This Week in Engineering

Flying taxis are one of the most widely anticipated technologies in aviation, but it’s a very difficult problem to solve. Safety, cost, range and environmental considerations have delayed development by decades, but a new generation of e-VTOLs, combined with advanced engineering tools and materials, suggests that this may be changing.  At the 2023 Paris Air Show, one of the companies developi...

Current lithium-ion battery technology is limited by physics and economics. Lithium-based batteries are heavy, expensive to produce and are relatively slow to charge. A new silicon nanowire anode technology developed by Amprius Technologies promises to deliver lithium-ion batteries with double the gravimetric and volumetric power density of current systems. The solution to the cost problem is to u...

With a chronic industrial labor shortage in America, combined with climbing interest rates and high inflation, the challenges for American manufacturing are increasing. Geopolitical conflict with Russia, strained relations with China and the emergence of artificial intelligence are adding even more uncertainty. For the automation sector however, these challenges present a golden opportunity for a...

Autonomously guided vehicles, or AGVs, are now common in warehouses and factories. Soon, they may be on city streets, delivering fast food and gourmet meals to homes by Uber Eats, Pizza Hut, 7-11 and others. Can small delivery robots reliably get time-sensitive deliveries like fast food to consumers as efficiently as human delivery drivers? We’ll know soon. * * * Want to watch this podcast as a vi...

Standardization is important for the widespread adoption of any mass consumer technology. The Edison lamp base is an example, as is the standardized shape and form of gasoline and diesel fuel pump nozzles worldwide. Electric vehicle charging has yet to develop a single global standard, and the two largest currently are Tesla’s NACS and CCS, which are used by the majority of other electric vehicle...

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) recalled almost a million GM midsized SUVs due to defective airbag inflators. According to NHTSA, deployment of the airbags may propel metal shrapnel into the passenger compartment, causing possible injury or death. The manufacturer of the modules, ARC Automotive, has rejected the government allegations. The company argues that single...

Since the V-2 rockets of World War II, it’s been axiomatic in large rocketry that a flame deflector is necessary below booster engines to reduce the risk of damage to the launch pad and the booster. Last week’s launch of the SpaceX Starship used no deflector, and post-launch pad damage was extensive. Several booster engines failed shortly after launch, possibly as a result of debris, thermal and a...

The collapse of a parking garage in lower Manhattan has thrown a spotlight on the structural integrity of older reinforced concrete buildings and bridges in the U.S.. The site is left with unstable partial walls and multiple damaged vehicles which represent an environmental hazard due to fuel, lubricants and coolants. Although the collapse occurred with little warning, a forensic engineering study...

The Environmental Protection Agency has been setting U.S. motor vehicle emissions standards for over half a century, and in the process has reduced the output of unburned hydrocarbons, particulate matter, oxides of nitrogen and carbon monoxide by several orders of magnitude since the unregulated engines of the 1950s. Today, however, the Biden Administration is proposing a set of rules that include...

Circulating of fluid through woven into a garment was used successfully during the Apollo moon landings to regulate the astronauts’ body temperature. A new development by researchers at Switzerland-based École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne has resulted in miniature tube pumps in the form of fibers that allow high-pressure fluidic circuits to be woven into textiles without an external pump. Pr...

As applications for artificial intelligence are developing rapidly, the need for ever higher computational power to train massive datasets for AI puts a premium on chipmaking technology. Conventional photolithography is increasingly difficult as gate density increases on modern semiconductors, and single digit nanometer devices are more time-consuming and difficult to fabricate. Nvidia has develop...

The Turkish aircraft industry is on a roll. With the excellent performance of Bayraktar TB-2 drones in Ukraine, and the development of the larger, more capable Akinci twin engine high-altitude drone, Turkish military aviation is moving into systems that are comparable in performance to industry heavyweights from America, China and Russia.  The new TF-X program will take Turkish aerospace to t...

Carnot cycle refrigeration by mechanical compressors has been around for over a century, and it’s a mature technology. Since World War II, it has been used to heat and cool structures, but with increased urgency in reducing fossil fuel use, heat pumps are under renewed scrutiny as a low-emission climate control solution. Moving heat with this technology is significantly more energy efficient than...

The recent derailment of a Norfolk Southern train in East Palestine, Ohio, resulting in a toxic chemical spill was a rare but not unknown event on America’s railroads. Like every other wheeled vehicle in commercial service, rolling stock relies on anti-friction bearings. And like all ball and roller bearings, heat is the major cause of failure. For safety-critical applications in railways, thermog...

60 years ago, nuclear energy was touted as a power source that would deliver electricity at prices “too cheap to meter.” Experience with large-scale nuclear generation to date has shown that large commercial nuclear power plants do not produce electricity cheaply; however, the new imperative to reduce carbon dioxide emissions has given nuclear new incentive to develop.   New, fourth-gene...

Since World War II, modern combat doctrine worldwide has emphasized wars of speed, maneuvers and mobility. Since the pioneering German blitzkriegs of 1939 and 1940, the notion of static battle lines, seen in the First World War, has been widely regarded as obsolete. Surprisingly, the current war in Ukraine has developed in a manner that looks very similar to the trench warfare of World War I. A ce...

The recent earthquake near the Turkish-Syrian border has killed, at the time of writing, over 41,000 individuals and has collapsed over 6,000 buildings in Turkey alone. Turkey is a known region for serious seismic events and has endured significant earthquakes. Turkish building codes from 2007, heavily revised in 2018, specify earthquake-resistant construction, and the city of Istanbul completed a...

Nuclear energy is enjoying a resurgence. Some nations are deferring the retirement of reactors and other countries are developing new generation fission designs that are safer and more cost-effective than current technology. By retrofitting existing coal-fired power plants, new small modular reactors, or SMRs, are at the forefront of this development. Want to watch this podcast as a video? This We...

Lithium, cobalt, nickel and rare-earth elements have been studied extensively, as have the supply bottlenecks and predicted production shortages that have driven battery prices higher in electric vehicles. Rarely discussed, however, is a critical input for not only electric vehicle batteries but also for the entire electricity infrastructure: copper. According to a new report by S&P Global, su...

Tanks have been a game-changing technology in warfare for a century, and Ukraine was the site of major tank battles in World War II. In the current Russia Ukraine war, both sides have used Soviet-era tanks, with the most numerous being updated versions of the T-72. But as the war drags on, more modern equipment is making its way to the conflict, notably the Russian T-90 main battle tank.  Cur...

In the drive to create a zero-carbon economy by the middle of the century, multiple engineering solutions for replacing fossil fuels are in development. Power generation through wind, solar, nuclear, geothermal and other carbon-free technologies are on the rise. But transportation, particularly air transportation, is a much more difficult problem to solve with alternates. Aviation is driven primar...

The 2023 edition of the Consumer Electronics Show had its share of innovations, and many are far outside the strict realm of consumer electronics. Sony and Honda announced a major venture to produce electric cars that are as much entertainment platforms as personal transportation under the Afeela brand, and John Deere wins awards for self-driving tractors and develops a novel electric excavator ba...

The last of 1,574 Boeing 747s has left the company’s Everett, Washington plant, and will be delivered to Atlas Air early next year. That airframe wraps up a remarkable 54 year production program, with the 747 joining the Airbus A380 as the end of four engine wide-body airliner programs. 50 years ago, “Jumbo Jets” were seen as the solution to lower seat mile costs, enabling an entirely new industry...

2022 was a busy year engineering, with important firsts recorded in space exploration, commercial aviation and energy. What’s in store for 2023?  Engineering.com expects that the far-reaching impact of the war in Ukraine, combined with political pressure to de-carbonize will result in acceleration in the shift away from fossil fuels. But in the interim, ultra pipeline and LNG gas supply chain...

In 2017, Elon Musk presented a prototype of a battery electric Class 8 highway tractor, predicting that electrification will fundamentally change the American trucking industry. Trucking in America is a 700-billion-dollar annual industry, and with 4 million Class 8 vehicles registered on American roads, the fleet is considerable. While electrification looks promising, current lithium-ion battery t...