In the academic research world, things are still largely paper and journal based.  This makes a lot of sense, you send an article to a journal, it’s reviewed by academic peers, and then published in a journal.  For most dissertations, the goal is to publish a hardcopy, which sits in a library somewhere.  More pro-active institutions allow you to download dissertations from a library website, and often times the content has also been published in journal form.

I’ve been thinking of how to publish and promote my dissertation online, to maximize its impact on the world.  This just means, I want to make it as open as possible for search engines and interested researchers to find and to read.  I thought about making it into a giant webpage, and am still working on converting it to a Joomla! website, but this isn’t automatic, although published it on a content management system like Joomla! or Wordpress offers the best mix of on-demand reading and SEO.  In conjunction with a book I’m promoting, I decided to experiment with Issuu.com, where one can upload a PDF document and then embed a viewer (flash based) anywhere on the internet.  This offers many advantages.  For one, anyone can access the dissertation with a web browser, second, it can be easily embedded and distributed like an online magazine.

One primary drawback of Issuu is that is isn’t easy to quickly search through a document, which is really needed when going through a research document.  That’s one reason why publishing on a CMS website is ideal, because the document is then fully optimized for searching and a reader can quickly find the most important parts of the research, which they can then use to further their own projects.

Having lofty goals is good for individuals. It motivates us think, more importantly to imagine the possibility of attaining things which should be impossible – when viewed from within the conventional idea of what is possible.

Google is littered with random stories about conspiricies and views on the fake moon landing. This missed the point. The moon landing wasn’t simply the act of placing living humans on the surface of the Moon. It was the momentum of inspiration and innovation, both physical and mental, as well as philosophical which embodies the true impact of the Apollo 11 mission, and the landing of humans on the Moon on July 20, 1969.

On July 21st, 1938 a climbing team including Heinrich Harrer, Anderl Heckmair, Fritz Kasparek and Ludwig Vörg began their asscent of the Eiger Nordwand. The climbing of the Alps, and of many mountains can be as phycologically daunting and mentally liberating as the idea of flying to the nearest planet. The idea of climbing a mass of rock on our planet might seem like an unlikely comparision to flying to the moon. But if you’ve ever looked up the face of a mountain, and tried to imagine a route up what appears to be a barren face, then you can understand the will requried to attain a feat such as launching people into Space. For, until it has been done, it’s nothing but fantasy, an idea to preoccupy the tohughts. But when the summit has been achieved, when a person has been landed on the moon, then we can look out again into the further unkown, and imagine another place to see, another idea to understand, and the Universe becomes a little less vast.

Professor Thomas Scheibel is going to talk about the development of techniques in the biological materials realm, which enable the manufacture of synthetic spider silk via the development of proteins. The story of this product being brought to market is going to be covered.

This is the stuff which is truly awesome to hear about, bridging the great divide between engineering and biologically inspired materials, which make use of the design which has gone into different natural biological materials. Animals and plants, insects and all manner of tiny organisms have gone through millions of years of design iterations to reach their present form. By comparison, a car engine has likely gone through what, maybe 10 or so real design iterations and an equal number of significant design refinements over the course of a decade?

http://www.inet-basel.ch/lounge

http://www.amazee.com/innovation-networks

7. Oktober 2009

In the dielectric form polymers are layered with electrodes and a voltage is applied, the electrostatic forces then lead to deformation of the material. Dielectric EAPs therefore rely on the electrostatic forces between electrodes to induce actuation by expansion of the polymer layer. When a high voltage is applied electrostatic attraction between the electrodes leads to an expansion in the plane of the actuator.

Ionic EAPs function via the displacement of ions in the polymer. The required driving voltages are generally on the order of a few volts, less than that required for dielectric EAPs. However, a larger driving current is required. Common applications for EAPs include artificial muscles, body sensors, and peristaltic pump designs. Due to the viscoelastic nature of the base polymer material, EAP actuators generally exhibit low response times.

At the present time, the commercialization of EAP materials is not sufficiently advanced to provide a characterized material source to be considered for a smart materials characterization study. The long-term reliability of EAP actuators is also a concern, dielectric actuators need to be pre-stressed but degradation of the pre-stress stiffness can occur. The advent of new polymers will no doubt lead to improvement in EAP designs and reliability.

The most common SMA is Nitinol (Ti3Ni4), and research into it dates back to research by the United States Navy, hence it’s name, Nickel Titanium Navy Ordinance Labs (Nitinol). The morphing affect of SMAs relies on the temperature dependent phase transformation between austenite and martensite. The shape memory effect is possible through reversibility of the martensite transformation via self-accommodation of martensitic plates.

Shape memory alloys rely on a transformation sequence between martensite and austenite. A shape memory material may be mechanically deformed while exhibiting a martensitic phase, and return to its original shape when heated above its transformation temperature. When heated, the material goes through a reverse transformation, the phase changing from martensite to austenite. Upon cooling from the austenite phase, the material crystallography returns to martensite. The transformation is rather versatile, enabling the manufacture of three different types of shape memory effects: one-way, two-way, and mechanical shape memory.

The narrow composition tolerance of Nitinol, and cost of the raw materials makes it difficult to manufacture in large bulk. Advances are being made in the area of iron and copper based SMAs, which offer a lower material cost. Super elastic tendons and texture-changing surfaces are common applications of Nitinol-based smart material system designs.

However, the phase transformation dependence on temperature renders a poor actuation response time unless the material can be heated and cooled at high rates. This implies that the surface area to volume ratio of a Nitinol actuator should be very high, such as occurs with a Nitinol coating as opposed to a Nitinol beam actuator. Despite a great deal of research expenditure, Nitinol based smart material designs have seen limited success. One drawback of SMAs such as Nitinol is the accumulation of dislocations in the crystal lattice, which can limit the service life and long-term reliability of Nitinol actuators. Over millions of fatigue cycles degradation in shape recovery can be seen.

Traditional materials such as wood, concrete and metals are generally highly engineered and optimized to certain design requirements. Systems in Nature however, use complex materials, which are genetically optimized through natural selection to accommodate the changing conditions of a certain operating environment. In many ways current material design concepts are being rethought with an eye towards systems, which integrate active components into traditional materials to create material systems which interact with their environment. One method of accomplishing this goal is the integration of sensors and actuators into laminate materials. This allows the engineering of multi-functional products, which can sense and respond to changes in their environment and thereby increase the functionality of the original design. The field of smart materials seeks to fill the gap between traditional uni-functional and controllable multifunction materials.

The goal of smart materials research is to enable the design of materials that can function beyond the traditional design interests such as strength, stiffness, thermal conductivity, etc. An active or smart material system can generally be thought of consisting of three essential elements, the active material, the passive material, and the control system.

The active material is defined as the actuator or sensor element. As a sensor, the device exists to receive information from the operating environment (such as vibration or mechanical deformation). As an actuator the device enables interaction with the environment via shape or vibration control. The term “passive material” or “host structure” denotes the material that the device is integrated into. Finally, the control system refers to the mechanism or program which collects information from the sensor elements and controls actuation of the material. Modeling of various control systems has been addressed in numerous works, but research into the coupling between device and structure is infrequently addressed. Ideally, the same device should be able to act as a sensor and actuator, thereby lending greater flexibility to fulfilling the specific design requirements of any given application.