SELF HEALING CONCRETE

 

Even the tiniest cracks on the surfaces of concrete structures can lead to big problems if they aren’t immediately repaired. Now researchers have demonstrated a sunlight-induced, self-healing protective coating designed to fix cracks on the surface of concrete structures before they grow into larger ones that compromise structural integrity.

Damage control: Concrete structures could one day be able to fix their own surface cracks.

More resilient concrete structures like bridges and overpasses could save governments billions of dollars in annual expenses on repairs and maintenance. In recent years, a growing field of research has focused on developing self-healing mechanisms for a range of materials, concrete included. Several approaches to self-healing concrete have emerged, including attempts to engineer self-healing mechanisms into concrete itself. But the authors of a new paper published in ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces say their demonstrated technology represents the first example of a self-healing protective coating for concrete.
Previous approaches to self-healing concrete systems have mostly focused on restoring strength to damaged concrete, says Chan-Moon Chung, a professor of polymer chemistry at Yonsei University in South Korea who led the research. His group chose to focus on protecting the surface, where tiny cracks can allow water, chloride ion from deicing salt or seawater, and carbon dioxide to penetrate the structure, which can lead to harmful deterioration.
The new coating contains polymer microcapsules, filled with a solution that, when exposed to light, turns into a water-resistant solid. The idea is that damage to a coated concrete surface would cause the capsules to break open and release the solution, which then would fill the crack and solidify in sunlight.
Researchers have developed a range of microcapsule-based, self-healing systems in recent years. Generally, they consist of a “healing agent,” often a polymer paired with a catalyst. The systems are designed so that damage brings the healing agent, originally in solution, into contact with the catalyst, which causes the healing agent to solidify. But “there are limitations to this system,” says Chung, such as the availability and cost of the catalyst. Since sunlight induces the key reaction in his group’s new coating, it has the advantage of being “catalyst-free” and potentially inexpensive, he says. Chung says the polymer his group chose as a healing agent is attractive because it won’t freeze even in very low temperatures, and is considered environmentally friendly.
To demonstrate the effectiveness of the coating, the researchers sprayed it on the surface of concrete samples, and used razor blades to apply small cracks. Scanning electron microscopy confirmed that the razor blade caused the microcapsules to release their contents, which filled the damaged area. After the researchers exposed samples to sunlight for several hours, further microscopy showed healing, whereas damaged areas in control samples remained unfilled. Finally, the researchers confirmed that samples with the new coating were far less vulnerable to water and chloride ion penetration than were controls.
Chung says his group’s next task is to determine the optimal composition of the coating, and show that it remains stable over an extended time. He says that, so far, the group has shown that the coating can remain stable for a year.

Using electrical signals to train the heart's muscle cells

Columbia Engineering researchers have shown, for the first time, that electrical stimulation of human heart muscle cells (cardiomyocytes) engineered from human stem cells aids their development and function. The team used electrical signals, designed to mimic those in a developing heart, to regulate and synchronize the beating properties of nascent cardiomyocytes, the cells that support the beating function of the heart. The study, led by Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic, The Mikati Foundation Professor of Biomedical Engineering and a professor of medical sciences (in medicine), is published online January 19 in Nature Communications.

Cardiovascular disease is one of the major health problems around the world, especially because the heart cannot repair itself: if cardiomyocytes are lost to injury or disease, they have only a minimal ability to regenerate. Scientists have been trying to develop ways to regenerate hearts by using cardiomyocytes grown from the patient's cells taken from skin or blood.
To be successful, these cardiomyocytes need to respond to and integrate with the surrounding heart muscle. But, currently, the immaturity and resultant irregular beating of human cardiomyocytes derived from stem cells have limited their usefulness for regenerative medicine and biological research.

"We've made an exciting discovery," says Vunjak-Novakovic. "We applied electrical stimulation to mature these cells, regulate their contractile function, and improve their ability to connect with each other. In fact, we trained the cell to adopt the beating pattern of the heart, improved the organization of important cardiac proteins, and helped the cells to become more adult-like. This preconditioning is an important step to generating robust cells that are useful for a wide range of applications including the study of cardiomyocyte biology, drug testing, and stem cell therapy. And we think that our method could lead to the reduction of arrhythmia during cell-based heart regeneration."

Vunjak-Novakovic worked with George Eng and Benjamin Lee, both of whom recently received their PhD from the Department of Biomedical Engineering. They are also MD students and the study's co-leading authors. The team grew human stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes and engineered them into three-dimensional structures. They then exposed these structures to electrical signals that mimicked those in a healthy heart--over just one week. They showed that this electrical stimulation increased cardiomyocyte connectivity and the regularity of muscle contraction.

The researchers plan to conduct fundamental studies of how the immature heart develops its beating function, and to investigate whether the "conditioned" cardiomyocytes will have the ability to seamlessly integrate with the heart muscle and provide a synchronized beating function.

"The heart is an organ of amazing complexity with about 3 billion cells that beat synchronously in response to electrical signals," Vunjak-Novakovic observes. "Our ability to recapitulate biology using bioengineering tools continues to drive our work and to be a source of inspiration. We are frequently reminded that this may be the best time ever to pursue biomedical engineering research!"
Benjamin Lee adds, "As a student in both engineering and medicine, I am particularly interested in how electrically conditioned cardiomyocytes can be used in a clinical context."

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Story Source:
Materials provided by Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

First Battery-Free Cellphone

University of Washington researchers have invented a cellphone that requires no batteries -- a major leap forward in moving beyond chargers, cords and dying phones. Instead, the phone harvests the few microwatts of power it requires from either ambient radio signals or light.

The team also made Skype calls using its battery-free phone, demonstrating that the prototype made of commercial, off-the-shelf components can receive and transmit speech and communicate with a base station.

The new technology is detailed in a paper published July 1 in the Proceedings of the Association for Computing Machinery on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies.
"We've built what we believe is the first functioning cellphone that consumes almost zero power," said co-author Shyam Gollakota, an associate professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the UW. "To achieve the really, really low power consumption that you need to run a phone by harvesting energy from the environment, we had to fundamentally rethink how these devices are designed."

The team of UW computer scientists and electrical engineers eliminated a power-hungry step in most modern cellular transmissions -- converting analog signals that convey sound into digital data that a phone can understand. This process consumes so much energy that it's been impossible to design a phone that can rely on ambient power sources.

Instead, the battery-free cellphone takes advantage of tiny vibrations in a phone's microphone or speaker that occur when a person is talking into a phone or listening to a call.
An antenna connected to those components converts that motion into changes in standard analog radio signal emitted by a cellular base station. This process essentially encodes speech patterns in reflected radio signals in a way that uses almost no power.

To transmit speech, the phone uses vibrations from the device's microphone to encode speech patterns in the reflected signals. To receive speech, it converts encoded radio signals into sound vibrations that that are picked up by the phone's speaker. In the prototype device, the user presses a button to switch between these two "transmitting" and "listening" modes.
Using off-the-shelf components on a printed circuit board, the team demonstrated that the prototype can perform basic phone functions -- transmitting speech and data and receiving user input via buttons. Using Skype, researchers were able to receive incoming calls, dial out and place callers on hold with the battery-free phone.

"The cellphone is the device we depend on most today. So if there were one device you'd want to be able to use without batteries, it is the cellphone," said faculty lead Joshua Smith, professor in both the Allen School and UW's Department of Electrical Engineering. "The proof of concept we've developed is exciting today, and we think it could impact everyday devices in the future."
The team designed a custom base station to transmit and receive the radio signals. But that technology conceivably could be integrated into standard cellular network infrastructure or Wi-Fi routers now commonly used to make calls.

"You could imagine in the future that all cell towers or Wi-Fi routers could come with our base station technology embedded in it," said co-author Vamsi Talla, a former UW electrical engineering doctoral student and Allen School research associate. "And if every house has a Wi-Fi router in it, you could get battery-free cellphone coverage everywhere."
The battery-free phone does still require a small amount of energy to perform some operations. The prototype has a power budget of 3.5 microwatts.

The UW researchers demonstrated how to harvest this small amount of energy from two different sources. The battery-free phone prototype can operate on power gathered from ambient radio signals transmitted by a base station up to 31 feet away.

Using power harvested from ambient light with a tiny solar cell -- roughly the size of a grain of rice -- the device was able to communicate with a base station that was 50 feet away.
Many other battery-free technologies that rely on ambient energy sources, such as temperature sensors or an accelerometer, conserve power with intermittent operations. They take a reading and then "sleep" for a minute or two while they harvest enough energy to perform the next task. By contrast, a phone call requires the device to operate continuously for as long as the conversation lasts.
"You can't say hello and wait for a minute for the phone to go to sleep and harvest enough power to keep transmitting," said co-author Bryce Kellogg, a UW electrical engineering doctoral student.

"That's been the biggest challenge -- the amount of power you can actually gather from ambient radio or light is on the order of 1 or 10 microwatts. So real-time phone operations have been really hard to achieve without developing an entirely new approach to transmitting and receiving speech."

Next, the research team plans to focus on improving the battery-free phone's operating range and encrypting conversations to make them secure. The team is also working to stream video over a battery-free cellphone and add a visual display feature to the phone using low-power E-ink screens.

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Story Source:
Materials provided by University of Washington. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Are Mechanical Engineers in Demand?

 

"Yes, Mechanical Engineering is “still in demand”, but there are some things you should understand about economics if you are really concerned about job stability.

We call it the cycle. I have worked through a number of cycles over the last 35 years, here is what happens….

An industry springs up to meet a market demand. For now, imagine wind turbines get popular because other energy sources get expensive. So there is a big demand for Engineers (mechanical, electrical, civil) to design and build wind turbines! Great, right? Right! But soon enough wind turbines have been designed, built, installed… now what happens?

It's called layoffs. Sad but true. But then some of those Engineers go on to develop something that “comes next”. It may be that if you want to go work on that, you might need to get more training, you might need to relocate, you might need to take a pay cut, and… here is the painful part… you are an expert at wind turbines, it is all you have worked on recently, and now it is a field no one has an interest in paying you to do any more…. and new guys fresh out of University cost less, have an easier time of relocating, and so on.

Hurts to be obsolete. So if you really love being in engineering, you need to love change, reinventing yourself, going where ever the work is, stay trained on the latest computer tools and so on.

You will be “in demand”, you just need to be demanding of yourself…. If you can do it, welcome to the team! Now let's go design something cool…" - 

Ned Boff,

Lead Electrical & Controls Engineer

PhD Mechanical Engineering, University of Auckland

MEP IN THRISSUR

 

Core Institute of Technology hopes to be pre-eminent in "Industrial Training" with universal perspective. We provide the most demanding HVAC, MEP, QA/QC, NDT, CSWIP, BGAS, Industrial Electrical Designing and Wiring, Civil QA/QC and QS, Web and Software Technologies & SEO courses at one stop - Core Institute of Technology. We are also an ISO 9001:2008 Certified Institution.

We are committed to be the top and the best institute in imparting quality education in moulding students into competent and confident professionals and inculcating in them a passion to work wisely, relatively, and effectively for a better future for them and for the society.

Mechanical, electrical, and plumbing services (MEP) is a significant component of the construction supply chain. MEP design is critical for design decision-making, accurate documentation, performance and cost-estimating, construction planning, managing and operating the resulting facility. It consists of-

• HVAC
• FIREFIGHTING
• ELECTRICAL
• PLUMBING

MEP is mainly applied in the field of construction. MEP is a must in all the upcoming and ongoing construction projects around the world. Since construction is a field that continues to develop with the passing of years, the scope of MEP is wide and you will find its application in the most remote of places.

ENGINEERING VIVA TIPS AND SUGGESTIONS!

 

 

 INTRODUCTION

 

 

Traditionally, the oral examination (a.k.a. the oral, viva or viva voice) occurs after the written final exams. There is a lot of misunderstanding and misplaced apprehension about such oral exams, and here we attempt to present an overview of the oral examination, remove some of the mystery, promote your confidence and help you to prepare effectively.

Oral presentations and examinations are becoming more common throughout degree courses, as educational practitioners increasingly appreciate that a very good measure of someone's understanding of a subject is their ability to verbally explain the subject to someone else. For our purposes, we will only explicitly consider the oral examination that occurs with an external examiner after the written final exams of an undergraduate degree. Much of this section will also apply to taught MSc degrees.

 

 

 

  Why are oral exams conducted?

Oral examinations typically have two main purposes. Firstly, the oral exam allows an external examiner to ascertain the comparability of a degree grade amongst different educational institutions. Secondly, it allows the external examiner to confirm or improve the appropriate degree grade classification for a student that may be just under the borderline for a higher degree grade, or a student whose performance may have been impaired due to mitigating circumstances. Students that are just above a degree grade may not be marked down on the basis of the oral examination. Thus, you should always look upon the oral exam as an opportunity to improve your grade.

Oral examinations are not just an assessment of the student's performance- oral exams are usually an opportunity for the external examiner to get feedback from the students on the performance of the department and university.

 

Who conducts the oral exam?

Typically, an External Examiner is appointed, who chairs the oral exam.

The details of practice vary amongst universities, and you will almost certainly be well informed about the particular practices that occur in your Department. If not, however, be sure that you are aware of what will happen by asking in advance. As an example of how practices may differ, some oral exams have a panel of two or three members (e.g. the External Examiner, the Degree Course Co-ordinator and the Head of Department). In other universities, it may only be the External Examiner that is present.

 

 

 

What is examined?

The oral exam is an academic interview at which the examiner(s) will be looking at your understanding and breadth of awareness of the subject area of your degree course. The approach of different External Examiners varies considerably, and the information here should only be used as a very rough guide. You may get further information by talking to your lecturers, as well as to past students.

Nevertheless, the oral exam may well involve a discussion of topical subjects that are relevant to the degree course content (e.g. Environmental sciences: what might be the impacts on vegetation of the removal of large herbivores, as occurred in many areas in the UK following foot and mouth disease?). You may be asked what your favourite modules were, and why you found these modules academically interesting and/or challenging. This may lead on to a further discussion based on your favourite modules. For example, if you state that Environmental Impact Assessment was your favourite module and explain why, you may then be asked a variety of questions, such as: What is the legal backing for EIAs?; What are common problems in EIAs?; How could the EIA process be improved? Can you discuss different examples of where the EIA process could be considered a success and a failure?

In addition to considering the taught content of your module, the examiner(s) will also be examining your understanding of the subject matter of your thesis, your appreciation of its significance to established knowledge in the field, and your awareness of the breadth of the subject area. A considerable proportion of the exam may be spent discussing your final year project, given that it is an independent and novel piece of research that you were responsible for designing and executing.

The External Examiner will have read (and graded) your final year project, and you should be prepared for a quite rigorous discussion of your project.

 

The oral exam as feedback for the department

As mentioned above, oral exams are usually an opportunity for the external examiner to get feedback from students on the performance of the Department and University. Depending on the examiner, you may be asked to comment on your experience during the three or four yours that you have spent at the Department and University. This gives you an opportunity to comment on issues such as the following:

- Teaching quality: teaching methods and facilities, clear communication to students of the academic aims and objectives of modules, level of help and guidance during and after modules, provision of tutorials, provision of feedback.

- Research support: level of help and guidance during the final year project, availability of equipment and facilities.

- Student support: library facilities, IT courses, computer availability, printing facilities, photocopying etc.

Remember that you should give credit and praise where it is due! If there are areas where you can suggest an improvement, do so in the spirit of constructive criticism- departments regularly adopt many of such suggestions. Finally, use your judgement to decide if the viva is the appropriate time to mention a particularly negative experience: if so, do so as objectively as possible and avoid naming individuals.

 

How can I prepare?

1. Final year project

Read your final year project, and be acquainted with the most important references. Be prepared to discuss such questions as:

Tell me what you learned from your project?
Why did you choose this project?
What were the objectives of the project?
Were the objectives addressed?
How did you go about doing (experiment A)?
Tell me another way of doing (method B).
How did you know when you were finished?
What would happen if __________?
What did not work?
Why did you choose (method B)?
What are the limitations of (method B)?
If you were to start again, is there anything you would like to change?
What were the best features of your project?
Why did you choose the statistical methods that are in your project?
Is there another possible explanation for your results?
What further research would you liked to have conducted, and why?

2. Be ready to discuss central themes of your general degree discipline and academic modules.

In many ways, there is not a lot that you can do to prepare for discussions on these subjects- the preparation has been the learning effort that you have put in over the duration of your degree!

3. In anticipation of being asked to comment on the support that you have received, have a few positive and negative aspects of your learning and teaching experiences.

 

Tips and advice for the oral examination

Be prepared!

Be well presented. It may well be customary for students in your department to wear a suit. The oral exam is not a fashion show, but you should at least be well groomed and neatly dressed.

Stay calm and pleasant.

Listen carefully to the questions.

Don't answer simply 'yes' or 'no' to questions; on the other hand do not give a prepared speech. Try to answer the question as it is put, remembering that you are engaged in an academic conversation. If you don't understand the question, ask the examiner to repeat the question, or repeat your interpretation to the examiner. If you still don't understand the question, then it is better to admit it than to try and bluff.

Be prepared to justify your ideas and conclusions. If the examiners challenge your interpretation but you feel that your case is a good one, muster your arguments and be willing to present your case firmly but courteously. However, if the examiners have identified a genuine weakness, concede the point gracefully. Even if you feel the examiners are unreasonably critical do not become argumentative or allow the discussion to become heated. You can agree to differ and to reconsider the point.

Don't be overly worried that some parts of the exam were really difficult- it is only by pushing your to your limits that the examiner can determine your ability. 

All You Need To Know About MEP

 

Mechanical, electrical, and plumbing services (MEP) is a significant component of the construction supply chain. MEP design is critical for design decision-making, accurate documentation, performance and cost-estimating, construction planning, managing and operating the resulting facility. It includes:-

 

 

HVAC (heating, ventilating, and air conditioning) is the technology of indoor and vehicular environmental comfort. Its goal is to provide thermal comfort and acceptable indoor air quality. HVAC system design is a subdiscipline of mechanical engineering, based on the principles of thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, and heat transfer.Refrigeration is sometimes added to the field's abbreviation as HVAC&R or HVACR, or ventilating is dropped as in HACR (such as the designation of HACR-rated circuit breakers).

 

 

Firefighting is the act of extinguishing fires. A firefighter suppresses and extinguishes fires to protect lives and to prevent the destruction of property and of the environment. Firefighters may provide other valuable services to their communities, including emergency medical services.

Firefighting demands a professional approach. Many firefighters achieve a high degree of technical skill as a result of years of training in both general firefighting techniques and developing specialist expertise in particular fire and rescue operations such as aircraft/airport rescue, wilderness fire suppression, and search and rescue.

One of the major hazards associated with firefighting operations could possibly be the toxic environment created by combustible materials, the four major risks are smoke, oxygen deficiency, elevated temperatures, and poisonous atmospheres. Additional hazards include falls and structural collapse that can exacerbate the problems entailed in a toxic environment. To combat some of these risks, firefighters carry self-contained breathing equipment.

 

Electrical system design is the design of electrical systems. This can be as simple as a flashlight cell connected through two wires to a light bulb or as involved as the space shuttle. Electrical systems are groups of electrical components connected to carry out some operation. Often the systems are combined with other systems. They might be subsystems of larger systems and have subsystems of their own. For example, a subway rapid transit electrical system is composed of the wayside electrical power supply, wayside control system, and the electrical systems of each transit car. Each transit car’s electrical system is a subsystem of the subway system. Inside of each transit car there are also subsystems, such as the car climate control system.

 

 

Plumbing is any system that conveys fluids for a wide range of applications. Heating and cooling, waste removal, and potable water delivery are among the most common uses for plumbing however plumbing's not limited to these applications. Plumbing utilizes pipes, valves, plumbing fixtures,tanks, and other apparatuses to convey fluids. Trades that work with plumbing such as boilermakers, plumbers, and pipefitters are referred to the plumbing trade. In the Developed world plumbing infrastructure is critical for public health and sanitation.

 

MEP is mainly applied in the field of construction. MEP is a must in all the upcoming and ongoing construction projects around the world. Since construction is a field that continues to develop with the passing of years, the scope of MEP is wide and you will find its application in the most remote of places.

 

Opportunities after studying MEP are abundant especially in a country like India which is a developing nation where the construction field is booming. In most developing and fast growing countries there are huge demands for Mechanical, Electrical and Plumbing workers on huge projects such as construction of Airports, Hospitals, Schools, Shopping Malls and such, where central air conditioning system is applied.

 

Eligibility & Certification- Candidates who have completed their Diploma or B.tech courses can specialize inthis field and get placed inthe above mentioned scenerios. They can obtain Govt approved certification from CTDS or STED council after attending the 6 months diploma course.

If you would like to know more about the course and its benefits feel free to contact us at
Email- tcr@coreengineer.com
Phone- +91 9447 833 399, 0487-2333399