applied in so many different areas. OK so repairing fighter jets might be obvious, but the mechanics of life in so many areas can be engineered for the better. Pick an industry that is interesting and motivates you and be a mechanical engineer in it. Ben Zabell I would say that there will always be a need for people to travel and a need for energy. If you are seeking a lifelong career in one sector, one of the industries related

As population expands, the one industry that will always grow with it is infrastructure. Any branch of engineering with links to construction such as civil engineering or machinery is probably a safe bet. Most importantly, though, do something that interests you. There will be times you have to do some boring bits but as long as there is something to look forward to once the boring bit is done you’ll get through it. Take as many opportunities as you can while you can. There are many engineering companies that offer graduate schemes that let you try out different areas of the business (design, development, even marketing) so these can be a great way to find out if you really enjoy something as much as you think you will. Rhys Owen

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For me, aerospace. Whether it be satellites, rockets or aircraft. There is an immense amount of technology and processes involved. There’s the chance to travel (usually) and you can go into either the manufacturing of aircraft, operation and maintenance, or what will become increasingly important in future years, disposal and recycling of aircraft (or any other aerial system). David

JOIN OUR VIRTUAL CAREERS FAIR

Professional Engineering and the IMechE have launched a brand-new virtual careers fair called EngRec Live 2020. The event will take place on 21 October 2020 and will be the top event this year for engineering careers, allowing IMechE Students and Young Members to engage with companies looking for top engineering talent and vice versa. Some of the biggest engineering firms in the country are looking to hire the best graduates and working engineers, and at EngRec you can meet them all from the comfort of your own home.

WHO WILL BE ATTENDING?

BENEFITS FOR ATTENDEES:

HOW TO SIGN UP:

l Sponsors, Exhibitors, Seminar

l Speak directly with companies

l To sign up for EngRecLive 2020,

Leaders: Engineering consultancies, OEMs, universities, institutions and government agencies. l Attendees: IMechE Student and Young Member network, including STEM and university students, recent graduates and those in the early parts of their careers.

looking to recruit l Get your CV in front of engineering recruitment leaders l Find out more about interesting engineering career opportunities, industries and projects on the rise l Apply for your favoured job vacancies on the day

head to thinkpublishing.co.uk/engreclive l If your company is interested in

hosting a stand at the event and reaching loads of top engineering talent, please email IMechE@thinkpublishing.co.uk

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Meet Rob Jeffs, the engineer on a mission to save his colleagues from ‘soul destroying’ process manuals SUBS

CHALLENGING CAREERS

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Imagine having to read the Highway Code every time you wanted to drive your car. The reading would eat into travel time. It would be boring, and probably feel a bit patronising. Getting anywhere would be a pain and you would probably give up after a few attempts, cancelling trips or taking different modes of transport. For Rob Jeffs, improvement leader at Rolls-Royce Submarines, the scenario is not difficult to imagine because until recently he and his colleagues faced something very similar at work. Instead of the Highway Code, however, the required reading was quality management systems – “soul destroying” sets of rules and regulations, processes and procedures. “Nuclear is obviously very highly regulated, a quality- and safety-conscious industry,” says Jeffs. “Previously, the way process documents were written – how to design a component, for example – was all around… being comprehensive. So you would have a world expert in their field pretty much write a book on how to do their thing. Every single nugget of information they had.”

PRODUCTION CLIENT

ROLLS-ROYCE SUBMARINES LTD; UK MINISTRY OF DEFENCE CROWN COPYRIGHT

Reading the rule book

Encyclopedic process documents were no doubt useful in some circumstances, but they were a pain for engineers required to read them before starting work. “You end up with something tens of thousands of pages long,” says Jeffs. “It’s a huge amount of text in complex language. Reading one book you can manage, but asking people to read 20 books before they have to do something is very, very difficult and gets incredibly boring fast. Engineers go to university because they want to make and design things, not spend four hours of their morning reading the rule book.” The management systems were held up “as if written on clay tablets,” according to Jeffs. “It takes a lot of enjoyment out of the job. At a professional level it stifles innovation.”

For a company keen to embrace ‘progressive’ and ‘lean’ ways of working, stifled innovation is unforgiveable. Jeffs thought he might have an alternative. Instead of hundreds of black-and-white pages of very complex language, Jeffs had an ambitious aim – single-page ‘process landscapes,’ with diagrams and colourful text in larger type. He did the first one in 2018, condensing a system on how to change an existing product within a submarine. It was a success, winning Jeffs two internal RollsRoyce awards. Last July he published two more, one on checking and approving engineering output and another on managing engineering work.

Freedom

“We were taking out stuff that wasn’t wrong, but there was so much detail there it didn’t allow people to think,” he says. Instead, the new documents have the “bare minimum” needed to satisfy the law and customers. “The rest,” says Jeffs, “is freedom. You are free to use your experience and thinking.” The A3 ‘landscapes’ are much more visually engaging, with simplified communication. Text is blue, not black – a minor change to make information stand out – and the pages have a few

key references, rather than the dozens previously included. Now, instead of approaching quality management systems with dread and boredom, Jeffs’ colleagues have embraced the new processes, going so far as to display them in meeting rooms and glue them in notebooks. “They became living documents,” he says.

Starting conversations

Following the success of the first documents, it seems certain that the new method will be replicated across Rolls-Royce and beyond. It sounds too good to be true – happy workers, efficient processes and increased innovation. But surely information has been lost in Jeffs’ condensed approach? The long documents may have been replaced, he says, but the knowledge is still there. Instead of reading hundreds of pages, junior engineers are encouraged to approach their more experienced colleagues to discuss options and get answers in a more flexible way. “You have a whole body of people who are a little bit older, who can coach and guide,” he says. “That is a much better way of sharing knowledge. We need to have these conversations and start sharing.”

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Novel methods will be called for when we get around to building out in space

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Swaddled in an insulating atmosphere and sat nicely in the solar system’s ‘habitable zone,’ Earth is perfectly suited for human life. Thanks to billions of years of geothermal activity and biological development, there is an abundance of material to make that life comfortable. We have everything we need to build homes to protect us from the elements. The first human colonisers on our nearest remotely hospitable neighbours will not be so lucky. The Moon and Mars are not optimised for human life – high levels of radiation, extreme temperatures and meteorite bombardment threaten the survival of the first brave pioneers. They are both rich in useful minerals, however, and are believed to hold water. Unfortunately, there is an acute lack of heavy equipment. Various projects are developing mining robots and construction

tools for off-Earth projects, but, even if they can be successfully built and operated, getting them into space is another challenge entirely. Transporting 0.45kg of materials into space costs roughly $10,000, making it prohibitively expensive to send up fleets of mining and construction machines, or building materials. To stand a chance of surviving, astronauts will need to use their ingenuity to maximise scarce resources. Colonies will have to reuse and recycle any available material. In The Martian, this was demonstrated by NASA engineer and botanist Mark Watney using his own solid waste to fertilise and grow potatoes, to survive a long stay on the Red Planet.

Urea acts as a plasticiser

PRODUCTION CLIENT

A group of researchers believes the same approach could make a vital contribution to future colonisation missions. Teams could build moon bases using surface material, water and another ingredient – urine. According to the researchers from Norway, Spain, the Netherlands and Italy, the urea in urine could work as a plasticiser, an additive that is incorporated into concrete to soften the initial mixture and make it more pliable before it hardens. Urea allows hydrogen bonds to be broken, reducing the viscosities of aqueous mixtures. The main ingredient for the

geopolymer concrete would be regolith, loose material from the Moon’s surface. To test the idea, the team used a regolith-like material developed by the European Space Agency, along with urea and various other plasticisers. Using a 3D printer, they built cylinders from the ‘mud’.

Surviving freeze-thaw

The experiments, carried out at Østfold University College in Norway, revealed that the samples with urea supported heavy weights and remained almost stable in shape. Their resistance was tested after heating to 80°C, and it was found to increase after eight freeze-thaw cycles like those on the Moon. “We have not yet investigated how the urea would be extracted from the urine, as we are assessing whether this would really be necessary, because perhaps its other components could also be used to form the geopolymer concrete,” said Østfold researcher Anna-Lena Kjøniksen. “The actual water in the urine could be used for the mixture, together with that which can be obtained on the Moon.” The work was published in the Journal of Cleaner Production. The team stressed the need for further testing to find the best building materials for Moon bases, which they hope will one day be mass-produced with 3D printers.

The Moon and Mars are not optimised for human life – high levels of radiation, extreme temperatures and meteorite bombardment threaten the survival of the first brave pioneers

MORE WEIRD THINGS WE LEARNED WHILE MAKING THIS ISSUE

Coronavirus has speeded up engineering (page 5) 5G tech will transform industry (page 22) We may produce oxygen on Mars (page 32)

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