https://techxplore.com/engineering-news/ en-us The latest news on engineering technology, engineering science, computer engineering , civil engineering, chemical engineering, aerospace engineering and environmental engineering. Researchers in the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Technion in Israel have demonstrated control over an emerging material, which they consider as a possible future alternative to silicon in microelectronics. This is a timely development, because scientists and engineers face challenges in continuing the transistor shrinking trend, an important driver of computer chip performance. https://techxplore.com/news/2023-07-lays-groundwork-future-high-performance-alternatives.html Engineering Thu, 13 Jul 2023 12:12:05 EDT news608469122 A University of Minnesota Twin Cities team has, for the first time, synthesized a thin film of a unique topological semimetal material that has the potential to generate more computing power and memory storage while using significantly less energy. The researchers were also able to closely study the material, leading to some important findings about the physics behind its unique properties. https://techxplore.com/news/2023-07-material-key-energy-consumption-electronics.html Engineering Thu, 13 Jul 2023 12:00:01 EDT news608468203 Cambridge researchers, working in partnership with industry, have helped develop the first 3D-printed piece of concrete infrastructure to be used on a National Highways project. https://techxplore.com/news/2023-07-cambridge-smart-3d-concrete-wall.html Engineering Thu, 13 Jul 2023 11:36:28 EDT news608466982 An Aston University researcher has turned one of the basic rules of construction on its head. For centuries a hanging chain has been used as an example to explain how masonry arches stand. https://techxplore.com/news/2023-07-basic-upside.html Engineering Thu, 13 Jul 2023 11:03:02 EDT news608464981 The hottest drink of the summer may be the SEAS-colada. Here's what you need to make it: gin, pineapple juice, coconut milk and a dielectric elastomer actuator-based soft peristaltic pump. Unfortunately, the last component can only be found in the lab of Robert Wood, the Harry Lewis and Marlyn McGrath Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. https://techxplore.com/news/2023-07-powers-soft-robots-cocktails-door.html Robotics Thu, 13 Jul 2023 10:43:20 EDT news608463796 Clean energy plans, including the U.S. Infrastructure Investment Act's "Clean Hydrogen Road Map," are counting on hydrogen as a fuel of the future. But current hydrogen separation technology is still falling short of efficiency and sustainability goals. As part of ongoing efforts to develop materials that could enable alternative energy sources, researchers in Drexel University's College of Engineering have produced a titanium oxide nanofilament material that can harness sunlight to unlock the ubiquitous molecule's potential as a fuel source. https://techxplore.com/news/2023-07-titanium-oxide-material-sunlight-green.html Engineering Thu, 13 Jul 2023 10:41:16 EDT news608463672 On the moon, there are raw materials that humanity could one day mine and use. Various space agencies, such as the European Space Agency (ESA), are already planning missions to better explore Earth's satellite and find minerals. This calls for appropriate exploration vehicles. Swiss researchers led by ETH Zurich are now pursuing the idea of sending not just one solitary rover on an exploration tour, but rather an entire team of vehicles and flying devices that complement each other. https://techxplore.com/news/2023-07-planetary-analog-environments-explored-team.html Robotics Thu, 13 Jul 2023 10:24:01 EDT news608462637 In a study published recently in Advanced Intelligent Systems, researchers from Queen Mary University of London have made significant advancements in the field of bionics with the development of a new type of electric variable-stiffness artificial muscle that possesses self-sensing capabilities. This innovative technology has the potential to revolutionize soft robotics and medical applications. https://techxplore.com/news/2023-07-self-sensing-electric-artificial-muscles.html Robotics Thu, 13 Jul 2023 09:13:46 EDT news608458421 When an electric vehicle is parked outside, its temperature can swing wildly from day to night and season to season, which can lead to deterioration of the battery. To dampen these fluctuations and extend the battery's lifespan, researchers have designed an all-season thermal cloak that can cool an electric vehicle by 8°C on a hot day and warm it by 6.8°C at night. The cloak, made predominantly of silica and aluminum, can do so passively without outside energy input and operates without any modification between hot or cold weather. This prototype is described July 11 in the newly launched Device, an application-oriented sister journal to Matter, Joule, and Cell. https://techxplore.com/news/2023-07-thermal-cloak-passively-electric-vehicles.html Engineering Thu, 13 Jul 2023 03:01:35 EDT news608436081 There is a "silent hazard" lurking underneath our major global cities, and our buildings were not designed to handle it. https://techxplore.com/news/2023-07-ground-deforming-ready-infrastructure.html Engineering Wed, 12 Jul 2023 20:10:05 EDT news608207129 As researchers make major advances in medical care, they are also discovering that the efficacy of these treatments can be enhanced by individualized approaches. Therefore, clinicians increasingly need methods that can both continuously monitor physiological signals and then personalize responsive delivery of therapeutics. https://techxplore.com/news/2023-07-headway-precision-therapeutics-fully-bioelectronic.html Engineering Mon, 10 Jul 2023 17:07:31 EDT news608227641 A common food and medicine additive has shown it can boost the capacity and longevity of a next-generation flow battery design in a record-setting experiment. https://techxplore.com/news/2023-07-next-generation-battery.html Engineering Mon, 10 Jul 2023 16:59:19 EDT news608227151 Imagine a wearable patch that tracks your vital signs through changes in the color display, or shipping labels that light up to indicate changes in temperature or sterility of food items. https://techxplore.com/news/2023-07-stretchy-color-changing-display-future-wearable.html Engineering Mon, 10 Jul 2023 16:56:05 EDT news608226959 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers have developed a novel method for underwater geolocalization using deep neural networks that have been trained on 10 million polarization-sensitive images collected from locations around the world. This new study, led by electrical and computer engineering professor Viktor Gruev, along with computer science professor David Forsyth, enables underwater geolocalization using only optical data while providing a tool for tethered-free underwater navigation. https://techxplore.com/news/2023-07-future-underwater-geolocalization-polarization-patterns.html Engineering Mon, 10 Jul 2023 16:16:15 EDT news608224570 Offshore wind farms bring environmental benefits throughout their life cycle. This understanding emerges from a study published in the international journal Sustainable Production and Consumption in which researchers from Politecnico di Milano analyzed the potential environmental impacts of a floating offshore wind farm undergoing authorization off the coast of Sicily. https://techxplore.com/news/2023-07-offshore-farms-environmental-benefits-life.html Engineering Fri, 07 Jul 2023 14:00:03 EDT news607957201 Three years ago, one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history blasted through Lebanon's capital, Beirut. The accidental detonation of improperly stored ammonium nitrate killed 218 people, injured thousands and caused billions of dollars in property damage across what is considered one of the oldest cities in the world. Joe Kallas, a doctoral candidate in the Penn State Department of Architectural Engineering from Beirut, was in the city that day and witnessed the devastation to the historic neighborhoods firsthand. https://techxplore.com/news/2023-07-architectural-heritage.html Engineering Fri, 07 Jul 2023 13:25:52 EDT news607955148 The implosion that took the lives of five souls who made the perilous deep sea voyage to the Titanic shipwreck is not your typical disaster. But perhaps the OceanGate Titan submersible craft was doomed from the start. https://techxplore.com/news/2023-07-combination-social-organizational-technical-factors.html Business Fri, 07 Jul 2023 11:49:06 EDT news607949343 University of California Berkeley researchers have designed an extreme-weather proven, hand-held device that can extract and convert water molecules from the air into drinkable water using only ambient sunlight as its energy source, a study published in Nature Water shows. https://techxplore.com/news/2023-07-portable-sun-powered-harvester-combat-scarcity.html Engineering Fri, 07 Jul 2023 09:39:22 EDT news607941557 Two teams of solar-power engineers, one led by a large group at Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie GmbH, the other led by a group at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, has found two ways to improve the efficiency of solar cells by getting silicon and perovskite to work together better. Both teams have published papers in the journal Science outlining the details of their work and the results of their testing. Stefaan De Wolf and Erkan Aydin, with the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, have published a Perspectives piece in the same journal issue outlining the work done by both teams. https://techxplore.com/news/2023-07-methods-efficiency-solar-cells-silicon.html Engineering Fri, 07 Jul 2023 08:47:09 EDT news607938408 Solid electrolytes with high lithium-ion conductivity can be designed for millimeter-thick battery electrodes by increasing the complexity of their composite superionic crystals, report researchers from Tokyo Tech. This new design rule enables the synthesis of high-entropy active materials while preserving their superionic conduction. https://techxplore.com/news/2023-07-high-entropy-superionic-solid-state-conductors.html Engineering Thu, 06 Jul 2023 14:00:01 EDT news607853165 The aim of the Affordable Titanium to Useable Defense Equipment (ATiTUDE) program is to develop a processing route for low-cost titanium for exploitation across the land, maritime and air defense sectors. The project is led by Rheinmetall BAE Systems Land (RBSL). Other members that make up the consortium are the University of Sheffield (UoS), BAE Systems, MBDA, Transition International and the Advanced Forming Research Center (AFRC). https://techxplore.com/news/2023-07-low-cost-titanium-armor-land-based-defense.html Engineering Thu, 06 Jul 2023 13:44:40 EDT news607869877 The costs of a type of battery storage suited to supporting the decarbonization of emerging economies have been predicted by Sheffield researchers. https://techxplore.com/news/2023-07-battery-storage-solar-power-low-cost.html Engineering Thu, 06 Jul 2023 13:32:03 EDT news607869122 A joint research team, led by Professor Lee Yongmin of the Energy Engineering Department at the DGIST and Professor Kim Sungsoo of Chungnam National University, has announced a significant advancement in battery technology with the development of a novel battery electrode degradation diagnosis technology. https://techxplore.com/news/2023-07-digital-twin-technology-advancement-battery.html Engineering Thu, 06 Jul 2023 12:32:03 EDT news607865521 The joint research team of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Professor JeongHo Kwak at the DGIST and Aerospace Engineering Professor Jihwan Choi at the KAIST have proposed a novel network slicing planning and handover technique applicable to next-generation low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite network systems. Findings of the study have been published in the journal IEEE Vehicular Technology Magazine. https://techxplore.com/news/2023-07-network-slicing-technique-low-earth-orbit.html Engineering Thu, 06 Jul 2023 12:29:02 EDT news607865341 A team led by Nagoya University researchers in Japan has successfully predicted crystal orientation by teaching artificial intelligence (AI) using optical photographs of polycrystalline materials. The results were published in APL Machine Learning. https://techxplore.com/news/2023-07-ai-based-technique-crystal-efficiency-electronic.html Engineering Thu, 06 Jul 2023 10:41:17 EDT news607858871 A research team has developed a human lung-inspired graphene-metal organic framework hybrid gas sensor, which can monitor extremely low concentrations of nitrogen dioxide at the level of one billionth in real-time. This study was published online on May 30, 2023 in Nature Communications. https://techxplore.com/news/2023-07-human-lung-inspired-sensor-nitrogen-dioxide.html Engineering Thu, 06 Jul 2023 10:06:19 EDT news607856776 Researchers have combined research with real and robotic insects to better understand how they sense forces in their limbs while walking, providing new insights into the biomechanics and neural dynamics of insects and informing new applications for large legged robots. They presented their findings at the SEB Centenary Conference 2023. https://techxplore.com/news/2023-07-big-robot-bugs-reveal-force-sensing.html Robotics Thu, 06 Jul 2023 09:30:01 EDT news607853048 In recent years, many countries have been competing to develop various platforms and systems that provide services directly to the general public using ICT solutions, especially big data. Among them, Green Button, an energy data-sharing platform launched by the Obama Administration in 2012, has drawn significant attention. https://techxplore.com/news/2023-07-energy-consumption-diet-real-time-power.html Engineering Wed, 05 Jul 2023 16:05:04 EDT news607791901 Meet Axl and Slash. The pair of mechanical arms named after Guns N' Roses members each weigh more than a ton but possess the deftness to nail wood without splitting. "Metallic beasts," is how BotBuilt cofounder Brent Wadas describes his yellow robots. https://techxplore.com/news/2023-07-robots-company-solution-labor-shortage.html Robotics Wed, 05 Jul 2023 15:00:02 EDT news607787123 Engineers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have developed a new test that can predict the durability of cement in seconds to minutes—rather than the hours it takes using current methods. The test measures the behavior of water droplets on cement surfaces using computer vision on a device that costs less than $200. The researchers said the new study could help the cement industry move toward rapid and automated quality control of their materials. https://techxplore.com/news/2023-07-fast-automated-cement-durability.html Engineering Wed, 05 Jul 2023 05:00:02 EDT news607593653