Smart Materials

Smart materials are one of the coolest new technologies out there right now, but they're hard to explain without actually seeing.  So if you go to about 4:00 into this video and watch for few seconds you'll see some smart materials in action and get a pretty good idea of how exciting they are for engineers.  The important part about the moving metal flaps in the demonstration is that those flaps are moving on their own and aren't being controlled by anything.  The way the heat from the sun effects the material they're made out of makes them curl up, so if they were placed on the outside of a skyscraper they would open on the sides of the building that were getting sunlight.  These new vents would let the building cool down easier from the heat that this sunlight would be adding, and means that skyscrapers with this kind of technology can stay cooler in hot summer months while using less electricity to power the massive air conditioning systems they need now.  Later in the video there's another part where she talks about making building walls open and close in the same way, so that the building could breathe itself naturally throughout the day and move air around to keep it cool without needing any power at all.

Another type of smart material that engineers can use in a lot of different places is conductive concrete.  This is just concrete with nanosized metal bits in the mix, but the metal content is set up in a way that lets the concrete conduct just a little bit of electricity.  This doesn't mean that the concrete will electrocute people who walk or drive on it, but the material can send small charges around to find faults in the concrete that would be caused by cracks or other weaknesses and defects long before they would be visible to human eyes or before they become a dangerous problem.  This would also mean that bridges, roads, and even building walls could be scanned for any areas that need to be repaired in a few seconds, which is a lot faster than the current way of walking very slowly around and looking very carefully at every inch of the surface to look for cracks and holes.  Another way that conductive concrete could be useful would be in designing safer roads for people to drive on in the rain or at night.  Usually in these times it can be hard to see the lines of the road, and sometimes the paint has faded off and is impossible to see.  But with electroluminescent materials a paint could used that lights up whenever a small current is run through it.  So by turning on the conductive concrete an entire highway or city could have roads with lanes that light up at night or in the rain to make it easier for drivers to see where they are going and help prevent accidents in these dangerous situations.

Nanotechnology

Probably one of the biggest advances in science that is happening around now is the development of nanotechnology in research labs.  When a lot of people think of nanotechnology they think of tiny robots that can build larger things by working together, but this is just a futuristic prediction of what nanotechnology might eventually turn into after a long time.  Right now though nanotechnology has already given engineers many more tools that they can use in their work, and it has many exciting new possible uses too.  

One very recent new technology for engineering that comes from nanotechnology is high efficiency solar panels.  These solar panels can capture 90% of the light they absorb and turn it into the heat that is needed to create power.  This is a much better use of this light than current solar panels can provide, and with a much higher efficiency solar panel engineers can generate more power with less area available to put the panels.  This means that buildings could be designed with solar panels like these on top and be able to generate enough power to possible run the entire building.  Also, the panels can be used very easily to help generate power for entire cities because they can replace the coal, oil, and gas that is used in current power plants.  These plants just need a source of heat to turn water into steam so they can use the steam to push the turbine and make electricity.  And these solar panels can be used to make this heat without fossil fuels, so cities can upgrade their power plants and get more sustainable power without having to replace their entire grids and systems.  

Another nanotechnology discovery that has helped engineering is ultrahigh performance concrete.  This is a mixture of concrete that uses carbon nanofibers to become stronger and lighter than any other type of concrete available.  So engineers are using it on places like bridges, where the weight of a concrete deck for cars to travel over is a big part of the weight that the supports have to carry.  If a new concrete is both stronger and lighter, then this lets engineers use less material and make the bridges cheaper to make.  It also lets them make bridges taller and longer than they ever could before, because this new material can completely open up new ways of designing and building bridges.

A final nanotechnology that has a lot of promise for the future is carbon nanotubes.  These are very small little cylinders of carbon atoms that are the strongest material ever discovered in history.  If engineers can figure out how to make a lot of them cheaply, they could be used for all sorts of impossible sounding things like building a space elevator.  But right now they can only be made in tiny amounts and are too expensive to be used realistically.

New Technologies in Engineering

Engineers have always been the people that have taken new discoveries in science and technology and found out ways to make them useful to people.  Back in ancient times engineers were the ones who figured out how to get water into cities, like how the Romans built the aquaducts to get fresh water across miles of land.  Engineers also needed to figure out how to make the discovery of electricity something that everyone could use, and designed and built the power plants and power grids that everyone relies on today.  So when scientists make breakthroughs, it's up to the engineers to find a way of putting this new knowledge to use in the real world.  This is especially true in modern times. Scientists are discovering new things faster than ever and the challenges that engineers need to solve are much more complicated than they have ever been in the past.

One of the biggest challenges that modern engineers face is from creating sustainable buildings, cities, and communities.  This is because current ways of building things results in a lot of carbon pollution in the atmosphere.  This has lead to climate change around the world, and engineers need to come up with new ways that have much less of an impact on the world's climate and use less resources than they do now.  A lot of this can be done by setting new rules and regulations, or even just passing laws that stop people from using power and water wastefully, but if engineers want to be able to do enough to make a serious difference with climate change then they are going to have to look at new technologies to help them do it.

For example, solar and wind power are new technologies that can create electricity sustainably and with no carbon pollution, but it is difficult to find ways to use them to power entire cities.  Some engineers in Australia though have found a way to power an entire office building completely with the solar and wind power it creates on its own, meaning that the building is already close to completely sustainable on its own.  On top of this, the building also recycles all of its own water using the power it generates itself, so it uses a very little amount of the water resources in the city where it is.

Both of these things are very important if the world wants to build sustainable communities.  Fossil fuels like oil and natural gas will start to run out later in this century, and unless engineers begin to design things that require less of this fuel now cities won't be able to keep their electricity for ever.  Also, the population of the world gets bigger and bigger every year, but the supply of fresh water for all of these people to share doesn't grow at all.  So unless engineers can find ways to use less water, there won't be enough water for everyone to drink in the future.

Not all of the new technologies that engineers are using are related to building sustainable cities or fighting against climate change.  Some of the most interesting ones just let engineers build things that have never been built before.  But new technologies are always being experimented with by engineers, and this blog is about all of them.