Project Update!

Over the past few weeks I have been so busy with coursework and completely caught up in Halloween and Guy Fawkes night, I forgot to update you on my project!

So recently I have finally managaed to complete the calibration process of my experiment despite a few problems on the way and I'm now well under way, getting some real data to analyse. Here are a few pictures to show you whats happening now in the lab!

This was just after the the sand went into the tank.

This is the plough in action today and works as follows:

•  The trolley is pulled along the tank using a pulley system attached to a motor,
• The horizontal distance is recorded using another cable attached to the trolley which is electronically communicated to the computer interface.
• The magnitude of the velocity of the trolley is determined by the voltage input. This is controlled by the user.
• Finally, the depth achived is recoded using a spring loaded instrument, which electronically records the displacement as a voltage which can then be converted using the calibration.

And since it is Halloween, heres a picture of my pumpkin!

 

125th Anniversary of the Tay Bridge

This evening I attended a special lecture organised by the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) to commemorate the 125th anniversary of the completion of the Tay Bridge.

Duncan Sooman, a celebrated civil engineer, from Network Rail was the speaker for the evening end enlightened us on not only the history of the Tay Bridge but on the repairs and maintenance of the bridge today.

Being very involved in the project, our speaker was able to take us from the initial conception of the maintenance project, through procurement and tender, to what is happening right now in the ongoing project including looking at the problems that are currently being faced.

I found this really interesting as I could directly relate it to a piece of coursework I am currently in the process of completing as part of my Construction Management module. I am completing an appraisal of the construction management during the New Wembley Stadium project, and it really was refreshing to hear of a current project where so much detail is being put into the management of the project.

Overall the talk was really inspiring. I really felt the relevance of my current coursework to my future career.

Transatlantic Travel

Imagine being able to travel from London to New York in 54 minutes. Now if someone said that to me, I'd say it must be impossible, but I've found out that this isn't the case! A model has been made that shows that high speed transatlantic travel is actually possible, in the form of a magnetic train within a floating vaccum pipeline.

Futuristic engineering is a real interest of mine, and to find out that this is possible has blown my mind! It's projects like this that I dream of working on in the future.

This is an image courtesy of http://dsc.discovery.com which shows how it is imagined the project would work.

You can find more about the idea at http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/engineering/transatlantictunnel/interactive/interactive.html

Boston's Big Dig

Having a quiet Sunday night in and just looking at some engineering projects and came across 'Boston's Big Dig'. The project interested me as it is extremely cumbersome to be placed in such a big city, such as Boston.

The idea is to bury a lot of the main infrastructure of the city underground and reclaim land on the surface, for parks and added greenery. However, this project isn't as, for lack of a better word, 'simple'. The project encompasses several large projects such as the widest cable stay bridge in the world, the Zakim Bridge, which is 10 lanes wide, and looks pretty stunning!!

The project also includes the Fort Point Channel Crossing, an amazing 11 lane tunnel to cross the channel, that was designed to sit above the existing subway system by a mere 5 metres!! Also included is an Airport Tunnel, 3/4 of a mile long crossing Boston harbour to relieve traffic from the city centre and provide a more efficient and time saving route to travel.

The project really has caught my eye, and I can't believe I'm only finding out about it's exisitance now!! Boston is now another place I just need to visit for its engineering value, and the inspiration it has given me!

Starting Lab Work!

So last week I started on the experimental phase of my project, mainly just getting to know the lab, doing my risk assessment and setting up my experiment.

This is the tank in the lab which I'll be shovelling sand in and out of over for the next few months!

After getting to know all the staff in the lab and getting everything sorted, I had to prepare the bed of the tank.

Firstly as you can see, I created a gravel layer as the base. I then covered the gravel in plain multi-purpose cloths. These cloths acted as a permeable layer on the bed. This helps when I'm adding the element of water to my experiment but also helps when I'm shovelling sand in and out of the tank.

I've also now added the sand to my experiment. It is an incredible fine silica sand. I've also started doing a few trial runs, can't wait to get even further this week and get some good results! Will post more pictures soon!

Honours Project: Multi Pass and Deep Ploughing Strategies

Hello!

I'm now well into my first semester of fourth year and now my dissertation/project is starting to get interesting.

I'm going to be looking into multi pass trenching, which, in a nutshell, is ploughing soil from the seabed in order to lay a pipeline underneath the surface. There are dangers associated having pipelines sitting on, or above the seabed, such as external loading from fishing and trawling nets and hydrodynamic loading. There is also the risk of movement of the pipeline, by thermal expansion on commissioning. In areas such as polar regions, trenches must be deeper than normal, which isn't possible when ploughing in one pass. Multi pass, is where the trench is ploughed more than once in order to make a deeper trench.


The purpose of my study is to create an original model to investigate the effect of multi pass pipeline ploughing by using experimental results from 1/50th laboratory model testing, as well as creating a tow force prediction model that incorporates multi pass ploughing.
Next wait, I'm starting the experiment phase of the project, can't wait to get into the lab for my first proper original investigation!!

Will post pictures and more from the lab next week!!

Tough Mudder

This weekend I participated in Tough Mudder Scotland 2012. It is a half marathon length assault course designed by special forces and one real challenge!

I was doing it as part of a team from my work, DUSA Dundee. We decided to participate in the challenge back in February and have been training hard since then. The course is set out not as a race but a way to test your stamina, mental grit and camaraderie. It is all about teamwork.

The course carries obstacles such as firewalking, jumping into pools of ice, getting shocked by electricity of up to 10,0000 volts, to name just a few!!!

Through our teamwork and training we all made it to the end earning the orange headband to show we are mudders as well as a t-shirt and a well deserved beer, it was a fantastic feeling!!

So far we have raised £633.75 for Help for Heroes and still taking donations at http://www.bmycharity.com/toughmudderDUSA. Thanks to everyone who has donated and helped along the way and especially to DUSA, who have helped so much funding the travel and our awesome t-shirts!

If you would like to find out more about Tough Mudder and the course, you can do on the website http://toughmudder.co.uk/

Art Deco

So tonight I've been doing a bit of research into different periods of Art and Design, and came across some really cool art deco poster designs, but one stood out in particular:

A recent movie, yet a poster that looks as if it was designed during the art deco period during the 1920's and 1930's. This has really motivated me too look into using vintage design in my work.

Art, and in particular graphic design, has always been an interest of mine and in particular Art Deco posters.

Poster courtesy of: http://blurppy.com/2012/03/09/art-deco-batman-posters-by-rodolforever-reyes/

CHECK IT OUT! :)

Wimbledon!

After the craziness of Wimbledon over the past few weeks (Congratulations Serena and Roger!) I learnt a little more about the engineering that has went into creating the roof that covers centre court.

I was amazed at the little things that don't really get mentioned, like the guttering system in place. From an architectural view as well, it certainly does do as much as possible to give the impression of an open air court.

Photo courtesy of: http://uk.prweb.com/releases/2009/07/prweb2610154.htm

TRAMS!!

As you an see from the photo, the trams are causing absolute chaos outside my work in Edinburgh.

Although I must say that part of it I have found interesting. In the main, the practice of health and safety on site. The amount of violations as I know anyway, was unbelievable. Scary to think how some engineers view health and safety practice, in particular the lack of it.

Wild Weekend in Dartmoor National Park

On Friday, I was up at 4.30am to get ready and go into Edinburgh to catch my 9 hour train down to Plymouth for the Royal Academy of Engineering's Wild 1 course, set in the beautiful Dartmoor National Park. I was eager and ready to go and see what the weekend would bring as I really had no idea of what to expect once I arrived.

Upon arrival at Plymouth Station I found the rest of arrivals for the course and we all got chatting about our different courses and what we were thinking we were doing over the course. This was when I first met Aimen who studied in Leeds and he was telling me about a placement over in Tokyo he had an interview for. TOKYO!! I was amazed, and it really got me thinking about why I have limited myself to just looking for placements locally in the UK and so it is now my intention to broaden my horizons a bit and look all over the world for some experience as I believe it would be an even better oppertunity and experience.

Once we got to the Dartmoor Training Centre, I met the rest of the participants and the WILD team, who were absolutely brilliant. We had a briefing and then were split up into 3 teams of around 9 or 10 people. I was put in team Yellow and then we were told that the teams are in competition over the course of the weekend. Once we were in teams we were given the task of remembering everyones names, their engineering discipline and the university they were from. There were people doing civil engineering like myself to those doing automotive engineering and ship science. I was so surprised by the broad spectrum of courses. Afterwards, we had our dinner (Shepherd's Pie and Veg) and then got down to some problem solving activities which included building a tower from card, aiming to achive the maximum height possible whilst maintaing stability. It was a great night and a good oppertunity to get to know my teammates. After the challenges we had time for a beer to wind down and then and bed.

On the Saturday, each team set of at intervals of 45 minutes in the morning with a clue as to where the destination was. After working out some anagrams and a bit of map reading, we had our destination, a route and our first bearing and left the training centre at 8am. On reaching our destination, our team was presented with a challenge. We were to transport a dummy (posing as an injured person) across a series of rivers, find medicine for the dummy and get into a safe zone in as quick a time as possible. It was a great task and challenge and a big learning curve for us all. We all had very strong opinions of how to carry out the task and it became very apparent that we were all used to leading teams as opposed to following someone else. Soon, we learnt to listen and work as a team properly to find the best strategy for the challenge. After completing the challenge, we recieved another clue about our next destination and so on the day went. The other challeges were abseiling down a cliff face, herding our blindfolded team into a pen using whistles and rattles and then crossing a freezing cold lake using some rope and rubber rings (no swimming was allowed). After drying off from the last challenge we were brought back to the centre for a warm shower and some tea, coffee and cakes! Our team then set to work on another challenge we were faced with - creating a play based around the question 'What is an engineer?'. We chose to go along the route of a comedy sketch which looked at solving some simple engineering problems and we included a video of some engineering structures we encountered during the day. It was then time for dinner (Roast Garlic Chicken with Veg, Coleslaw and Potato Salad - Amazing!) before we all sat down for the results of the days tasks. Our team was in joint 1st place with the Red team, and the Green team came last. So it all came down to our plays. The other teams were really good and entertaining and so we didn't think we had a chance of winning but... we did! Afterwards, we all went down to the local pub with the WILD crew for a few drinks before bed.

Sunday morning was a lazy start but we were up and out by 8am and set to work on some challenges including creating a guttering system for water to be transported uphill, guiding the team to picking up unseen objects with a hook and navigating between rocks with another dummy (we named Eve). We finished around 10am and sat down to a brunch (Sausages, Spanish Omlette, Potato Wedges and Salad) before going through the scores a final time to find that yet again we were joint 1st place! After packing we sat down and discussed the weekend in our groups before setting off home again.

The weekend was truly an experience I will never forget. I have met so many interesting and like minded people that I hope to stay in touch with and have learnt so much about myself and gained so many skills from the weekend. It was an amazing experience and will definitely be applying for WILD 2 next year.

WILD 1 with The Royal Academy of Engineering

Next weekend from Friday 22nd to Sunday 24th June I will be participating in the WILD 1 course run by the Royal Academy of Engineering in and around the Dartmoor training centre near Plymouth.

It is an exciting prospect as we have been kept mainly in the dark as to what to expect from the course but I think it will be a great way to meet and network with other engineering students from around the UK with very similar interests to myself, and to gain new skills that I can hopefully implement in my course and in my future career.

The objectives set out by the RAEng and WILD team are to help introduce the concept of leadership and teamwork and bring out our strengths and weaknesses in each field, to introduce us to Dartmoor's dramatic natural beauty and the challenges that it poses, and finally to link in the value of WILD 1 to the values and philosophy of the RAEng.

I have left a link to the WILD course website which shows a bit more about the sort of activities I'll be involved in over the course of the weekend.

http://www.evisionwild.com/

It's been a while...

Hello!

Sorry it has been a while since my last update and I have since finished the 'Pavilion Project' and will try and get the finished portfolio, poster and presentation to you as soon as possible.

This project was a great insight into architechture and engineering and I learnt alot about how portfolios work in the industry. I also learnt a lot about how I work myself as from the brilliant feedback that Jamie and I recieved I realised where my strengths lie but also where I could work upon.

It was always stated that this was a learning module, and in my fifth year we get a chance to do a similar module again, but on an even larger scale. I plan on detailing this a lot better to my readers when I eventually start even more cumbersome project. It is a daunting yet exciting prospect as there are so many ideas now floating around my head as to what to do.

Placement of the Pavilion

Recently development of the final concept has been the main focus of our time. We are looking into many different aspects of how to improve the structure, designing the structural elements, and looking at how the structure is to be built and collapsed.

A main part of this was the placement of the pavilion.

After brainstorming ideas on placements and the reasons for such placements, we have decided roughly on where the pavilion is to be situated.

As we can see from the sketch, the pavilion is to be placed on the west side of the campus green adjacent to paths to the west and south of the structure. The location was picked for many reasons:

• Proximity to DUSA and the main road leading to the campus green.
• In view from may different entrances onto the campus green eg. from Matthew Building, ISE, Library and Seabraes Halls.
• Access points from pathways around the site, encouraging visitors and flow through the pavilion.
• Seen from the Air bars' floor to ceiling windows, generating interest and encouraging visitors to the structure.
• Possibility to use outdoor space near to union where there is a heavy footfall.
• etc.

This placement is not as yet finalised however it gives a great deal of understanding of what can be done to further the development of the design.

Initial Ideas

Over the past couple of weeks, we have been looking at different designs and ideas for the travelling pavilion. There were 3 main concepts as detailed below.

Idea 1: This was based around the idea of a versatile pavilion to be used on all occasions and one that could easily be used outwith the university campus for projects in the centre of Dundee and also as part of the ongoing V&A Dundee project on the waterfront. The shape was designed to be rigid and triangular to mirror some of the architecture around Dundee as well as easily collapsable for quick assemble and storage.

Idea 2: This concept was built around looking at the shapes of the surrounding buildings on the campus. Straight lines and edges to represent buildings such as DUSA and the Matthew Building and curved pod like features to mirror the Queen Mother Building and the Chaplaincy. It was decided that the pod like shapes would take on a tier-like structure to give a visually exciting pavilion from all views and not just from plan view.

Idea 3: This concept was loosely based on the second idea, trying to create a structure that mirrored the surrounding buildings as well as use the space on the campus green to its full advantage. The idea formed an almost 'lemon' shape and the sloped roof was created to give possible room to recycle rain water and add solar panels in an effort to create a building thqat was not only visually stimulating but that was also environmentally friendly.

After analysis of all the concepts, Idea 2 was chosen to take forward to be developed further, using several ideas from the other concepts to develop the pavillion.

Conceptual Design Project

This semester we have been assigned the task of designing a travelling pavilion for the University of Dundee and DUSA (Dundee University Student's Association) to be located on campus, specifically on the campus green located in the centre of the campus. Various restraints were given in the brief to be worked around however the design and 'look' of the pavillion itself was for us as the designers to decide upon.

To start with, we researched current design portfolios to come up with an idea of what is expected. This one, a design of the new V&A building in Dundee by the architects at REX was particulary inspiring as they were able to show exactly how they envisioned the building and what they wanted to do with the space within seconds of opening their portfolio.

http://vandaatdundee.com/your-future/PDF/REX_web.pdf