Survival is the driver for adaptation: safety engineering changed the future, security engineering prevented disasters and transition engineering navigates the pathway to the climate-safe future

Consider a simple idea describing the time, space and relationship scales of survival. Engineering has been going along with the current paradigm that growth in wealth and material consumption can continue through innovation and technology development. The proposed survival continuum concept represents a new way to think about sustainability that has clear implications for influencing engineering projects in all fields. The argument for survival as the driver for adaptation is developed sequentially, building on theory, definition, examples and history. The key idea is that sustainability will be effectively addressed by a new engineering discipline furthering development of the field of safety engineering with longer time scale, broader space scale and more complex relationship scale. The implication is that the past 100-year development of safety engineering can be leveraged to fast-track the inclusion of sustainability risk management throughout the entire engineering profession. The conclusion is that a new, interdisciplinary field, Transition Engineering, is emerging as the way our society will achieve sustainability-safety through rapid reduction in fossil fuel use and reduction in detrimental social and environmental impacts of industrialization.

Wedeven Associates: Finding New Ways to Develop Novel Solutions to Persistent, Intractable Problems

Wedeven Associates is a small tribology research and engineering consulting firm located near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The company faced a variety of challenges associated with the COVID-19 pandemic as did most small businesses in 2020. As the company became fully operational again, Wedeven Associates was approached by a longtime client to solve a tribological problem the client’s engineers had been trying to address for many years. The catch: Wedeven Associates only had a little over 2 months to do the work while complying with pandemic-related travel and meeting restrictions. This case tells the story of how the Wedeven Associates team met the challenge using virtual tools and a collaborative approach built on first principles. Readers are introduced to “tribology” as an engineering discipline and “first principles” as a problem-solving approach.

150 YEARS OF SHIP DESIGN

As part of writing a short article entitled “Ship Design – From Art to Science?” [1] for the Institution’s 150th anniversary celebratory volume [2], the author consulted the Institution’s centenary book by K C Barnaby [3] to get a feel for the formative first hundred years of ship design recorded in the learned papers presented to the Institution. This consultation was motivated by consideration of the papers in the first volume of the Transactions of 1860, which, surprisingly, contained no papers directly on ship design, either on ship design in general or through describing the design intent behind a specific new ship. Rather, like the very first paper by Reverend J Woolley, the remaining 1860 papers concerned themselves with what could be called the application of science (and mathematics) to the practice of naval architecture as an engineering discipline. However this initial focus broadened out in subsequent volumes of the Transactions so that both technical descriptions of significant new ship designs and, more recently, papers on the general practice of ship design have also figured, alongside the presentation of progress in the science of naval architecture. Given that the vast bulk of ships built over this period have been designed like most buildings to a set pattern, or as we naval architects would say based on a (previous) “type ship”, those designs presented in the Institution’s Transactions, and the few other collections of learned societies’ papers, are largely on designs that have been seen to be of particular merit in their novelty and importance. Therefore this review looks at the developments in ship design by drawing on those articles in the Transactions that are design related. In doing so the papers have been conveniently broken down into the three, quite momentous, half centuries over which the Institution has existed. From this historical survey, it is then appropriate to consider how the practice of ship design may develop in the foreseeable future.

Root Cause Analysis of Wells with Integrity Failures

A Root Cause Analysis (RCA) is a methodological process of problem solving. In brief, this is an approach of "post mortem" analysis of the consequences with aim to understand what is one single (or multiple) lack of Management System that led to failure. Subsequently we can develop detailed remedial plan and actions to address failed Management System and most importantly prevent reoccurrence. Approach has been widely used in science and engineering. Probably, will be difficult to identify inventors of this analysis however first appearance in engineering discipline credited to Sakichi Toyoda, founder of Toyota Industries. He improved RCA by implementing technique called the "5 whys". Despite obvious benefit and versatility of root cause analysis methodology there are several challenges that might jeopardize result:–Absence of critical data / information due to various reason (time gap, no recoverable samples etc)–Too many variables that not allow to pinpoint main line / chain of investigation–Multiple failures with different root causes–"Depth of investigation" how many "Whys" are efficient to reveal main root cause.

A reflection on a bone tissue engineering design and commercialisation project

<p>A commercialisation project centred round a material called synthetic nacre was undertaken as a teamas part of the 2014 Masters of Advanced Technology Enterprise (MATE) programme. There were multiple goals of: examining the individual role within the group,from an engineering discipline(mechatronics), and what it means for building successful teams; finding and developing the material for a market application, in this casethe niche ofbiodegradable osteoconductive load bearing biomaterials for orthopaedic implants; andreflecting on the personalcontribution to the commercialisation processand how successful it was. The role of an engineer to solve problems was proposed and found to be partially true in this case; additionally a secondary role in communicating technical information coherently was also apparent and important to the enterprise development. An adaptive biomaterial design concept and specification for the target application was formed using the literature and extrapolating where there was no resolution or gaps in the research. The influence of mechatronics has been established on the decision making process and direction of the commercialisation project. The design process was incomplete and therefore the enterprise develop was unsuccessful as it has not been validated by going through a full design, test, evaluate cycle. The goals of the course environment and the team building approach further reinforces this belief.</p>

A reflection on a bone tissue engineering design and commercialisation project

<p>A commercialisation project centred round a material called synthetic nacre was undertaken as a teamas part of the 2014 Masters of Advanced Technology Enterprise (MATE) programme. There were multiple goals of: examining the individual role within the group,from an engineering discipline(mechatronics), and what it means for building successful teams; finding and developing the material for a market application, in this casethe niche ofbiodegradable osteoconductive load bearing biomaterials for orthopaedic implants; andreflecting on the personalcontribution to the commercialisation processand how successful it was. The role of an engineer to solve problems was proposed and found to be partially true in this case; additionally a secondary role in communicating technical information coherently was also apparent and important to the enterprise development. An adaptive biomaterial design concept and specification for the target application was formed using the literature and extrapolating where there was no resolution or gaps in the research. The influence of mechatronics has been established on the decision making process and direction of the commercialisation project. The design process was incomplete and therefore the enterprise develop was unsuccessful as it has not been validated by going through a full design, test, evaluate cycle. The goals of the course environment and the team building approach further reinforces this belief.</p>

The Revolutionary Role of Remote Sensing in Civil Engineering

Civil engineering is considered as the second oldest engineering discipline of the world. It deals with the design, maintenance and constructions of different structural and building elements like roads, bridges, dams etc. It comprises of many sub divisions like surveying, water resources, environment etc. Remote sensing plays a key role in acquiring and providing topographical data and 3D images. It also helps in examining existing structures and layouts. Thus remote sensing is indispensable in the field of civil engineering. This paper tries to give a brief overview of what remote sensing is and how it plays a vital role in making civil engineering more convenient, simple and efficient.

Dynamics of Mechatronics Engineering in Pakistan

Mechatronics, being a new engineering discipline in Pakistan, has to face many risks for its successful establishment and growth. Every discipline owes its evolution and progress to the stakeholders, government, universities and experts. This paper discusses the general view of Mechatronics engineering education in Pakistan, the evolution of Mechatronics engineering in Pakistan and the status of Mechatronics in the industries of Pakistan. The paper presents a survey based approach and the use of Cronbach Alpha for assessing reliability of the data

Using Software Applications in Teaching of Slope-deflection Method in Subject Static Analysis of Constructions

Static analysis of building structures is an important engineering discipline. The presented paper deals with the teaching process of the slope-deflection method in the subject Static Analysis of Constructions at the Faculty of Civil Engineering of the Technical University in Košice. The slope-deflection method is the method for the analysis of statically indeterminate structures and serves to obtain their inner forces and deformations. For purpose of teaching this subject, teachers prepared programs in the Fortran code and with the help of the output of decisive values obtained from the programs. Teachers know if students have correct solutions of their tasks and can guide students to work to correct mistakes in their work.

Using Software Applications in Teaching of Slope-Deflection Method in Subject Static Analysis of Constructions

—Static analysis of building structures is an important engineering discipline. The presented paper deals with the teaching process of the slope-deflection method in the subject Static Analysis of Constructions at the Faculty of Civil Engineering of the Technical University in Košice. The slope-deflection method is the method for the analysis of statically indeterminate structures and serves to obtain their inner forces and deformations. For purpose of teaching this subject, teachers prepared programs in the Fortran code and with the help of the output of decisive values obtained from the programs. Teachers know if students have correct solutions of their tasks and can guide students to work to correct mistakes in their work.