• Question: how have you modified already produced products and ideas so that they are improved and can also be used well in different environments and circumstances??

    Asked by emilyyyy.s :) to Philippa, Pete, Neil on 13 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Pete Symons

      Pete Symons answered on 13 Mar 2015:

      Hi emilyyyy.s:),

      I have, to be more accurate I have been involved in the safety assessment of modifications to existing products.

      The Ministry of Defence is always modifying its aircraft and equipment, that is because when the equipment was originally designed and produced it was designed to work in a particular type of environment but often the environment in which they are used changes over time due to different military (or humanitarian) threats;

      For example a helicopter might have been designed to work in arctic conditions because of a military threat in a cold country, but during the time in which the helicopter is in service (with the RAF) there may be a war or problem somewhere else in the world which isn’t cold (somewhere like Iraq). Heat has an effect on the lift characteristics of a helicopter so you need more powerful engines to get higher. In this case in order to operate the aircraft in Iraq you would need to modify the existing engines to give you more power so that you could use the helicopter like you wanted.

      I hope this helps!

    • Photo: Neil Taylor

      Neil Taylor answered on 16 Mar 2015:

      Hi emilyyyy.s :)!

      Great question!

      As part of my work, I use finite element analysis (FEA) software. The software allows you to draw an object (e.g. a pipeline), divide it into little blocks, and then ask the program to work out how the object will react to temperature/bending/stretching etc.

      A professor at a university had invented a special “element” for FEA that modelled the seabed (i.e. the soil that the pipeline lies on top of at the bottom of the sea) in ways that hadn’t been done before. He created a single element model in FEA (i.e. there was only 1 element – so it was a tiny model), ran some analysis, and then checked that it agreed with data from some lab tests.

      My job was to take the single element that he had designed and test if it worked for the types of models that we use in industry – which are hundreds or thousands of elements long!

      I tested the element in a range of different pipeline models (to model different environments and circumstances), and provided feedback to the professor as to what worked, and what didn’t work.

      The professor would then edit the code and send it back to me, and the process would repeat itself. The end result that the code was improved 😀 .

    • Photo: Philippa Jefferis

      Philippa Jefferis answered on 16 Mar 2015:

      Hi,

      What you are describing is innovation and I believe engineers are really good at that. Every day I work on different projects, and no project is ever the same. That means I have to use my engineering knowledge to adapt my designs to meet the requirements of that particular problem.

      However the next challenge for engineers is using or knowledge in one field and applying it to another. We are getting better as we see lots of ideas starting to be shared further a field. It is likely that in a few years I will be designing my repairs with technology integrated into it.

      On one project we have already started using technology that Neil has probably used for a long time. It is the use of fibre optics to “listen” – previously used in pipes to detect where leaks may be due to change in vibrations. We now use it along the road side to detect where there may be traffic as the slower cars will send different vibrations to moving traffic.

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