News by Subject Technology & Engineering

A group of researchers at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid has recently developed a new software aimed at the analysis of energy generation systems based on kites and drones. In a recently published scientific article, they used the software to study the behavior of these systems while transforming the kinetic energy of the wind into useful electrical energy.

Scientists from NUST MISIS have tested experimental composite materials for aircraft brakes. New materials, reinforced by carbon 'fabric', have turned out to be far more durable than the current analogues. As a result of testing, the scientists developed recommendations to improve the fracture toughness of both existing and developed composite materials for braking systems, which in the long term can improve the reliability and safety of aircraft operation and reduce maintenance costs.

A world with faster-charging batteries begins with an understanding of how positively charged lithium ions move through the electrode to deliver energy. New research from UD has provided that, used X-rays to get a micron-scale movie of how lithium distributes within the electrode while lithium-ion batteries are running.

ORNL story tips: Oak Ridge National Laboratory neutrons investigate novel crystals' ability to capture carbon dioxide from air; gleaning valuable data from Twitter used to quickly map power outages, emergencies; ORNL's lightweight, heat-shielding graphite foam tested at Germany's Wendlestein 7-X stellarator yields positive results in fusion reactors; open source software scales up analysis of motor designs to run on supercomputers.

In a paper published today in Science Robotics, engineers at Brigham Young University detail new technology that allows them to build complex mechanisms into the exterior of a structure without taking up any actual space below the surface. This new class of mechanisms, called 'developable mechanisms,' get their name from developable surfaces, or materials that can take on 3-D shapes from flat conformations without tearing or stretching, like a sheet of paper or metal.

Desert ants are extraordinary solitary navigators. Researchers at CNRS and Aix-Marseille University, in the Institut des Sciences du Mouvement -- Étienne Jules Marey (ISM), were inspired by these ants as they designed AntBot, the first walking robot that can explore its environment randomly and go home automatically, without GPS or mapping. This work, published on Feb. 13, 2019, in Science Robotics, opens up new strategies for navigation in autonomous vehicles and robotics.

The heaviest vehicle to successfully land on Mars is the Curiosity Rover at 1 metric ton, about 2,200 pounds. Sending more ambitious robotic missions to the surface of Mars, and eventually humans, will require landed payload masses in the 5- to 20-ton range. To do that, we need to figure out how to land more mass. That was the goal of a recent study.