Cars of the Future

The article “Open Roads” in Mechanical Engineering discusses the Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize Competition in which teams attempted to build a car that could get 100 miles per gallon.  No limitations were imposed on the design of the cars; they only had to meet certain performance marks.  This resulted in an incredibly wide range of innovative ideas.

The Automotive X Prize was created in 2007 with a $10 million prize poll to encourage the development of high efficiency vehicles.  Teams are rewarded for a car that gets at least 100mpg and meets EPA emissions standards.  For those that made the mark, races determine the winner.  The cars would also have to meet a safety standard and the team would have to have a business plan for realizing mass production.

This past April, 21 companies presented 26 cars, only 15 of which passed the fuel efficiency and emissions standards.  

Here are some of the cars that were in the competition

The Tango – Commuter Cars, Spokane, Washington

The Tango is a very small compact only 39 inches wide, which is half the width of a normal car.  One distinguishing feature of the Tango is that it’s already a production vehicle.  The company’s president and driver, Rick Woodbury, reasoned that the small footprint of the car would reduce traffic congestion in addition to the fuel savings.

The battery power doesn’t have a long range, but can seat two.  At any rate, the car wasn’t meant to be driven long distances, but is designed for one purpose – the daily commute.  In fact, in many cities, it’s legal for a motorcycle or vehicle of similar width to run between traffic lanes.  The Tango can do just that.

With the small design the Tango can do 0-60mph from a stop in 4 SECONDS, while the electric motors delivering an astonishing 1000 ft.lb of torque.

The Tango is also about 3,300 lbs, one of the heaviest, and is solidly built with a race car style roll cage to protect the driver.

The Very Light Car – Edison2, Lynchburg, Virginia

Mounting the wheels away from the body inside a fuselage allowed for good handling and less air drag.  A Yamaha 250cc motorcycle engine powers the car, and was modified to re-circulate exhaust gas, which preheats intake air, improving efficiency.  Due to the small engine, every component on the car was made as light as possible, resulting in a weight less than 750 lbs.  The drag coefficient of .159 is impressive compared to about .3 for a normal car.  However, safety is a concern with the extremely lightweight vehicle.

The Viking 45

Unlike most other cars, the Viking 45 was built by students at the Vehicle Research Institute at Western Washington University.  This car was built with one thing in mind – to save money.  With the limited budget, they chose a 3-cylinder Honda Insight engine.  One extremely innovative aspect of the Viking was the construction of a carbon composite chassis, reducing the weight to 1,835 lbs.

There are still many tests to pass.  In late July, the Very Light Car did a 200 mile test with fuel still left and the end, averaging about 120 mpg, which will probably be good enough to win its class.  The Tango was eliminated for not meeting the fuel economy standard, and the Viking the 60 to 0 braking test.

At any rate, I think this is a great way to propel spur a new generation of high efficiency vehicles.  All the cars entered have design aspects that have never been seen before.

One thing to keep in mind is form and function.  Many people may be turned off by the small size or radical designs, but they are not meant to carry a lot of people or tow heavy items.  They are designed for efficiency.  Think of how many people drive their SUV’s and trucks to work every day by themselves; this represents a lot of wasted money and energy.  For some, these vehicles may be the answer they’ve been looking for.

I love my gas guzzling truck, but I think for daily commute purposes something like these cars would be ideal.

"Growth of Opportunity" - the future of the US power industry

This article in the October 2010 issue of Mechanical Engineering Magazine discusses the inevitable overhaul of the US power industry and its workforce.  Tens of thousands of new engineers are expected to be hired by 2030, but no one has been willing to predict when jobs will begin to open up or where the financial support will come from.

Electric Utilities expect about $500 billion in projects to be invested through 2030 to repair the crumbling infrastructure and accommodate the steadily increasing demand for electricity, but where the capital will come from is anyone's guess in this economy.  According to the Center for Energy Workforce Development, 45% of engineering jobs in the US power industry could become vacant by 2013 due to the aged workforce.  A vast percentage of the workforce are "Baby Boom" engineers who will be retiring soon. 

With the development of post WII technologies, the power industry exploded throughout the 50's, 60's, and 70's.  However, the deregulation of the industry in the 80's resulted in lower prices, and lower revenues.  Countless jobs were done away with as a result of the mergers, downsizing, and hiring freezes that ensued.

The result is an industry where the average worker is 48 years old, 5 years more than the average US worker.

The future need for Mechanical and Electrical Engineers is obvious, but the ones that retire will not be replaced one-to-one with new hires; staffing will be reduced.  With the evolving industry, most companies can reduce cost by outsourcing engineering and construction projects. 

However, the demand for electricity continues, and running power plants is literally a 24/7-365 job.  Everyday tasks for Mechanical Engineers "revolve around keeping power plants running for 40 to 60 years."

The article also points out ME's serve in traditional engineering roles, project managers, operations and maintenance managers, and plant managers.  In fact, the majority of managers in the utility industry are ME's.

I think this demonstrates the flexibility and breadth a Mechanical Engineering degree.  While most other fields are specialized to particular tasks, ME's study mechanics, kinematics, thermodynamics, materials sciences, structural analysis, and fluid dynamics.

I am well aware of the future opportunities in the power industry after working with Duke Energy.  The average age at Duke I believe is 50 years old!!!  They even offered a voluntary retirement package to condense workloads.  Young engineers will have unprecedented opportunities to take on leadership roles in the industry.

One major concern that folks at Duke and across the industry have expressed is the knowledge and experience that will be walking out the door in the coming years.  Because of the huge gap in age (you're either 50+ or 25 in the power industry it seems), there hasn't been enough time for the youngsters to learn what they need to know from the old guys.  Every plant has little nuances and tendencies; the same piece of equipment has different problems in different plants.  The things you can't learn in school, I have seen, are just as important if not more so for being a successful plant engineer.

I think it's crucial for the future reliability of the power industry to start hiring new engineers.  The knowledge of the older guys needs to be passed down before it's too late.

The government has simply made it too damn hard to raise capital for new coal or nuclear plants, and with the current recession, no one is being hired.  That's a whole other animal I won't get in to now, but some major policy changes on emissions and nuclear plants need to made, have to be made, for all of us to continue getting the reliable electricity we take for granted.

The Unwritten Laws of Engineering

The article cited for this blog post is titled The Unwritten Laws of Engineering from the October 2010 issue of the Mechanical Engineering Magazine of ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers).

W.J. King, author of The Unwritten Laws of Engineering, “observed that the chief obstacles to the success of engineers are of a personal and administrative rather than a technical nature.  King was an engineer with General Electric and later became a UCLA professor.  He admitted that his troubles in the engineering profession were not with the quality of his design work or his engineering expertise, but with the unwritten rules of professional conduct.

However menial and trivial your early assignments may appear, give them your best efforts.

The effort and enthusiasm put forth to accomplish even simple tasks will not go overlooked by superiors.  I know from firsthand experience how important that is.  While I was on a Co-op assignment with Duke Energy from January-August of this year, the vast majority of things assigned to me could have been handled by a 5^th grader, such as making copies, proofreading documents, etc, all of which had nothing to do with engineering competence.  However, I performed these tasks without complaint.  I actively sought out legitimate engineering projects and offered help on anything.  My superiors appreciated my enthusiasm, and slowly but surely, gave me more technically challenging tasks that I enjoyed doing.

Demonstrate the ability to get things done

Expressing initiative, resourcefulness, and persistence in all dealings will earn respect of colleagues.  Expressing the energy to start a project, keep it going, troubleshoot obstacles along the way will get you far.  Productivity is vital.

Develop a “Let’s go see!” attitude

King makes the point that an engineer can’t expect to be a successful problem solver in the real world by just sitting at a desk and stewing over drawings or reports to hypothesize a solution.  A real passion for going out in the field and visually assessing the problem is paramount.  

I can definitely relate to that.  My mentor at Duke would periodically come to my desk with projects he wanted me to be involved with.  Being totally new to the whole power plant thing, I typically was lost in the terminology and drawings.  However, once we got out in the field and took a look around, things fell into place.  It seems obvious that firsthand visual inspection is key to understanding the problem, but you would be surprised at how many engineers would sit at their desks all day.  I could never do that.

Strive for conciseness and clarity in oral or written reports; be extremely careful of the accuracy of your statements.

I can attest to the values of conciseness.  Nothing is more obnoxious or counter productive than listening to someone in a meeting ramble for 20 minutes about something that could have been said with 20 words.  The first step in a report or answer to a question is to “state the essence of the matter as succinctly as possible.”

King also expresses that if you do not know the answer to a question, do not try to guess out of a fear of looking incompetent.  A wrong answer is exponentially worse than no answer on major engineering projects.

According to Trevor Young, author of Technical Writing A-Z: A Commonsense Guide to Engineering Reports and Theses, good engineering requires good communication.  Communicating in a concise, accurate, and complete manner is a large part of being a good engineer.  Also, a good engineer should be able to express the relative importance of ideas in a report.

One of my personal rules in writing reports is never to assume someone knows what I’m thinking, and don’t leave anything open for interpretation.  An engineering project is an exact, precise undertaking.  Using formal language in an objective manner is key to conveying exactly what is intended.

One of the first things you owe your supervisor is to keep him or her informed of all significant developments.

Many young engineers hesitate to bother bosses with what they think are minor details, but it is their job to know what is going on at all times.  I got a taste of that at Duke.  Virtually every time I was in email contact with someone concerning a project, my boss asked me to copy him on the email, not matter how trivial the discussions.  Also, King notes that young engineers can’t be afraid to be the bearers of bad news.

Be as particular as you can in the selection of your supervisor

King expresses the importance of having a properly selected senior engineer as a mentor to guide a young engineer’s development.  I know how important that is.  A degree gives you basic tools to think through engineering problems, but does not prepare you for the obstacles you’ll encounter working with a company.  How to handle contractors, vendors, incompetent employees, basic project tasks, and all other things unrelated to the laws of physics is a learned set of skills.  Most will learn by imitation, thus you don’t want to get stuck with someone who is not well respected or incompetent.  I was fortunate in having a great mentor and very well respected throughout the company, but a different stroke of luck could have resigned me to someone much less competent, running the risk of acquiring some bad habits.

Genre as a way to understand history

In “Genre as Social Action,” Miller argues that “a rhetorically sound definition of genre must be centered not on the substance or the form of discourse but on the action it is used to accomplish” (152).  These rhetorical actions are inherently a function of the rhetorical situation.  Furthermore, similar situations recur through time, prompting similar action.  

Before continuing, I think it’s important to note that Miller is not merely attempting to propose what constitutes genre, but something much deeper.  The understanding of genre as typified rhetorical actions based in recurrent situations provides insight into the character of a culture, past or present.  

Here’s why.  

Examining recurrence is at the heart of understanding history.  However, what recurs is not the material situation.  The exact people, places, or objects in a situation are unique and isolated by time; they cannot recur.  Nor can a perception of a situation recur.  All people perceive things differently.

Situations are not independent of human interference.  According to Miller, “Before we can act, we must interpret the indeterminate material environment; we define, or “determine”, a situation” (156).  We give meaning to physical stimuli.  The meaning results in action. 

Situations are simply “social constructs” built using past experiences, or ‘types’, to define a situation.  Thus, “we create recurrence, analogies, similarities.  What recurs is not a material situation but our construal of a type” (Miller 157).  

This is in stark contrast to Bitzer’s materialist view of recurrence.  I think Bitzer thought of recurrence as something whose path cannot be altered or influenced by humans, only responded to.  Miller is saying that every situation ever encountered by humans (history) arose exactly as function of human interpretation. 

Situations, I guess, are subconscious self-fulfilling prophecies.  If we determine situation, then exigence “must be seen as social motive.”  Thus to classify a rhetorical work on the basis of its recurrent situation is to classify the work on the basis of social motive, and subsequent social action.  Understanding these attributes clearly delves into psyche of time period the work was created and aids in understanding why history formed the way it did.