mech engineering 201108

Replacing lost fi ngers

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THE MAGAZINE OF ASME

SPLITDECISIONS

E iciencies improve when

the engineer and project manager

see eye to eye.

VOL.133/NO.8 AUGUST 2011 | WWW.MEMAGAZINE.ORG

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35 PATENT TROLLSEven those who make and sell nothing

are devising new ways to make money

from U.S. patent laws.

By Kirk Teska

39 EVERYDAY FINGERSProsthetic limbs have been around a long

time; but until Dan Didrick came along,

working artificial fingers didn’t exist.

By Jean Thilmany

Focus on Plant Engineering

42 ALTERNATIVE MEASURESWhen instruments can’t reach the pump,

there’s another way to go with the flow.

By Ray Beebe

44 A FREEZE IN TIMEAn ASME post-construction standard leads

a refinery maintenance team through an

unfamiliar but efficient repair.

By Jaan Taagepera and Nathan Tyson

48 A PUMP WAR STORY:

BACK TO BASICS By Gary Wamsley

72 INPUT OUTPUT Awards Show Off Robot Advances

By Alan S. Brown

2 MECHANICAL ENGINEERING | August 2011

featuresdepartmen

ts

6 Editorial

8 Letters

12 News & Notes

16 Washington Window

18 Global Window

20 Computing

23 Software Exchange

24 Tech Focus Fluid Handling & Fluid Power

61 ME Bookshelf

62 New Products

64 Resource File

67 Positions Open

69 Ad Index

70 ASME News

Focus on Engineering Management30 SERVING

TWO MASTERSIt takes judgment and thought to

balance the ethical engineer and

capable project manager.

By Brian Porter

ON THE COVER08 11

VOLUME 133/NO.8

Special supplement

IGTI’S GLOBAL GAS

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Mechanical Engineering (ISSN 0025-6501) is published monthly by The American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Three Park Avenue, New York, NY 10016-5990. Periodicals postage paid at New York, N.Y., and additional mailing offi ces. POST-MASTER: Send address changes to Mechanical Engineering, c/o The American Society of Mechanical Engineers, 22 Law Drive, Box 2300, Fairfi eld, NJ 07007-2300. Return Canadian undeliverable addresses to P.O. BOX 1051, Fort Erie, On, L2A 6C7. PRICES: To members, annually $32 for initial membership subscription, single copy $7; subscription price to nonmembers available upon request. COPYRIGHT © 2011 by The American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Canadian Goods & Services Tax Registration #126148048. Printed in U.S.A. Authorization to photocopy material for internal or personal use under circumstances not falling within the fair use provisions of the Copyright Act is granted by ASME to libraries and other users registered with the Copyright Clearance Center Transactional Reporting Service, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923. Request for special permission or bulk copying should be addressed to Reprints/Permissions Department.

vault

THIS MONTH IN ASME.ORG

What’s your engineering degree worth, and how much are your peers earning? Find out in the 2011 Engineering Income and Salary Survey conducted by ASME and ASCE.

Hydrodynamic models of large bodies of fresh water may be helpful to the public in understanding ecosystems and how pollution affects them.

ON.FB.ME/MEMAGAZINE | MEMAGAZINEBLOG.ORG | MEMAGAZINE.ORG | ASME.ORG

Re: The FDA is opening a dialogue on nanotechnology by publishing proposed guidelines on how the agency will identify nanomaterials in FDA-regulated products.

If this initiative were to be correlated with the joint efforts of existing worldwide

standardization entities, we soon would have appropriate regulations in this

challenging area.

Re: President Barack Obama is making a push to train 10,000 new American engineers a year.

Major engineering companies will continue to outsource. Having a bunch of

new engineers won't help any unless there is some sort of domestic policy to keep

engineering services domestic.

Does he mean that he will retrain the thousands of engineers that are out of

work or in temporary jobs while they look for jobs in their fi eld? Or does he mean that

he will fi nd work for the 2008, 2009, and 2010 graduates that are looking?

Our modern culture does not promote (or even value) the work ethic that is

required to earn a degree in mechanical engineering. The obsession with

entertainment, computer games, and materialism has deceived many young people into thinking that adult life will be easy—a simple extrapolation of the

carefree indulgences of youth.

Much of what made our country great (and I believe will continue) is our

entrepreneurial ethic and the environment to incubate and create new opportunities. I would propose that encouraging students

to harness the DIY spirit that, I believe, is having a recent renaissance will lead

to capable engineers who can create new technology, new businesses, and ultimately jobs and demand for engineers—and new

engineering fi elds!

From ASME LinkedIn groups

The art of producing sheet-metal stampings from a fl at sheet while cold has made marked progress in recent years, and many articles are now made of sheet metal which were formerly produced by casting or forging, or in a lathe, milling machine, drill press, or at the bench.

Forming and stamping operations especially have in many classes of work become very complex, and the art of draw-ing sheet metals, stimulated by the enormous demand of the automobile industry in particular, calling for most intricate shapes, has reached a state of perfection hardly imagined possible a few years ago. The results achieved by the ingenuity of the present-day press and die designers, and to no small degree also by the metallurgist, who comes into consideration through his improvements of the physical qualities of the metals used, are indeed revelations in economy of production, strength of stamped articles, and the absolute interchange-ability and beauty of appearance of the fi nished products. ...

At the same time the economical production of motor cars was made possible solely on account of the ability of the press and die manufacturers to successfully control the fl ow of the cold sheet metal into certain forms and shapes.

Editor’s note: The author was one of several who delivered papers on the subject at the Spring Meeting, held under the auspices of the ASME Machine Shop Practice Division. A selection of the papers was published in the August issue.

The Infl uence Exerted by the Automobile on the Machine-Tool Industry

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editorial

BUILDING COLLABORATION

CONGRATULATIONS! YOU’RE

HIRED. Now you’re in charge of a large engineering team. It’s the job you always wanted.

You hold an engineering degree from a good school, and you have 15 years of excellent appraisals under your belt. You’re a good engineer, and you’ve had plenty of experience on how not to manage from all those boneheaded bosses you’ve had along the way. The ones you swore had no clue how to manage people.

The H.R. manager who gave you the good news about the 18 percent raise that comes with the job tells you the fi rst thing you’ve got to do is focus on getting the technical team and the project management folks to see eye-to-eye. Upper manage-ment, she says, is afraid of another “Deepwater Horizon thing”—a new catchphrase in today’s engineering reality for a failed system.

“Good luck, don’t mess up,” she says as you leave her o, ce.

Managing people, under the best of circumstances, is hard enough, but navigating between those concerned with safety and those on the other side of the fl oor who push for e, ciency is even harder. Over the past 50 years, engineers have realized they must balance budgets and meet business demands, says Brian Porter, who we commissioned to write this month’s cover story, “Serving Two Masters.” The require-ments to meet technical needs such as specifi cations, public safety, and reliability, and the business require-ments such as budget and schedule “are frequently confl icting in na-ture, even when they theoretically serve one another,” Porter says.

Getting workers to collaborate e/ ectively is part science, part art,

and part voodoo.A recent Harvard Business Review

article stresses that getting every-one on your team to share a purpose does not come simply from a corpo-rate statement, or even from a single charismatic leader. It comes from a combination of often intangible ele-ments that create a long-lasting and e/ ective work culture.

One way to do that is to collabo-rate at all levels of the enterprise. You can’t expect people on your team to get along if you don’t engage in similar behavior yourself.

The HBR article recounts the story of Microsoft’s ill-fated tablet com-puter that could have preempted Apple’s iPad by more than a decade —if it hadn’t been for internal com-peting divisions at Microsoft that conspired to kill the project. Micro-soft had not learned to collaborate with itself.

Certainly inciting collaborative behaviors among workers is saddled with many complex dimensions that include personal convictions, cultural values, and the particular enterprise’s operating norms. But when it comes to complex systems, “Demands to sacrifi ce performance are out of the question,” Porter says. “Learn from the past; use it today, for a successful future.”

Now that you’ve been on the job a few months you realize that managing teams isn’t as easy you thought. You also realize the importance of collabo-ration in the process. Not to put more pressure on you, but the stakes are high. Failure is not an option.


Editor-in-Chief John G. Falcioni

Executive EditorHarry Hutchinson

Associate EditorsAlan S. Brown, Jean Thilmany,Jeffrey Winters

Electronic Publishing EditorBenedict Bahner

Art & Production DesignerTeresa M. Carboni

Director, Advertising Sales and Publishing DevelopmentNicholas J. Ferrari

Marketing and Promotion ManagerAnthony Asiaghi

Classifi ed and Mailing List Manager(212) 591-7534

Circulation CoordinatorMarni A. Rice

Managing Director, Publishing & Unit Support Philip V. DiVietro

Online www.memagazine.org(212) 591-7783; fax (212) 591-7841E-mail: [email protected]

The American Society of Mechanical EngineersPresident Victoria A. RockwellPresident-Nominee Marc W. GoldsmithPast President Robert T. SimmonsGovernors Richard C. Benson, Betty L. Bowersox, Julio Guerrero, Said Jahanmir, Robert N. Pangborn, Thomas D. Pestorius, Edmund J. Seiders, J. Robert Sims Jr., Charla K. Wise

Executive DirectorThomas G. Loughlin

Deputy Executive DirectorMichael K. Weis

Secretary and TreasurerWilbur J. Marner

Assistant SecretaryWarren R. Leonard

Senior Vice PresidentsCenters Clark McCarrellStandards & Certifi cation Kenneth R. BalkeyInstitutes Dilip R. BallalKnowledge & Community Thomas G. LibertinyStrategic Management Stacey Swisher Harnetty

ME Editorial Advisory BoardRobert E. Nickell, Chairman; Harry Armen; Leroy S. Fletcher; Richard J. Goldstein; Thomas G. Libertiny

For reprints, contactEdward Kane, (866) 879-9144, [email protected]

Opinions expressed in Mechanical Engineering magazine do not necessarily refl ect the views of ASME.

John G. Falcioni, Editor-in-Chief

[email protected]/johnfalcioni

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letters

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To the Editor: I enjoyed and agree with some

of the points and suggestions made in the ar-

ticle “Has the U.S. Lost Its Technical Edge?”

(May). We as a country have probably not

done our best to promote science, technology,

engineering, and mathematics (STEM—or

should it be STEAM?). Perhaps we have lost

our steam.

STEM education at the middle school levels

can only help. However, I believe there are other factors being overlooked.

One of the most influential factors in young teens’ lack of interest in STEM-

related programs is the media and public interest in rock stars, celebrities,

athletes, and Wall Street tycoons.

It appears to be more than just interest; it’s closer to worship. And the com-

mon denominator is money and flash—quite intoxicating to middle school

teens or even old engineers.

As a teeny bopper would you want to be Justin Bieber or Joe Engineer? The

rock stars, etc. get recognition, respect, status, and reward.

What does Joe Engineer get? If anything, Joe Engineer gets a bad rap when

a pipeline blows up, or an oil rig spews oil, or even when commuter trains col-

lide. I’ve managed a few multi-disciplined engineering groups, and it’s been

my observation that for the most part engineers feel they lack respect, rec-

ognition, status, and reward within their companies and with the general

public. They feel this way because that’s the way it is.

So, if we want to home grow technical talent, we must at least match the

status that engineers and scientists receive in other countries. A tough task.

RUSSEL KOELSCH, P.E.

FOUNTAIN VALLEY, CALIF.

To the Editor: In reply to Delores Etter’s piece in the May issue, I will certain-

ly laud her—and others’—desire to advance technical careers and help America

keep its technological edge. I love my job as a mechanical engineer and tell my

wife that most days I go to work and play; that’s how much fun I have at work.

Yet missing in all this is the demand-side. Kids are not stupid. They look at

factories closing all around them. They go to stores and see “Made in X,” with

X not being U.S.A. They watch the news, and hear of more and more jobs being

sent overseas where the labor rates are cheaper.

A recent issue of another engineering magazine had several letters from en-

gineers discussing the lack of respect they received in their positions, and all

strongly discouraged engineering as a profession.

And while “I don’t get no respect” is a comedic line, the universal head-

nodding at the antics of the Pointy-Haired Boss in virtually every Dilbert

cartoon points to a serious problem with management bred in business

schools, with no knowledge of the actual product and a belief that people are

but “talent” or “human capital,” and completely interchangeable and ex-

pendable assets.

STEM careers are rewarding, but nobody can deny that achieving academic

success in these fields is di.cult. There is a lot of work, and a lot of classes.

Engineer vs. Rock Star

MESHING



COOLING WITH GAS

To the Editor: The author of “Remov-

ing Heat From a Reactor in Shutdown”

(May) writes as if light water reactors

were the only reactors in the world.

Indeed most of the world’s 442 reactors

are LWRs—but not all. Britain’s historic

Magnox and AGR reactors, along with

the high-temperature gas reactor in the

U.S. are not. LWR evolved from the U.S.

Navy submarine program of Admiral

Rickover. LWR technology today re-

mains nearly the same as in the 1950s

when it was designed: very high power

density, low heat capacity metal clad

fuel in a fixed geometry maintained by

zirconium alloy under fixed tempera-

ture limits. As temperatures rise, the

alloy changes phase and loses strength,

becoming reactive with its water cool-

ant, H2O. That reaction created the free

hydrogen that combusted at Fukushi-

ma, and was also problematic at Three

Mile Island.

Although compact and comparatively

cheap in contrast with other technolo-

gies, the LWR has one fundamental

weakness—metal clad fuel. Indeed, at

both Three Mile Island and Fukushima

Dai-ichi, the two principal variants—the

pressurized water reactor and boiling

water reactor—both su2ered cata-

strophic failures. Economic losses that

resulted from undercooling following

shutdown caused as much anguish as

nuclear meltdown fears to their owners

and financiers. Other reactor types don’t

have these limitations. For example,

the high-temperature gas reactor has a

nonreactive coolant (helium), high heat

capacity core (graphite), and ceramic

fuel particle coating analogous to clad-

ding. The structural graphite heat sink

performs well at very high temperatures

compared with metal cores. These reac-

tors are not as susceptible as LWRs to

loss of cooling events, and retain fission

products better in unpredictable sce-

narios like Fukushima.

Perhaps one positive aspect of Fuku-

shima will be that the world’s reactor

designers reconsider non-metal core

reactor designs. They o2er much di2er-

ent and potentially safer performance

in unpredictable “beyond design basis

events.”

J.K. AUGUST, P.E.

ARVADA, COLO.

Editor’s note: The author chairs the

American Nuclear Society’s Committee 28

on gas reactors.

ACID AND MERCURY

To the Editor: I was shocked that Dmit-

ry Paramonov (“Some Aspects of the

Fight Against Climate Change,” ASME

Nuclear Engineering Division News,

May) would say in his article on climate

change as it relates to the consump-

tion of fossil fuels: “... consequences of

global warming are not necessarily bad

for all countries or social groups.” Two

things he failed to consider in making

that statement were ocean acidification

caused by CO2 absorption, and mercury

that is often emitted along with CO2 from

coal-fired plants.

Both of these things will increasingly

and negatively impact the quantity and

quality of food we are able to harvest

from ocean sources, not to mention the

rivers and pristine streams that are ex-

hibiting increased mercury levels as well.

Thus it is doubtful that anyone on this

Earth will ultimately be immune from

the consequences of global warming as it

relates to the burning of fossil fuels.

BOB BALHISER

HELENA, MONT.

Letters to the Editor

Mechanical Engineering

Three Park Avenue

New York, NY 10016-5990

fax: (212) 591-7841

e-mail: [email protected]

The editors reserve the right to edit letters for clarity,

style, and length. We regret that unpublished letters

cannot be acknowledged or returned.

letters to the editor

Mechanical Engineering welcomes

comments from our readers.

Letters can be typewritten or

e-mailed, and must include the

author’s full name, address, and

telephone number. Address your

submission to:

+

With companies so eager to send those

jobs overseas, why would a rational per-

son examining a future career invest so

much for such a risky proposition?

Make engineering jobs more secure,

more respected, and create technical

career paths for those not interested

in management, and you will see more

people interested in STEM careers.

DAVID HUNT, P.E.

NASHUA, N.H.

FROM WHALES TO OWLS

To the Editor: I genuinely enjoyed read-

ing “From Whales to Fans” (May). Alan

Brown did a wonderful job following

the evolution from inspiration to mar-

ket. It’s valuable for younger readers to

observe that great ideas may take years

to make their way into production, and

that to do so takes persistence, drive,

and an ability to sell your ideas.

I do however have one small point to

add with regards to the history of the

discipline’s understanding of such lead-

ing edge features. Although it is perhaps

somewhat obscure, Paul T. Soderman

produced a rather comprehensive study

(NASA TM X-2643) of the e2ects of

leading edge features in the 7-foot x

10-foot wind tunnel at NASA Ames at

Reynolds numbers of 1 million and 2.3

million. It would appear that the study

was originally inspired by the desire

to reduce the acoustic signature of the

wing passing through the air, and many

of the leading edge features rather

strongly resembled owl feather leading

edge combs.

I do not o2er up this reference to deni-

grate in any manner the tenacity or ex-

tent of the work of Dr. Fish and his col-

leagues, which I have admired for years.

None of the leading edge features tested

by Soderman resembled the sinusoidal

and three-dimensional nature of whale

fin tubercles and their abstractions

tested by Dr. Fish and his colleagues.

I simply believe that the evolution of

the idea and the history of such lead-

ing edge features had been so well ex-

pressed in the story that it would have

been a shame not to mention the exten-

sive work done by Soderman at NASA

Ames back in 1972.

AARON ALTMAN

DAYTON, OHIO

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The U.S. Department of Energy

in June selected six projects to

split some $7.5 million to work

on advanced designs for wind

turbine drive trains.

Among the companies receiving awards

is GE Global Research, which will design

and test a 10 MW direct-drive generator

employing low-temperature supercon-

ductor technology, and Advanced Mag-

net Lab of Palm Bay, Fla., which is devel-

oping a new drivetrain coil confi guration.

Another company receiving an award,

Clipper Windpower of Carpinteria,

Calif., will be testing a drivetrain design

intended to increase serviceability.

Any advances that make turbines more

reliable and e* cient will help drive down

costs of wind power.

Other organizations receiving DOE

funds are Boulder Wind Power of Colo-

rado, Dehlsen Associates of Santa Bar-

bara, Calif., and the National Renewable

Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo.

While the DOE program is aimed at

developing American manufacturers

of wind turbine technology, interna-

tional companies are already deploying

some advanced turbines of their own.

In June, Siemens installed the fi rst

prototype of its new direct-drive wind

turbine.

The SWT-6.0-120, which was

deployed in Høvsøre, Denmark, fea-

tures a rotor 120 meters in diameter

and is rated at 6 MW.

The new turbine design, which is

intended for use in o. shore wind farms,

is less massive than other turbines of

similar power, weighing in at just 350

metric tons. The hope is that a lighter

nacelle will enable the turbines to be

installed on thinner towers, reducing the

cost of construction.

Siemens plans to install other proto-

type wind turbines for testing over the

next couple of years. If all goes according

to plans, the advanced turbines could

begin production in 2014.

JEFFREY WINTERS


Next-Generation Wind Gets a Boost

NEWS&NOTES

SIEMENS

A new report from the National

Research Council recom-

mends that regulations

covering offshore wind farms

focus on performance goals rather than

prescriptive rules in order to accom-

modate future innovation. The recom-

mendations cover structural integrity,

environmental performance, and power

generation.

U.S. Department of the Interior’s

Bureau of Ocean Energy Management,

Regulation, and Enforcement, which

regulates offshore wind farms, asked

the NRC to develop the recommenda-

tions. The resulting report is Structural

Integrity of Offshore Wind Turbines: Over-

sight of Design, Fabrication, and Installa-

tion. It draws on the offshore experience

of European wind farms and U.S. oil,

gas, and marine industries.

The committee found that offshore

wind farms pose signifi cantly lower

risks to safety and the environment

because they are unmanned and do not

handle hazardous substances. There-

fore, they do not require as stringent a

regulatory approach as other offshore

industries. The committee calls for

industry to propose specifi c standards,

guidelines, and recommended prac-

tices to meet the bureau’s performance

requirements.

Industry can build on the procedures

pioneered in Europe, where more than

800 offshore turbines are connected to

the grid.

The United States operates some of

the world’s largest wind farms. Most sit

astride the wind belt that stretches from

Texas to the Dakotas. While land there

is cheap, the cost of building transmis-

sion lines to urban centers is high.

Offshore facilities, located where winds

are higher and more consistent, would

sit relatively close to major population

centers and existing transmission lines.

The Cape Wind project, the fi rst

offshore facility to win U.S. approval,

suggests what is coming. The 468 MW

farm will consist of 130 wind turbines.

Each tower will rise 258 feet tall, and the

blades will rise 440 feet above the water

surface. The farm will lie just off Cape

Cod in Massachusetts.

In addition to suggesting the Bureau of

Ocean Energy set performance targets

and allow industry to set standards, the

report recommends that certifi ed third-

party evaluators review project propos-

als. One reason is that the bureau lacks

the workforce and expertise to take on

that role. ALAN S. BROWN

Study Proposes Goal-Driven Regulations for O" shore Wind

▲ Installing the rotoron Siemen’s new turbine


August 2011 | MECHANICAL ENGINEERING 13

One Global Code Symbol ASME is taking steps to replace its

current 28 separate product certi-

fi cation marks with a single certifi -

cation mark.

The primary reason for the change is

the global success of ASME Standards

and Certifi cation programs. There are 28

ASME code symbol stamps in use by vari-

ous certifi ed companies in 75 countries.

Having them use a single certifi cation

mark will greatly help ASME monitor its

trademark around the world.

The new mark was introduced in the

2011 Addenda to the Boiler and Pres-

sure Vessel Code published in July. Cer-

tifi ed companies may request and use

the new mark immediately, and they will

have the option of using the old marks

until Jan. 1, 2013.

After that date, the

new certifi cation

mark becomes

mandatory and

the old stamps are

to be returned to

ASME.▲ The new mark.

Just as we receive feedback about

the world through more than just

our eyes and fi ngers, so too—one

day—will robots.

Scientists at Technical University of

Munich in Germany are developing

an artifi cial skin for robots that they

said will provide important tactile

feedback about its world to the robot

to supplement perceptions formed by

camera eyes, infrared scanners, and

gripping hands.

The sense of touch gives robots one

more sense on which to rely as they

fi nd their way around a room or new

environment, said Philip Mittendorfer,

a scientist who is helping develop the

artifi cial skin at the university’s Insti-

tute of Cognitive Systems.

As with human skin, the way the

artifi cial skin is touched could lead the

robot to retreat when it hits an object

or cause it to use its machine vision to

search for the source of contact, he said.

Retreating or looking for the source

of contact is especially important for

robots that work as helper machines for

people who live in constantly changing

environments, even if that environment

is their own apartment.

The centerpiece of the robotic skin—

which is actually a series of plates worn

by the robot—is a circuit board about

the size of a penny. Each board contains

four infrared sensors.

“We thus simulate light touch,” Mit-

tendorfer said. “This corresponds to our

own sense of the fi ne hairs on our skin

being gently stroked.”

The artifi cial skin also contains six

temperature sensors and an accelerom-

eter that allows the robot to register the

Sensitive Skin for Robots

Continued on page 15

“Innovation distinguishes between

a leader and a follower.”

- Steve Jobs

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and compressors, our innovation in design and

technology has helped our customers create

new innovative products and become leaders

in their marketplace.

For more information on

how Thomas innovation

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your industry, go to

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NEWS & NOTES

Spatial Corp. of Broomfield, Colo., has

released its Convergence Geometric

Modeler, a 3-D geometry kernel that of-

fers a consistent interface, foundation-

based tolerant modeling to maintain

geometrical and topological precision,

and large-model capacity. /// West-

port Innovations Inc., a developer of

alternative-fuel engine technologies,

has entered into an agreement with

General Motors to develop natural

gas engine controls, emissions, and

performance strategies for light-duty

vehicles. Westport said it plans to open

a technical center in Michigan. The

company has about 15 employees in

Farmington Hills, Mich., and plans to

expand there as demand grows for

natural alternative-fuel vehicles.

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The ASME standard Hydraulic

Turbines and Pump-Turbines has

been published in a new edition,

PTC 18-2011, which includes

updated test techniques for continuous

performance improvement.

It defines methods for measuring

flow rate, head, and power, from which

e*ciency may be determined. It also

specifies requirements for pretest

arrangements, types of instrumenta-

tion, methods of measurement, testing

procedures, methods of calculation, and

contents of test reports.

The standard, which replaces the 2002

edition, also includes revised illustra-

tions and new tables. Some older test

methods, such as the volumetric and

pressure-time Gibson flow-measure-

ment method, have been deleted.

PTC 18-2011 Hydraulic Turbines and

Pump-Turbines is available for pur-

chase online at www.asme.org. The

price is $140.

Grid-Positive CollegeA community college in northern

California believes that it has be-

come the first college in the United

states to become “grid-positive.” That

is, it expects the value of the electricity

it generates to exceed the cost of the

electricity it consumes.

The school, Butte College, is in Oroville.

The campus has 25,000 solar panels,

which are expected to generate more

than 6.5 million kilowatt-hours of elec-

tricity a year.

Michael Miller, the director of facilities

planning and management for the Butte-

Glenn Community College District,

which runs the college, said the installa-

tion cost about $24 million after rebates.

The system will generate electricity

during the day, when rates are at their

highest. Excess electricity will be sent

to the grid, and the college will receive

credit for that power at the day rate.

The evening rate is about half the cost

of electricity during the day. When the

sun goes down, the college will draw

electricity from the grid, but the total

cost will likely be lower than the credit it

earned during the day.

movement of individual limbs and in

that way determine what body parts it

has just moved.

“We try to pack many di1erent

sensory modalities into the smallest of

spaces,” Mittendorfer said. “In addition,

it is easy to expand the circuit boards to

later include other sensors”

For the machine to have detection

ability, the signals from the sensors

must be processed by the central com-

puter that controls the robot, he added.

Only a small piece of skin is currently

complete. But the principle has already

been demonstrated to work, Mittendor-

fer’s supervisor, Gordon Cheng, said.

The scientists will place the plates that

constitute the skin together to form a

honeycomb-like, planar structure to be

donned by the robot.

“This will be a machine that notices

when you tap it on the back. Even in the

dark,” Cheng said.

JEAN THILMANY

Editor’s note: Prosthetic fingers covered by

artificial skin are the subject of the feature,

“Everyday Fingers,” on page 39 of this issue.

Test Code Updated for Hydro Turbines

Sensitive SkinContinued from page 13


The Bureau of Ocean Energy

Management, Regulation, and

Enforcement said it is mak-

ing improvements in the oil

and gas permit application process.

Improvements include publication

of a permit application checklist to

assist o$shore oil and gas operators in

submitting complete applications to

drill, the implementation of complete-

ness checks by bureau personnel before

significant sta$ time is spent reviewing

an application, and the development of

clear permit review priorities that will

expedite agency reviews.

According to the U.S. Energy Infor-

mation Administration, oil production

in the Gulf of Mexico has been rising.

In 2010, nearly 600 million barrels of

oil were produced, the highest level in

three decades.

There are currently 24 permits pend-

ing and 18 permits have been returned

to operators with requests for additional

information, particularly information

regarding containment. The proposed

changes may reduce the number of per-

mits returned to operators.

Exxon Mobil announced in June that

it had identified a substantial oil and gas

source in 7,000 feet of water, and about

230 miles from the nearest shoreline in

the Gulf of Mexico.

Two bills, S.512 and S.1067, before

the Senate Energy and Natural

Resources Committee seek to

establish research programs to reduce

the cost of nuclear plants by using small

reactors.

Advocates of small modular reac-

tors, designed to generate less than

300 MW, believe they can reduce the

costs of nuclear plant construction.

The committee has received testimony

from proponents who said that modular

construction techniques will permit plant

subassemblies to be built which can be

delivered and assembled on site.

Costs are a major issue in large nuclear

plants. The cost of a nuclear power plant

with a 2,000 MW capacity can exceed $14

billion.

The Committee also received testimony

on S.937, which includes a number of

provisions that would seek to increase

the use of transportation fuels that are

not petroleum based. While there was

agreement that diversifying the nation’s

transportation fuels would be a clear

benefit to both national and economic

security, there were concerns raised that

some of the bill’s provisions might have

high environmental costs.


Agency to Expedite O#shore Drilling Applications

Senate Votes to End Ethanol Credit

WASHINGTON WINDOW

WHITE HOUSE WEIGHS

IN ON THE SMART GRID

The White House has released

a 108-page report, “A Policy

Framework for the 21st Century

Grid: Enabling Our Secure

Energy Future,” which specifies

various smart grid initiatives.

The report was prepared by

the National Science and

Technology Council.

The initiatives include $250

million in loans for smart-grid

technology deployment.

The report is aimed at closely

monitoring and guiding energy

policy. It also clearly explains

where the newly budgeted

federal dollars will be going and

what the administration hopes

to achieve.

The policy report aims to set up

a framework for implementing

that technology e.ciently, secur-

ing the connected power grid

from cyber threats, and creating

an energy framework that will

put more control in the hands of

consumers using energy.

Senate Bills Back Modular Reactors

This section was compiled by ASME Govern-

ment Relations. Links to more information at

http://bit.ly/MEWashingtonWindow

The Senate has voted 73-27 to

adopt an amendment to the

Economic Development Revital-

ization Act of 2011 that e1ec-

tively repeals the $5 billion blender’s tax

credit enjoyed by industry as part of the

nation’s ethanol mandate.

The amendment was introduced by

Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Tom

Coburn (R-OK). “The 73 votes sent a

powerful message that the days of big

subsidies for ethanol are coming to a

close,” Sen. Feinstein said. “We must be

serious about addressing the debt and

deficit, and this is a good first step.”

The amendment would eliminate both

the 45-cents-per-gallon tax credit that

refiners get for blending ethanol in gaso-

line, as well as the 54-cents-per-gallon

tari1 on imported ethanol.

Ethanol also is mandated by provi-

sions contained in the Energy Indepen-

dence and Security Act (P.L. 110-140).

The law mandates that 36 billion

gallons of biofuels must be in use by the

country by 2022. The House has not yet

followed suit, although House Appro-

priators did manage to successfully

adopt an amendment to the fiscal year

2012 agriculture appropriations bill,

H.R. 2112, by a vote of 283-128, which

would prohibit the use of funds for the

construction of an ethanol blender

pump or an ethanol storage facility.

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“Crops consume large

amounts of water, so is

there enough to meet

future demand or will

supplies run out? ... Of the 110,000 km3

of rain that falls annually on the earth’s

surface, 36 percent ends up in the sea;

forestry, grazing lands, and fisheries, and

biodiversity consume 57 percent; towns,

cities, and industry use just 0.1 percent

(11 km3); while agriculture consumes 7

percent (7,130 km3). Some 22 percent of

agriculture’s water consumption (1,570

km3) is ‘blue water’—water withdrawn

from rivers, streams, and groundwater for

irrigation purposes. Most of agriculture’s

water consumption (5,560 km3) is green

water—water available to crops from

rainfall stored in the soil root zone.

“Predicting future water demand is

fraught with difficulties. Forecasts made

less than 10 years ago have already been

proved inaccurate because no one accu-

rately predicted the rise in energy prices

nor the world recession and the impact

these factors would have on food prices.

The impacts of climate change are now

only beginning to unfold as are the stress-

es of population growth and water scar-

city. But the simple answer to the question

is—yes we have enough water but only if

we act now to improve how water is used,

particularly in agriculture which is the

main consumer. What is certain is that the

future of food security and water security

are inextricably connected.

“If water usage continues at the present

rate, global water consumption will almost

double by 2050. However, a more optimis-

tic assessment suggests it may rise from

7,130 km3 to 8,515 km3/yr by 2050. This is

not only based on predictions of population

increase but also on improving socioeco-

nomic conditions and nutrition—both of

which demand more water. The greatest

change over the past 30 years has been

the shift away from starch-based diets to

meat, eggs, and dairy products to a point

were livestock products account for about

45 percent of the global water embedded

in food products.”

From “Water for Food: Innovative

water management technologies for

food security and poverty alleviation,”

United Nations Conference on Trade and

Development, Current Studies on Science,

Technology, and Innovation, No. 4.


Looking at Water: Is There Enough?

GLOBAL WINDOW

This report was prepared in part by ASME's Asia Pacific LLC office.

The Finance Minister of China, Xie

Xuren, told a session of the National

People’s Congress that the country's

central government expenditures

exceeded revenue in 2010 by the equiva-

lent of about $123.5 billion U.S., accord-

ing to a report by Xinhua, the o*cial

news agency of the People’s Republic of

China. According to Xinhua, Xie said the

deficit was about $7.7 billion less than

the annual budget.

Xie reported the figures during the 21st

session of the Standing Committee of the

11th National People’s Congress.

He said revenues totaled more than

$655 billion, about $277 billion more

than the budgetary figure, and expendi-

tures reached nearly $780 billion, $128

million more than the budgetary figure.

The total central fiscal expenditure

included about $246 billion of central

government spending, and more than

$498 billion of tax rebates and transfer

payments to local governments, Xie said.

China’s Government in the Red for 2010

China’s current account surplus,

a measure of the country’s for-

eign trade, reached the equiva-

lent of $29.8 billion U.S. in the

first quarter of this year, an 18 percent

decrease from the quarter a year earlier,

according to the State Administration

of Foreign Exchange. This includes sur-

plus in commodity trade worth $20.8

billion, a service trade deficit worth

$10.2 billion, a revenue surplus worth

$7.6 billion, and a current transfers

surplus worth $11.6 billion.

The surpluses under the current and

capital and financial accounts raised

China’s international reserve assets

by $141.2 billion in the quarter, and

$138 billion of that was kept as foreign

exchange reserves.

By the end of March, China’s foreign

exchange reserves had reached $3,040

billion, up 24.4 percent from a year ear-

lier, according to figures from China’s

central bank.

China’s Account Surplus in First Quarter Reaches $29.8 Billion

BRIEFLY NOTED

Tang Rongyao, director of China’s

State Electricity Regulatory Com-

mission, said that the provincial grids

in ten provinces, including Beijing,

Shanghai, Hebei, Jiangsu and Zheji-

ang, are experiencing power supply

tensions. The vice general manager of

the State Grid Corp. of China, Shuai

Junqing, predicted that electricity

shortages will reach 30 million kW in

peak periods, the highest shortages

ever recorded. /// Li Canrong, assis-

tant to China’s Minister of Commerce,

said that China’s export situation will

remain complicated this year. He said

that China should accelerate the trans-

formation of the foreign trade develop-

ment model, promote internationaliza-

tion of strategic emerging industries,

and entirely improve the quality and

benefits of international trade.

An Australian industrial design firm,

Design+Industry, recently gave shape to

what a client hopes could be the next big

thing in automobiles: a three-wheel, high-

performance vehicle. Design+Industry

designed it with the help of 3-D modeling,

painting, and rendering software.

Strike Motors Australia, an automotive

company, asked Design+Industry to turn its concept for a

three-wheel vehicle into a commercially manufacturable

automobile. The result is Trike, a half-car, half-motorcycle

that seats two people and combines quick acceleration

with ride stability and cornering capability, said Ben Car-

roll, industrial designer at Design+Industry.

Design+Industry designers took the specs for the car and

used the creative tools and modeling and rendering capa-

bilities in the software package modo 501 from Luxology of

Mountain View, Calif. Their aim was to create a design that

would appeal to car enthusiasts and style-minded drivers,

and catch the attention of bystanders with a sleek, futuris-

tic design, Carroll said.

“We began using modo when clients started requesting

features we were not able to provide with the visualization

software we were using at the time,” Carroll said.

Whether it’s a software

developer, manufac-

turer, or food pro-

ducer, businesses of

all stripes are looking to implement

sustainability standards. But what

standards should they adopt?

To help, researchers at the National

Institute of Standards and Technology,

in Gaithersburg, Md., have adapted the

so-called Zachman framework, a for-

mal approach developed in the 1980s

to define organizational structures and

to classify and organize specifications

and data accordingly, said Rachuri

Sudarsan, a lead researcher for the

project and a NIST computer scientist.

Recently, the Zachman framework

has been used to describe and catego-

rize complex health-care and cyber

security standards. But NIST research-

ers have prototyped an adapted frame-

work to help organizations of all types

sort through the welter of choices and

evaluate and implement sustainability

standards most appropriate for them,

Sudarsan said.

Business leaders can call upon the

customized framework to view sustain-

ability standards from their particu-

lar business perspective. Complex

standards are broken down into six

different levels of detail—from the con-

textual view used by planners down to

discrete data levels—and distilled into

categories to answer six questions:

what, how, when, who, where, and why.

Results are arranged in a 36-cell

matrix, Sudarsan said.

NIST is pilot testing the framework on

its new Sustainability Standards Portal

at www.mel.nist.gov/msid/SSP/.

Many incentives motivate businesses

to improve sustainability efforts. These

range from concerns like cutting costs

and reducing scrap, to compliance with

regulatory and customer requirements,

to corporate citizenship. But businesses

must be able to identify applicable

standards across entire lifecycles of

products, processes, and services,

Sudarsan said. NIST intends the frame-

work to help leaders identify gaps and

overlaps in sustainability strategies.

How Sustainable?


COMPUTING This section was written by Associate Editor Jean Thilmany.

Three-Wheeling

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YN

AT

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AL I

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UT

E O

F S

TA

ND

AR

DS

AN

D T

EC

HN

OLO

GY

m The Trike, designed by a firm of industrial engineers in Australia with the help of rendering software, seats two people and combines the benefits of car and motorcycle.

m Software from NIST helps businesses evaluate sustainability standards.

“The applications of this software seem to be infinite.

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Brainy AntennasJust as too many cooks spoil the broth, too many users

may interrupt the Wi-Fi signal.

To ease signal interference, researchers in the new

Smart Antenna and Radio Laboratory at Gonzaga Uni-

versity in Spokane, Wash., are investigating reliable high-

bandwidth wireless communications via Wi-Fi.

The researchers aim to overcome wireless signal inter-

ference caused when many users try to communicate

simultaneously over the 2.4 GHz band used for wireless

communication, said Steven Schennum, an engineering

professor at the university, who helms the research.

The smart technologies developed by the team will

allow antennas to focus on one user signal at a time. For

example, for a Wi-Fi user working on a laptop with a weak

or cross-polarized signal, a smart antenna system would

use algorithms to optimize the signal to that individual

laptop.

Software from Ansys Inc. of Canonsburg, Pa., will

enable the university to test the performance of antenna

designs virtually, to reduce time and costs associated

with build-and-test methods, Schennum said.

“We’re creating a state-of-the art anechoic chamber for

testing our physical antenna prototypes, but even the

best antenna test chambers are limited in their size and

shape, the performance of their absorptive materials, and

the range of frequencies they can accommodate,” Schen-

num said. “By simulating electromagnetic fi elds and cur-

rents in a virtual environment using Ansys software, we

can test the performance of our antenna designs for any

location, plane, or geometry—and over a limitless range

of frequencies—before moving to the prototype stage.”

The new laboratory was funded with the help of a nearly

$1.2 million award from the National Science Foundation.

Researchers from the RAND Corp. have come up

with a new way to analyze opinions culled from a

large group of experts and laypeople to aid com-

plex decision-making.

“Expert panels have long been used to pursue research

across a broad area of policy,” said Siddhartha

Dalal, a lead researcher on the project and

chief technology o- cer at RAND, a nonprofi t

research organization in Santa Monica, Calif.

“This new system allows expert panels to be

done online in a robust way that resembles

face-to-face meetings, but with lower costs and

easier analysis of the information gathered.”

The online system and its associated method could

have applications within public policy, health care,

fi nance, and marketing, where expert panels are fre-

quently used to help solve problems or predict an unknown

future, Dalal said.

The system, called ExpertLens, incorporates elements of

well-known forecasting approaches.

Options for gathering opinions usually include convening

meetings of experts where opinions are expressed face to face

(the nominal group technique), organizing panels of experts

who share their opinions without meeting in person (the Del-

phi method), and putting out an open call for input to a large

community of people (the crowdsourcing method), he added.

Each of the approaches has certain strengths and

weaknesses, he said. Face-to-face meetings

can be expensive and di- cult to organize.

In addition, such e0 orts usually are lim-

ited to small groups of people with narrow

areas of specialization and can become

dominated by a small number of strong

personalities.

While crowdsourcing methods can reach

large groups of people online, they also can be inef-

fi cient and unfocused unless there is clear direction and input

is monitored, Dalal said.

ExpertLens leverages the advantages of both Delphi method

and the nominal group technique. It also uses modifi ed

principles of crowdsourcing to o0 er a means to elicit opinions

from a broad and diverse pool of experts who are in di0 erent

locations, Dalal said.

In general, in the fi rst phase of an ExpertLens process par-

ticipants answer a series of questions. In the second phase,

What Do You Think?

Continued on Page 22


Researchers at North Carolina

State University in Raleigh

have developed a new way to

use multi-core chips, which

they said will help computers more

e#ciently process models of biological

systems.

Computer models of biological sys-

tems have many uses, from predicting

potential side e%ects of new

drugs to understanding the

ability of plants to adjust to

climate change, said Cranos

Williams, an assistant profes-

sor of electrical engineering at

the university and a research-

er on the project.

The new technique has improved

the e#ciency of algorithms used to

run models of biological systems

more than seven-fold, creating more

realistic models that can account for

uncertainty and biological variation,

according to Williams.

Developing models for living

things is challenging because, unlike

machines, biological systems can have

a significant amount of uncertainty

and variation, he said.

“When developing a model of a

biological system, you have to use

techniques that account for that

uncertainty, and those techniques

require a lot of computational power,”

Williams said. “That means using

powerful computers. Those comput-

ers are expensive, and access to them

can be limited.

“Our goal was to develop software

that enables scientists to run biologi-

cal models on conventional computers

by using their multi-core chips more

e#ciently,” he said.

The brain of a computer chip is its

central processing unit, or core. Most

personal computers now use chips

that have between four and eight

cores. However, most programs only

operate in one core at a time. For a

program to use all the cores, it must

be broken down into separate threads

so that each core can execute a di%er-

ent part of the program simultane-

ously, Williams said.

The process of breaking down a

program into threads is called paral-

lelization, which allows computers to

run programs very quickly.

In order to parallelize algorithms for

models of biological systems, Wil-

liams’s research team created a way

for information to pass back and forth

among the cores on a single chip.

“We used threads to create locks

that control access to shared data,”

Williams said. “This allows all of the

cores on the chip to work together to

solve a unified problem.”

The researchers tested the approach

by running three models through

chips that utilized one core, as well as

chips that used the new technique to

utilize two, four, and eight cores. In all

three models, the chip that used

eight cores ran at least 7.5 times

faster than the chip that used

only one core.

“This approach allows us to

build complex models that better

reflect the true characteristics

of the biological process, and do

it in a more computationally e#cient

way,” Williams said.

“In order to understand biological

systems, we will need to use increas-

ingly complex models to address the

uncertainty and variation inherent in

those systems.”

Ultimately, the researchers want to

see if this approach can be scaled up

for use on supercomputers and wheth-

er it can be modified to take advantage

of the many cores that are available

on graphics processing units used in

many machines, Williams said.


COMPUTING

BRIEFLY NOTED

Structural engineering software developer, CSC, of Chicago, has released an update of its structural calculation software, Tedds. The update provides compatibility with Word 2010. /// Design Science of Long Beach, Calif., has released MathType 6.7 for Macintosh, featuring support for Microsoft Office 2011 and Mac OS X Lion. The appli-cation helps communicate math on the Web and in print. /// Skew Matrix Software LLC of Louisville, Colo., has upgraded its OpenSceneGraph, which powers 3-D graph-ics rendering in visualization, simulation, virtual reality, and other 3-D applications. /// The recently released SimulationX CAD interface from ITI Group of Dresden, Germany, allows assemblies to be imported into Creo Elements/Pro CAD software from PTC of Needham, Mass. /// NEi Software of Westminster, Calif., has released an embedded Nastran solution for Creo Parametric, also from PTC. The software allows engineers to perform finite element analysis using Nastran technology within the Creo environment.

Quicker at the Core in Parallel

What DoYou Think?

they review the group’s responses and

discuss their answers using online

discussion boards. In the third phase,

participants re-answer phase one ques-

tions based on the information

they received during the

feedback and discussion

in the second phase,

Dalal added.

The online nature of

ExpertLens allows the results to be

rapidly compiled and the findings to be

analyzed quickly, said Dmitry Khodya-

kov, another ExpertLens developer

and an associate behavioral and social

scientist at RAND.

“The process of breaking down a program into threads is called parallelization, which allows computers to run programs very quickly.

”

Continued from Page 21


materials. Imported data can be selected

by appearance, part, body, or face and

new layers can be created to highlight

specific parts of the design.

Hardware: PC running the Windows

operating system and the SolidWorks

CAD system.

Developer: Luxology LLC, 2525 East

Charleston Road, Suite 104, Mountain

View, CA 94043-1636; (650) 336-1380;

fax (650) 336-1386; www.luxology.com.

Cost: $299.

www.me.hotims.com/34756-71 or circle 71

DATA CONVERSIONCapability: MultiCAD Direct Import

XVL converters translate all major

CAD and 3-D data formats into XVL.

The converters access CAD models

through the user’s respective CAD sys-

tem. They express the model as highly

compressed 3-D surfaces that maintain

the accuracy and the visual integrity of

the original data. The converters can

compress 3-D data up to 0.5 percent

of its original size. All converters on

o3er can perform post-processing com-

mands after conversions. Direct CAD

file input into the vendor’s XVL Studio

solution is available via the MultiCAD

Direction Option for XVL Studio.

Hardware: PC running supported

CAD system.

Developer: Lattice Technology

Inc., 582 Market St., Suite 1215, San

Francisco, CA 94104; (415) 274-1670;

fax (415) 274-1671; www.lattice3d.com.

Cost: $2,495.


MESH ITCapability: The Inventor Mesh Enabler

is a technology preview that enables

Inventor 2011 and 2012 users to work

with imported mesh data. The 3-D CAD

application can import mesh data from

Catia files. The Mesh Enabler adds the

ability to post-process the imported

mesh data to convert the mesh features

to Inventor base features. The base

features are then available for further

operations, including drawings and

measurements.

Hardware: PC running Inventor 2011

or 2012.

Developer: Autodesk Labs, 111 McInnis

Pkwy., San Rafael, CA 94903; (800)

964-6432; http://labs.autodesk.com.

Cost: Free. Preview will expire on Jan.

31, 2013.


PHONE SCANCapability: The iPhone app

Trimensional from a research sci-

entist in Georgia Tech’s College of

Computing, allows users with an

iPhone 4, iPad 2, or a recent iPod Touch

to make 3-D models of everyday objects

from photos and share them by e-mail.

With the latest update, users can also

e-mail animated videos of their 3-D

models. For a few dollars more, artists

and designers can even export their

creation to CAD programs or 3-D illus-

tration applications. It produces a full

3-D model users can zoom into, pan

around, and view from any angle.

Hardware: iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad.

Developer: Grant Schindler, Georgia

Institute of Technology, 801 Atlantic

Drive, Atlanta, GA 30332-0280; schin-

[email protected].

Cost: 99 cents, available through the

iTunes app store.


LOOKS REALCapability: KeyShot 2.2 is a ray-tracing

program that creates photorealistic

images from 3-D CAD models. It sup-

ports the SolidEdge, Autodesk Alias,

and Pro/engineer CAD programs.

Users can see results at the same time

they make changes to the image. The

regular edition includes 2.1 megapixel

real-time resolution and 4.1 megapixel

o8ine rendering resolution; the pro-

fessional version includes unlimited

real-time resolution, unlimited o8ine

rendering resolution, and 360-degree

turntable animation.

Hardware: PC running Windows 7,

XP or Vista, or Macintosh OS 10.5 or

higher.

Developer: Luxion, 18201 Von Karman

Ave., Suite 970, Irvine, CA 92612; (949)

274-8871; fax (949) 266-9523; www.

keyshot.com.

Cost: $994; Keyshot Pro $1,995.


CLEAR VIEWCapability: The modo for SolidWorks

Kit simplifies the importation of

SolidWorks CAD models into Luxology

LLC’s modo 501 3-D modeling, paint-

ing, and rendering software. The kit

includes additional options for import-

ing parts and assemblies. Inside the

visualization software, users are pre-

sented with a SolidWorks-style layout

and navigation controls along with drag-

and-drop support for changing materi-

als and selecting lighting environments.

Tools included within the visualization

software allow imported models to be

reorganized so that it’s easier to apply

SOFTWARE EXCHANGE

Describe the software program

in detail, following the format

shown here.

You may include artwork.

Send your submissions to:

Software Exchange

Mechanical Engineering

Three Park Avenue

New York, NY 10016-5990

fax: (212) 591-7841

e-mail: [email protected]

ME does not test or endorse any software

program described in this section.

+submissions for software exchange

LUXION

l Photo quality images from CAD models.

A pharmaceutical plant in Ireland is using

Emerson Process Management’s Smart

Wireless technology to keep track of

the water it uses. By going wireless,

we’re told, the company saved money on

installation costs, and it has the option

of expanding its network in the future at

reasonable cost.

The plant, operated in Cork by

GlaxoSmithKline, produces active

ingredients that are used in the

formulation of prescription drugs.

The Cork plant found that its

water storage facility was too

small, so it added two new storage

tanks along with a new pipework

infrastructure.

According to Emmett Martin,

GlaxoSmithKline’s site services

and automation manager, “Water

is a considerable overhead to the

plant so it is important that we

monitor fl ow rates to manage con-

sumption, and to help identify any

usage trends.”

The tanks are about 300 meters

from the main control room and

there was no instrumentation or

cabling in place. A wired installation would have required

the addition of power and data cables buried in trenches.

The company avoided the acquisition and installation

costs of cables by opting to try Rosemount wireless fl ow

and pressure transmitters on the new storage tanks.

According to Emerson, wireless communication lets a

plant create a network and inexpensively add process

instrumentation.

GlaxoSmithKline installed ten Smart Wireless devices:

six Rosemount pressure transmitters, two Rosemount fl ow

transmitters, and two Rosemount

level transmitters. The Smart

Wireless technology integrates

with the plant’s automation

equipment. Flow data is trans-

mitted every 30 seconds and

pressure and level data every 300

seconds to a Smart Wireless Gate-

way positioned on the control

room roof.

The Gateway is connected using

a serial connection to the Del-

taV digital automation system

that controls the plant utilities.

From here the fl ow and pressure

measurements are sent to a data

historian and are available to plant

operators for regular monitoring

and reporting.

GlaxoSmithKline said it is able

to identify water usage for di+ er-

ent areas of the plant and has improved its understanding

of the costs. The company said the information puts it in a

position to consider changes.

EM

ER

SO

N P

RO

CE

SS

MA

NAG

EM

EN

T

Wireless Monitoring of Water Usage

n Wireless technology monitors GlaxoSmith-Kline’s water usage.


TECHFOCUS This section was edited by Executive Editor Harry Hutchinson

Fluid Handling & Fluid Power

Two British companies—Victrex

Polymer Solutions and Magma

Global Ltd.—are cooperating to

develop technology designed to

support increasingly deep subsea oil

and gas extraction.

Magma Global introduced at the

Offshore Technology Conference in

Houston earlier this year a trade-

marked product called m-pipe, which

is intended for risers, fl ow-lines, and

jumpers in very-high-pressure and

extreme-temperature environments.

Victrex Polymer Solutions, a division

of Victrex plc, supplies Magma Global

with a proprietary PEEK polymer

formulation that is the key ingredient

of m-pipe.

Magma Global describes m-pipe

as carbon polymer pipe that offers

improved reliability, increased perfor-

mance, lighter weight, and longer life

than conventional unbonded fl exible

pipe or steel alternatives. Magma Glob-

al is marketing m-pipe as a solution

to meet the challenges faced in harsh

environments where existing technolo-

gies are reaching their limits, particu-

larly in very deepwater applications.

According to Magma Global, m-pipe’s

weight in water is one-tenth that of

steel risers and withstands opera-

tional temperatures to 390 °F with

no effect on corrosion or fatigue

performance. The company said it is

currently designing m-pipe to opera-

tional pressures of 20,000 psi. Surface

roughness averages 0.05 µm.

The product is available with internal

Polymer Piping Aims for Greater Sea Depths

m John Crane dry-running split seal.


BY VIC LUNDBERG

Sealing the agitator shaft entry

point in a tank used for high

temperature mixing of tita-

nium tetrachloride (TiCl4) at

its Henderson, Nev., plant was a crucial

worker-safety issue for Titanium Met-

als Corp. (Timet). TiCl4 is an aggressive

chemical that has a tendency to fl ash o(

to form a potentially noxious vapor and

toxic white cloud. In addition, when the

chemical comes into contact with water,

it can become hazardous.

In late 2010, Timet sought out the

engineering team at Quadna to advise

the best way to seal the mixer shaft

entry point. We faced two major

challenges in developing an e( ective

solution.

The fi rst was to determine how to

maintain a strong positive seal. The seal

design was of paramount importance

and there were critical metallurgy

issues as well. Previously, the system

employed a double mechanical seal with

a mineral-oil barrier fl uid that provided

lubrication between the inboard and

outboard faces.

Timet wanted to use a split mechani-

cal seal instead—because its installa-

tion and eventual replacement takes

far less time. However, to enhance the

operation, a dry seal was needed.

The problem? At the time, no manu-

facturer was producing a dry-running

split seal.

The second obstacle was the length

of the shaft. The mixing operation uses

a long unsupported shaft, where it is

common to experience excessive shaft

run-out at the mechanical seal.

We recommended installing

a sleeve bearing made of

DuPont Vespel CR6100

polyimide. The additional

sleeve would help the long

shaft run true and mini-

mize shaft run-out at the

mechanical seal.

The typical clearance

for a steady bearing for a

shaft of the diameter used

for this mixer (3 to 5 inches)

is 0.020 in. of total clearance.

The Vespel sleeve bearing

was machined for a total

clearance of 0.007– 0.010 in.

The reduction in clearance between the

bearing and shaft allowed the Vespel

sleeve bearing to act as a primary seal

as well as to keep shaft run-out well

below maximum acceptable levels.

The reduction in clearance was pos-

sible because of the unique coe4 cient-

of-thermal-expansion properties of

Vespel. Thermal growth is largely

confi ned to the z direction (along the

shaft)—growth in the x and the y

directions is extremely small. In addi-

tion, the material is chemically inert to

TiCl4 and can operate without lubrica-

tion because of its very low coe4 cient

of friction.

Quadna redesigned the mixer stu4 ng

box for a John Crane Type 3740D car-

tridge split seal using the Vespel sleeve

bearing. This represented one of the

fi rst John Crane dry-running beta split

seal installations.

During fi nal assembly of

the bearing and split-seal

system, a slight dimen-

sional issue prevented

installation of the John

Crane seal. Because

time was running

short, the mixer had

to be placed back into

service. During subsequent

operation the Vespel sleeve

bearing alone sealed nearly

100 percent of the vapor

and also demonstrated its

e( ectiveness in reducing

run-out. So, Quadna and plant o4 cials

decided to continue operating the

unit without the seal while the minor

dimensional issue was addressed.

Then, at the fi rst opportunity, we put

in the dry-running seal to ensure com-

plete containment of vapor. The split

seal took only hours to install during a

brief outage (versus the days required

for a double seal) and has operated

without a hitch.

Several vessels in the plant that

were experiencing similar problems

now have received John Crane Type

3740D dry-running split seals as well

as Dupont Vespel 6100 sleeve bearings

for their mixer shafts, resulting in the

containment of all TiCl4 vapor.

These enhancements have provided

other benefi ts, too. Signifi cant savings

come from eliminating the mineral-oil

barrier fl uid and specialized seal-

support equipment to regulate fl ow and

pressure required by double mechani-

cal seals. In addition, seal replacement

in the future will take much less time.

Quadna team members are incorpo-

rating all the modifi cations as standard

o( erings for new mixers that Timet is

purchasing for the plant. Installation

of these mixers should be completed by

the end of 2011.

Vic Lundberg is a process engineer for

Quadna, a DXP company.

Mixer Seal Gets Major Makeover

diameters of 2 to 24 inches. M-pipe

with internal diameters up to 15

inches can be spooled.

Magma said it has carried out a wide

range of structural tests including

four point bend, tension, compression,

creep, collapse, burst, inter laminar

sheer strength, compression ring,

stress cycling, and impact.

Magma told us that, for qualifi cation

of m-pipe, the company has chosen

the risk-based approach advocated in

Det Norske Veritas RP-A203 Qualifi ca-

tion Procedures for New Technology,

with independent assurance from

Lloyd’s Register as the basis for quali-

fi cation of its risers, jumpers, and

spools. In addition Magma said it has

made detailed reference to DNV-RP-

F202, DNV-RP-F204, DNV-OS-F101,

DNV-OS-C501 and DNV-OS-F201 to

ensure it has fully captured industry

best practice for these products.

The two companies are based in

England, Victrex in Thornton Cleveleys

and Magma in Portsmouth.

JO

HN

CR

AN

E I

NC

.


We’ve all been there: an executive, manager, or client pressures the

engineer to make decisions based on business economics rather than technical merit. Last year was fi lled with stories of missteps: BP’s loss of Deepwater Horizon, and Toyota’s problems with brakes and accelerators.

Earlier this year, on Jan. 28, we remembered the explosion 25 years ago of the Space Shuttle Challenger. The Rogers Commission, appointed to investigate the incident, attributed the accident to “failure in the O-rings sealing a joint on the right solid rocket booster.”

The House Committee on Science and Technology, however, published its own fi nding: “that the underlying problem which led to the Challenger accident was not poor communication or underlying procedures …. Rather, the fundamental problem was poor technical decision-making over a period of several years by top NASA and contractor personnel, who

FOCUS ON ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT

Serving It takes judgment and thought to balance the ethical engineer and

capable project manager.

By Brian E. Porter


Brian E. Porter, P.E., PMP, is the

director of technical product and

market development for Semler

Industries in Franklin Park, Ill., and

vice president of Marcus Goncalves

Consulting Group in Boston. He

is also an adjunct professor at

Nichols College in Dudley, Mass.

erving Two Masters

failed to act decisively to solve the increasingly serious anomalies in the solid rocket booster joints.”

Michael Roberto, Trustee Professor of Management at Bryant University, is a recognized authority on decision-making. When he was a Harvard Business School professor, he wrote a book on the subject, Why Great Leaders Don’t Take Yes for an Answer. In that book, Roberto drew parallels between the culture of NASA in 1986 and that of the 2003 Columbia Shuttle disaster. In both circumstances, there was su, cient data to indicate the dangers, but fl ight managers pressed forward.

Deepwater Horizon, Challenger, and other disasters were overseen by managers who were also trained engineers. How did they miss critical details or make decisions with such disastrous results?

Many individuals in engineering fi rms—many reading this article, in fact—carry credentials for two jobs. They are licensed Professional Engineers and certifi ed Project

Management Professionals. Whether

you have the P.E. initials behind

your name or PMP, the titles are less

important than the responsibilities

they bring.

There is not supposed to be a con-

flict in combining the engineer’s role

with that of project manager because

they are supposed to complement

each other. The engineer and the

manager share responsibility on a

project for “getting it right.”

However, over the past 50 years,

with the flattening of management,

engineers also must balance budgets

and meet business demands. The

challenge remains for each engineer

to balance the P.E. and PMP respon-

sibilities. The requirements to meet

technical needs (functional specifi-

cations, public safety, reliability, etc.)

and business (such as budget and

schedule management) are frequent-

ly conflicting in nature, even when

they theoretically serve one another.

The Professional Engineer holds

a license. Just as a doctor, attorney,

or architect, one must be licensed

to legally perform certain criti-

cal services. The requirement is

intended to protect individuals and

society. “Professional Engineer”

is a legal designation in the United

States and is enforced by each of the

states according to their specialized

requirements often involving local

issues such as hurricanes, tornadoes,

earthquakes, killer bees, etc. Licen-

sure requires education, experience,

good character, and the passing

of a rigorous examination.

Many engineers may be com-

petent to do so, but only P.E.s

are legally permitted to stamp

drawings and approve final

designs, for instance.

The PMP designation is a

certification provided by the

Project Management Institute.

It requires job experience,

references, formal education,

ongoing education, and an

exam to become accredited—

many of the same require-

ments of the P.E. license. But as

of today, no governmental body

or territory requires project manage-

ment licensure.

The benefit is usually hiring or pro-

motion-related, but enough research

has been done to demonstrate

much better on-time and on-budget

performance from those that have

the PMP certification. It also unifies

terminology so that PMPs in the U.S.,

Brazil, China, India, or elsewhere are

speaking the same “language.”

Engineer’s Creed

As a Professional Engineer, I dedicate my professional

knowledge and skill to the advancement and

betterment of human welfare.

I PLEDGE:

» To give the utmost of performance.

» To participate in none but honest enterprise.

» To live and work according to the laws of

man and the highest standards of

professional conduct.

» To place service before profit, the honor

of standing of the profession before personal

advantage, and the public welfare above all

other considerations.

In humility and with need of Divine Guidance,

I make this pledge.


The licensed engineer and the

certified project manager both have

codes of conduct that set high moral

and ethical standards such as honest

enterprise and doing what is best for

the client. The conflict often arises

with the question of what “best for

the client” really means.

Meeting the schedule and budget is

critical for a customer. So is the qual-

ity of the product.

In practice, deciding the technical

and business goals will require judg-

ment of what is “best” for the client.

Ethical ConsiderationsThe greatest challenge to both

engineers and managers is that many

corporate leaders feel pressure from

stockholders and other stakeholders

more immediately than they do the

urgency of safety or engineering

obligations. Sometimes manag-

ers will ask for actions that cross

the line of reasonable risk. These

circumstances require an engineer

to oppose business drivers. In situ-

ations of safety and health, there is

no choice. Deciding where that line

is—well that’s the challenge.

Consider a few real-life examples.

Young engineer vs. senior business manager: Early in his career, an engineer was

tasked with testing a new prototype

device. The equipment would recycle

water-based fluids on site to reduce

transportation and labor costs. A

single alpha prototype proved prom-

ising, and three more units were

built for beta testing in a controlled

test facility. After the first day’s test-

ing, a senior business manager called

the engineer and announced that he

was going to take the beta prototypes

out to several customers.

The young engineer refused to

remove the equipment from the test

facility because the units needed a

few more weeks’ evaluation of their

safety and performance. The busi-

ness manager got upset and demand-

ed, “You will package them up, and

Project Management’s Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct

(Excerpt)

As practitioners of project management, we are

committed to doing what is right and honorable. We

set high standards for ourselves and we aspire to

meet these standards in all aspects of our lives—at

work, at home, and in service to our profession.

This Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct

describes the expectations that we have of ourselves

and our fellow practitioners in the global project

management community. It articulates the ideals

to which we aspire as well as the behaviors that are

mandatory in our professional and volunteer roles.

The purpose of this Code is to instill confidence in

the project management profession and to help an

individual become a better practitioner. We do this

by establishing a profession-wide understanding

of appropriate behavior. We believe that the

credibility and reputation of the project management

profession is shaped by the collective conduct of

individual practitioners.



I’m taking them to customers.”

During the first night’s testing,

two of the three units failed to meet

performance metrics and a safety

component on each one failed. Their

primary containment vessels, full

of liquid, collapsed and leaked into

the facility’s containment area. This

information was relayed to the busi-

ness manager.

You might think that the story is

over, but instead, the manager demanded that the third

unit be packaged and delivered to a customer. The engi-

neer refused and called the vice president and directors

of both departments to the see the failed equipment. The

business manager was escorted out of the R&D facility

and told that he had no further say as to when the units

would be shipped for field evaluation.

Three engineers vs. marketing: During the design of a new electromechanical product, a

company with revenues greater than $1 billion decided to

hire an outside engineering firm and assigned an engineer

on its payroll as the project manager to oversee the e*ort.

After six months of design, testing, redesign, and retesting,

the product was proposed to marketing. The engineering

firm, one of its third-party engineering consultants, and the

engineer acting as project manager all agreed to the design.

The marketing director determined that the cost was

too high for the overall product and suggested removing

one of the safety features. All three engineers recom-

mended keeping the device and recorded their opinions

in writing. The three engineers consulted a nationally

recognized testing laboratory, which noted that, while no

standard mandated the safety device, if the three engi-

neers felt it important to include, then it should be includ-

ed. The marketing director decided against the engineers

stating that they were too risk-averse, and ordered the

removal of the device, since it was not mandatory under

the standard.

Six months after this decision, several thousand

machines were recalled from the field because of a fire risk.

The safety device would have prevented the fire risk. The

cost? Several million dollars in recall promotion, equip-

ment rework, and labor versus $30,000 to have installed

the components initially.

Engineer vs. self: Sometimes the worst enemy to quality is not business or

fiscal demands, but engineers themselves. There was an

engineer in the middle of his career, working for a company

that set a reasonable deadline. Unforeseeable circum-

stances forced several delays. None of the management

team required the engineer to make up the time, but the

engineer was focused on meeting a self-imposed deadline

to prove his worth.

When it came time to deliver the

final product, it was on time, on

budget—and not very good. It had been

rushed and details were missing. Per-

formance was marginalized to meet

schedule and budget. It was the engi-

neer’s own doing. After the product

report was first delivered, the manager

o*ered some advice, “Remember this:

people will remember good work (or

bad work) a lot longer than they will

remember if you were a week late or over budget.” The

engineer went back to work and delivered the product late

and over budget. There was short-lived chiding from some

in management over the failure to meet the deadline, but

when the product was successful, ultimately the engineer

was rewarded.

Your CallAs engineers, we have obligations to be conscious of

the budget and schedule, but it is far more important to

prevent oil well blow-outs, braking problems, or O-ring

failures on a rocket booster. When in doubt, get a team of

other individuals to help evaluate decisions. Those within

the company and external resources may be helpful.

Demands to sacrifice safety are out of the question.

Demands to sacrifice performance must be evaluated

diligently and sensitively. Take some time to consider deci-

sions you’ve made: Learn from the past; use it today, for a

successful future. ■

To Read More

PMI. Project Management Institute Code of Ethics and

Professional Conduct. Retrieved Jan. 13, 2011, from

http://www.pmi.org/About-Us/Ethics/~/media/PDF/

Ethics/ap_pmicodeofethics.ashx.

Roberto, Michael, Why Great Leaders Don’t Take Yes

for an Answer: Managing for Conflict and Consensus,

(Wharton School Publishing, 2005).

Rogers Commission report, “Report of the

Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle

Challenger Accident” (1986). http://history.nasa.gov/

rogersrep/v1ch4.htm.

U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology,

“Investigation of the Challenger Accident: Report

of the Committee on Science and Technology,

House of Representatives” (Government Printing

Office, 1986). http://www.gpoaccess.gov/

challenger/64_420.pdf.

Demands to sacrifice safety are out

of the question. Demands to sacrifice

performance must be evaluated.


i f you want to address something, as the fi rst step, you have to defi ne the thing. Take patent trolls, for instance. Much maligned, they have never been clearly defi ned and thus can be dif-fi cult to handle. Meanwhile, opportu-

nistic new species of this interesting creature keep popping up.

The earliest trolls were fi rst called “subma-riners.” The typical profi le was someone who had numerous patent fi lings for futuristic ideas (futuristic at the time, anyway), who didn’t actually manufacture or sell anything, and who purposefully delayed letting the pat-ents issue (often for twenty years or more) until the marketplace had fully embraced the technology mentioned in the patent fi lings. Then these submariners surfaced, allowed their patents to issue, and sued or threatened to sue many of the businesses in an entire

Even those who make

and sell nothing are

devising new ways

to make money from

U.S. patent laws.

By Kirk Teska

Kirk Teska is the

managing partner of

Iandiorio, Teska, and

Coleman; an adjunct

professor at Suffolk Law

School, and the author of

two books: Patent Savvy for

Managers (Nolo) and Patent

Project Management (ASME Press).


industry (for example, wafer production or barcode tech-

nologies) often seeking a small percentage of a large com-

pany’s entire yearly revenue.

A change in the patent laws put an end to these sub-

mariners: patents, beginning in 1995, now have a life of

twenty years from the date of the application (instead of

seventeen years from issuance of the patent) meaning the

submarining tactic of keeping a patent application pend-

ing eats up the life of any resulting patent.

Trolls subsequently came to mean, in many cases,

companies which existed only to own broad patents for an

idea (for example, the ability to receive e-mail on a wire-

less device) and which then aggressively sued the biggest

players in the industry surrounding that idea.

Proposed legislation that would thwart these trolls has,

to date, not made it into law probably because it’s di+cult

to outlaw patent trolling if you cannot adequately define

it. Under some definitions, the legendary independent

inventor toiling in his garage could be a troll. Under other

definitions, well-known productive companies could

sometimes be deemed trolls—for example if they sue over

a patent which covers a product the company doesn’t cur-

rently sell.

Where Congress has failed, though, the courts have

limited, in some ways, certain aspects of patent trolling.

That has certainly not stopped all of the conventional

trolls, however, nor has it a#ected the proliferation of

new, somewhat unconventional trolls.

Recently, for example, the first patent marking troll

made its appearance. Often, this troll isn’t even an inven-

tor of any kind. Patent attorney marking trolls, for exam-

ple, prey on mistakes made by companies when their

products are incorrectly marked with patent numbers.

The customary practice when a new gizmo is engi-

neered is to put “patent pending” on it and later, when

a patent is won, to begin marking the gizmo with the

patent number. Patent marking trolls seek the recovery

of a $500 fine for every gizmo sold with a “wrong” patent

number. The wrong number scenarios include the situ-

ation where a patent naturally expires after its full term

(or expires even earlier in the case where certain govern-

ment required patent maintenance fees are not paid) and

yet the now expired patent number remains on a product.

Or, a patent could change or even be adjudicated invalid.

Still another scenario is when the gizmo itself changes

to the extent that it no longer has any of the features cov-

ered by the patent.

A fine of $500 for every falsely marked gizmo could far

outweigh the profits made on the gizmo. How did this sad

state of a#airs come to be? It’s a little complicated.

Under one section of the patent statute, if a competitor

produces an infringing product which violates a patent

marked on a product, the competitor is deemed to be

“on notice” of the patent and, if found guilty of patent

infringement, will have to pay damages for all sales of

infringing products from the date the patented products

were marked. Remarkably, this is true even if the compet-

itor never saw the product, the patent marking on it, or

the patent. This is a strong incentive to mark a patented

product with a patent number.

Conversely, if you sell a patented product and don’t

mark it with your patent number and I copy the product

and violate the patent, I don’t have to pay damages for

sales I make before you actually notify me about the pat-

ent, by sending me a letter, for example.

Since patent infringement lawsuits cost millions, they

are usually not brought unless the infringer has a lot of

sales revenue and was “on notice” for all or most of the

When sued over patent

marking, Solo was able to prove

that it had no intent to deceive.

sales. And so, patented products typically have a patent

number or two on them.

What happens, though, if a company falsely marks its

products with a patent number in an attempt to scare peo-

ple away from copying the product? In our system of laws

where fairness is at least a goal, you would expect such acts

are illegal. They are: another section of the patent statute

makes companies liable for up to a $500 fi ne per false pat-

ent marking o* ense. The $500 is split evenly between the

U.S. government and the

person who brings the

charge of false marking.

So far, so good, but

think about it: Would a

rational person sue if the

maximum total recovery

was $250? No, and as a

result the false patent

marking statute histori-

cally wasn’t used much.

That all changed

when the U.S. Court of

Appeals for the Federal

Circuit determined, in

a case between com-

petitors, that the statute

actually means a $500

fi ne on a per-article basis

rather than a $500 fi ne

based on a decision to falsely mark a product.

You can now see where this is headed. If I fi nd a lot, say

millions, of identical products which are marked incor-

rectly, we are talking some real money. I’ll pick some kind

of disposable product like, say, those plastic lids on co* ee

and soda drinks provided at Starbucks and other establish-

ments. That is exactly what a patent attorney did when he

sued Solo for false marking in a case where a $500 fi ne per

article could total almost the U.S.’s national debt.

Others too saw the potential for big recoveries—by some

accounts, hundreds of false patent marking cases have been

fi led. And it’s not just low-tech disposable products that are

targets. High tech companies like 3M, Pfi zer, Medtronic,

and Cisco currently face false marking lawsuits.

Based on the ruling in the Solo case, though, these

companies have at least a little ammunition with which to

defend themselves.

In the Solo case, Solo did once have patents covering

the lids. To provide the notice which would enable it to

recover damages for any infringement of the patents, Solo

made it so the molds marked the relevant patent num-

bers on the lids at the time of manufacture. The problem

was the molds lasted longer than the patents. When the

patents expired, all later lids produced by the molds and

containing the patent numbers were falsely marked.

Even so, the court noted the false marking statute

requires false marking with an “intent to deceive the

public.” In the case, Solo suc-

cessfully proved that it had

no intent to deceive because the company, as individual

molds wore out, replaced them with new molds lack-

ing the expired patent numbers—a practice which was

blessed by Solo’s attorneys. As a result, Solo never had to

pay any fi ne. Another defense is that the statute allows an

individual judge to award less than the $500 upper limit

per false marking o* ense.

Congress too is taking notice of the situation: A bill

(S.515) has now been proposed which would require a

false marking claimant to prove economic injury to the

claimant. If this bill becomes law, most patent marking

trolls couldn’t fi le false marking actions.

So far, there is no report of anyone coming away from any

of these lawsuits a millionaire, but it could happen were it

proven a given company actually meant to deceive people

into believing a product was patented when it wasn’t.

The new troll is the über troll. Funded to the tune of $5

billion and armed with 30,000 patents and patent appli-

cations, Intellectual Ventures LLC located in Bellevue,

Wash., urges high tech companies to become customers

of the company lest they fi nd themselves defendants in

patent litigation lawsuits. IV, formed in 2000 by ex-

Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold, spent its fi rst 10 years

building a huge patent portfolio. Some originated from

inventions conceived by IV personnel; others were pur-

chased. Verizon and Cisco reportedly paid hundreds of

millions of dollars to IV. But recently, when a few targeted


PATENT CENTRAL:

Intellectual

Ventures owns a

store of intellectual

property and has

fi led suits. RPX was

formed to avoid

IP lawsuits.


“Actually, it’s not magic at all…

these guys just like to dress up!”

“At Forest City Gear, you see, we produce the highest quality, engineered solutions

to our customers’ requirements and we do it using the best gearmaking machines

and test equipment we can afford. If there’s any magic in us at all, it’s found in the

people who make those gears, splines and assemblies at our company, every day,

then deliver them to you on time and at the best price possible.”

“Our company motto is Excellence Without Exception and we try to live by that

code, on every part on every job. To do less would make us bad wizards and, worse,

it would disappoint our worldwide customer base, some of whom are you folks

reading this ad, right now. That’s a witch’s brew and you’ll never find such a

concoction at our company…ever.” “That’s one spell you can count on!”

-Fred Young, CEO and Chief Wizard,

Forest City Gear

11715 Main Street

Roscoe, IL 61073 815-623-2168

Scan this code on your smart phone and see Fred walking through the plant. (He’s really the guy who likes to dress up!)www.bit.ly/ForestCityWizard Or visit www.forestcitygear.com for the rest of our story!

it can still help with the defense using IV’s portfolio but

that won’t necessarily work if the patent owner is a troll:

trolls don’t care about patents you have (or have access

to) because trolls don’t manufacture or sell anything

which could infringe a patent.

So, paying into IV and/or RPX is not the same as an

insurance policy. And, even with the “help” of IV and

RPX, history proves new and improved breeds of trolls

will inevitably emerge. ■

companies balked at licensing IV’s

patents, IV promptly sued them.

A byproduct of the über troll

are companies like RPX Corp.,

which is paid by other com-

panies to buy up potentially

threatening patents a troll

could use against them. RPX,

which declined to be comment

for this

article,

prom-

ises to never

litigate the

patents in its

portfolio. Annual

memberships are

available and di,er in

price from tens of thousands

to millions of dollars based on the

subscribing company’s operating

income. These “Troll Shields” might

fill in the gap between a Congress

which might not act and court cases

which only slightly impede various

kinds of trolling.

The problem is even if a company

doesn’t mismark its products, and

even if it pays into both Intellec-

tual Ventures and RPX, there’s still

nothing to stop some other “regular”

troll from alleging a patent violation.

Consider a new startup desiring

to design, manufacture, and sell a

new smart phone. There are likely

numerous patents that would have

to be traversed or licensed in order

to sell the smart phone without

liability given its many subsystems:

processors and other chips, cam-

era and GPS technology, software,

and the like. IV calls this intellec-

tual property a company needs an

“invention gap” and IV says it can

fill the gap (but will not disclose its

deal terms).

So, the startup signs on as an IV

customer and, for good measure,

becomes a member of RPX. But,

what if a patent owner owns a patent

violated by the new smart phone and

what if that patent is not in either

IV’s or RPX’s portfolio? In such a

case, the startup’s membership in

RPX and the fact the start-up is a

customer of IV is unavailing. IV says me.hotims.com/34756-13 or circle 13


In a former life, Dan Didrick fabricated cosmetic fi ngers. The key word in that phrase

is cosmetic. “The fi ngers were only a silicon cap

that doesn’t bend,” Didrick said. “We call them Sunday fi ngers because you wear them to church or dinner and then throw them in a drawer for the week.”

Bedeviled by the cosmetic fi ngers’ shortcomings, he invented X-Finger, surgical steel fi ngers that move, fl ex, and grasp, just like the wearer’s original fi ngers.

“You can move them as quickly as

Everyday Fingers

Prosthetic limbs have been around a long time; but until Dan Didrick came

along, working artifi cial fi ngers didn’t exist.

By Jean Thilmany,

Associate Editor


you can move your prior finger; plus because it’s common

to flex your finger from open to closed and the X-Finger

follows motion of a residual finger, there’s no learning

curve,” Didrick said. “A patient can use the device right

away after putting it on. They could immediately catch a

tossed ball that they see from the corner of their eye.”

Along the ten-year path since his first prototype, Didrick

patented the device—which uses no electronics—himself,

sought and received coverage from all major medical

insurers for the fingers, and taught himself computer-

aided design. That last bit, he said, was the easiest.

A huge proportion of nonfatal accidental amputations

involve fingers. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

estimates that finger losses account for about 94 percent

of job-related amputations.

So Didrick—who got his start in prosthethics as a child,

by using materials from his father’s dental o-ce to make

movie-quality monster masks—put his skills to use

fabricating prosthetic fingers.

But his world, and his job, changed when he met a man

who had lost several fingers in an accident and who

was deaf. The loss of the fingers made it impossible to

communicate in sign language.

“I started by actually carving components out of

wood and assembling them into reciprocating series of

components that, through leverages, force the mechanics

in the shape of a finger to move from a straight to a bent

position; from straight to a fist,” Didrick said.

Many amputees retain part of their finger. So the device,

when fitted over the hand and the residual finger or

fingers, lets a patient move his or her X-Finger by moving

the residual finger from extended to bent.

“So I came up with the assembly, but I was just carving

it out of wood,” Didrick said. “Then I started seeking out

design engineers. That’s when I realized it can cost tens of

thousands of dollars to have a design engineer create an

assembly of this nature.”

Though he had majored in business in college, Didrick

rose to this first challenge as he would rise to many others

while launching X-Finger. He simply bought a CAD

package—SolidWorks, from the company in Concord,

Mass.—and quickly ran through the tutorial.

“Then I just started designing the components,” he said.

“It only took about two weeks to get the first design. I

shipped those to a manufacturer and they replicated them

using an EDM machine and sent back components.”

Because all amputation cases are di.erent, Didrick

went on to develop what he called an erector set of parts

that could be assembled into more than 500 di.erent

configurations. That number is likely much higher than

500, but “once I got that high, I became confused counting

them,” he said.

The device is composed of stainless steel, with a plastic

cap that sits on the tip of the finger and another bit

of plastic that sits at the flange. This is covered with

a thermoplastic cosmetic skin that is soft and resists

tearing. Think of what an artificial fishing worm feels like

and how it can stretch.

“We actually contacted a company that was doing a job

for the military, and they’d formulated thermoplastic to

the same durometer reading as human skin; so it’s almost

eerie to touch it, in that it feels like skin,” Didrick said.

Each finger contains 23 moving parts, though depending

on the complexity of the case—such as whether the wearer

retains a residual finger or not—it could contain more.

For those without residual fingers, a wire runs into the

webbing between the fingers to receive open and flex

impulses. The device is attached to the wrist and fitted

over the hand and the residual fingers.

“It was really challenging replacing the ring and middle

finger. The joint that controls those residual fingers is in

your hand,” Didrick said. “But in this case it needs a probe

that goes down into the webbing between the fingers to be

controlled by that joint.

For those who have lost four fingers, the device allows the

movement of the palm to control all the artificial fingers.

Post EngineeringThough he’d invented the world’s first active prosthetic

finger (the passive type is the cosmetic “Sunday” finger),

Didrick, who now owns Didrick Medical Inc. of Naples,

Fla., was still an industry outsider.

He bought a book called Patent It Yourself by David

Pressman (1979 McGraw-Hill and since updated) and

spent a year writing his own patent.

Once the device was patented, FDA representatives and

some online help taught him how to write a 513(d) document

necessary for device evaluation. Didrick sent his evaluation

to the agency and soon received a positive response.

X-Fingers (the plural, used when the device contains more

than one finger) had been registered with the FDA.

The next step was receiving insurance approval for the

fingers. After he won approval from the FDA, he went on

to get approval from all major insurance companies, which

now cover X-Fingers.

“From there, the device began taking o.. The need was

great,” Didrick said. “Many amputees had been awaiting

something like this.”

What’s little realized, he said, is how many children

lose fingers. The largest group of people who lose fingers

outside the workplace are children under five, who

undergo finger amputation due to accidents like slamming

them in a car door.

He also has learned that one out of 200 people will lose

one or more fingers within their lifetime. That statistic

takes into account people living all over the world.

“It’s not only machinists who lose fingers,” Didrick said.

You can see a video demonstration of the X-Finger at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEX_0by9_30.

Many of Didrick’s customers pay a deposit in advance,

which helps finance the four-employee company and its

continued innovations.


What’s New and Next?After his initial success, Didrick began routinely traveling

to the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio and

to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington,

D.C., to fit wounded soldiers. He has also fitted British

soldiers with the device.

The U.S. Department of Defense asked him to design

an artificial thumb, which he has also done. It’s, not

surprisingly, called the X-Thumb.

He’s now at work on a thin glove that would enable those

with paralyzed hands who retain some mobility in the

wrist to use that mobility to control their hands.

Didrick is also trying to help children whose insurance

companies deny them coverage because they grow out of

their prosthetics too fast. The costs of producing children’s

X-Fingers are high because of the variation in injuries

and finger dimensions in smaller fingers and hands. He’s

recently established the nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization,

World Hand Foundation, to cover costs to provide

X-Fingers for those who cannot a,ord to pay for them.

And he’s still using his original CAD package.

“If we needed the funds to hire a professional design

team we’d never be able to do this,” Didrick said. ■

X-Fingers invented by Dan Didrick, are prosthetic fingers that can be manipu-lated by wearers through use of their residual finger or fingers. The device

lets them regain full use of their finger or fingers. Didrick taught himself CAD to model and manufacture the device, then

patented it and sold it himself.

DID

RIC

K M

ED

ICA

L I

NC

.


w hen a system is not performing as expected, we record and study its vital signs in an e" ort to diagnose

the problem. When some key parts cannot be reached for measurement, we have to fi nd an alternative way to get the information we

need. Here is a case in point.The managers of a coal-fi red

power plant believed that the ash removal system was

not operating as e& -ciently as it should.

Ash fell from the fur-nace and was sluiced

out at intervals, along with the fi ne ash and dust from the plant’s electrostatic pre-cipitators. The resulting slurry collected in an underground sump, from which it was

pumped to a dispos-al pond some distance

away. Two ash disposal pumps were installed,

one being for standby. Ash settled out in the disposal

pond and the carrying water over-fl owed to a reservoir. Two return pumps moved the water from there to a tank, lo-cated above ground and above the ash sump, where it would be available to re-enter the ash removal process.

In theory, the system should have operated almost as a closed loop. There would be loss-es attributable to evaporation from the pond,

Wheninstrumentscan’t reachthe pump,

there’s another way togo withthe fl ow.

By Ray Beebe

Ray Beebe is a senior lecturer in the School of Applied Sciences and

Engineering at Monash University and director of MCM Consultants

Pty Ltd. in Victoria, Australia.

Editor’s note: This article is adapted from a paper presented at the ICOMS 2007 Asset Management Conference

in Melbourne, Australia.

FOCUS ON PLANT ENGINEERING AND MAINTENANCE


which had a surface area of several acres, and the system was

set up to add water from the municipal supply to make up for

those losses. In practice, though, it was drawing much more

town water than expected.

Not only was the town water expensive, but there was also

a risk that adding so much outside water to the system would

overfi ll it, with the possibility of spillage via an e$ uent pond to

the main power station cooling pond, leading to unacceptable

chemical content. As a plant engineer, it was my job to fi nd the

cause of the problem and to put the system into proper balance.

I began an investigation to fi nd the fl ows required of each

pump to maintain a closed-system operation. Getting the nec-

essary information required tests of the pumps’ performance.

I knew that comparing the head (i.e. generated pressure)

against the fl ow is a method that reveals the condition of the

pump and also of the system it serves. Head is readily measured

with standard test pressure gauges or electronic transducers.

Non-intrusive fl ow meters work well where a suitable length of

pipe is accessible.

If conditions for direct measurement do not exist, a suitable

tank of uniform dimensions may be available in the system.

System setup is arranged so that its change in level can be mea-

sured with time and the fl ow rate calculated. Even in sealed

tanks containing liquids less benign than water, such as hydro-

carbons, there may be a manometric level indicator.

This task presented a few challenges. The disposal pump

conveyed the ash slurry from the sump to a disposal pond

some kilometers distant through a cement lined pipe, so direct

measurement of its fl ow was impossible. The sump was under-

ground, of irregular dimensions, and inaccessible for taking

rate-of-fl ow measurements.

The return tank, however, was accessible and of uniform di-

mensions from its top down through most of its height. I decid-

ed to use the rate of change in the tank level as the fl ow meter.

The tank had a capacity of 169 kiloliters; throughout its section

with parallel walls volume was 27.75 kL per meter of depth.

Because water infl ow causes surges in the tank level, the elec-

trode that controls the return pump is in an internal chamber

the height of the tank and open at its bottom. This gives a stable

water level and, because it is accessible from the top, a conve-

nient way to measure the depth of water in the tank.

Measuring the level change rate could be done with a stop

watch and a weighted tape measure. For the tests, during which

the system was run on water only, only one return water pump

was operating at a time. Input fl ow was found to be 136.7 liters

per second.

The tank outlet automatic valve was manually isolated for the

tests of the return pumps. Although the water level surged vig-

orously as it gushed in, the level in the side chamber inside the

tank was nicely damped and showed no oscillations.

Finding the output fl ow from the disposal pump was a di2 er-

ent problem. After the head-fl ow tests had been run on the re-

turn water pumps, one ash disposal pump was started, and the

system set to auto operation. The tank’s automatic outlet valve

was controlled by the sump level electrode to open whenever

the sump level dropped to the low setting, and in turn, to close

when the high level setting was reached.

All fl ow from the tank was replenishing the ash sump, accord-

ing to the detected sump level change and the autovalve. The

level of the tank was measured at regular intervals of one min-

ute, and resulted in a plot relating volume contained vs. time.

When I was plotting the data afterwards, I observed that the

level in the tank rose, and so the return water pump has a great-

er fl ow rate than the disposal pump. The gradient of the line

showed the di2 erence in fl ow averaging 10.4 liters per second.

This was a moment of serendipity. It was evident that the dis-

posal pump fl ow was less than the incoming fl ow, and could be

found by taking the di2 erence: 136.7 – 10.4 = 125.3 L/s. It gave us

a way of measuring ash pump fl ow that could be used for future

condition monitoring.

Another experience with this system taught us some addition-

al lessons. A disposal pump had its impeller severely worn from

the abrasive ash slurry and was sent for repair. A replacement

impeller was obtained from store and fi tted.

After the pump was reinstalled, operators reported that it

could not maintain the required fl ow. As the pump was newly

overhauled, worn clearances were unlikely, so a head-fl ow test

was run using the return tank as the fl ow meter again. The

retest confi rmed that the pump’s performance was below re-

quirements and, in fact, corresponded to that expected from

a smaller impeller. When the pump was dismantled a smaller

impeller was found inside.

The power station has four stages, each with an ash sump serv-

ing a pair of 200 MW units. The pumps have the same external

appearance and dimensions, but have more than one inter-

changeable impeller size available to suit the duty at each of the

four locations because the distance to the disposal point varies.

Attention was obviously needed to both stores coding and

overhaul instructions.

During the various investigations and tests on the pumps, op-

erators reported that one of the return water pumps was down

in performance. I went to the pump-house, which is unmanned

and located outside the power station over 500 meters from the

control room. Both pumps appeared to be running, contrary

to instructions. A call to the operator confi rmed that his panel

showed only one pump to be in service.

On closer inspection, the pump that was not in service was

seen to be rotating in reverse. As most motor noise originated

from its cooling fan, it appeared to be in service. A very close

look was needed to confi rm rotation direction.

The suction and discharge isolating valves on these pumps are

of the knife-gate type, operated by actuators. The limit switches

on the actuators of the o2 ending pump were out of adjustment,

such that the valves did not fully close. This allowed water from

the service pump to recirculate through its partner, rotating it

in reverse. This of course reduced the fl ow to the system. When

pumps are installed in parallel, each usually has a check (non-

return) valve and reverse running can also occur if this valve on

the out-of-service pump sticks open.

Once the proper adjustments had been made—the correct im-

peller installed on the disposal pump, proper parallel operation

restored for the return pumps—the plant managed to obtain

the desired closed-system operation for ash removal. It had also

found a method to measure the fl ow of its disposal pump. ■


An ASMEpost-construction

standard leads a refinery

maintenance team through an

unfamiliar but e#cient repair.

By Jaan Taagepera and Nathan Tyson

Jaan Taagepera is technical team leader of the engineering analysis team at

Chevron Energy Technology Co. and vice-chair of the ASME Post Construction

Committee’s Subcommittee for Repair and Testing. Nathan Tyson is a design

engineer at Chevron Global Manufacturing. They are based in Richmond, Calif.

freezetime

a

FOCUS ON PLANT ENGINEERING AND MAINTENANCE

lant processes and operations are carefully engineered to prolong the life of piping and equipment. What’s more,

enormous e$ort is invested in tracking the inevitable deterioration in process

plants so that repair or replacement of various components can be planned.

When an unexpected problem emerges, it triggers a reaction by plant personnel. Piping must be repaired, components replaced—and often these things must be done very quickly to minimize costly plant downtime.

But exactly what is the best response? In an industry where safety comes first, there is little appetite for attempting novel repairs that

pin


are not carefully studied—and when process plants are

down, often there is no business case for the delay that

careful study of untried alternatives would require, when

there are better-understood repair options whose costs

may be significant but are known.

Reluctance to innovate, however, could be costing com-

panies substantial sums of money. It was to address this

dilemma that ASME published a standard in 2006—PCC-2

Repair of Pressure Equipment and Piping—to guide plant

personnel in the swift and safe execution of several lesser

known but very valuable repair techniques, regardless of

their experience.

One such repair technique that is well documented in

PCC-2 is the use of freeze plugs, which prevent flow in pipes

to allow for downstream maintenance activity. It was this

section of the document that solved a critical problem and

avoided a shutdown at a busy refinery on the West Coast.

During a recent maintenance shutdown at the refinery

operated by Chevron in Richmond,

Calif., routine work had been planned

to dismantle a heat exchanger for

inspection and refurbishment. Heat

exchangers are key pieces of equip-

ment for refiners. They control

temperatures of process streams and

recycle heat to make processes run

more e*ciently.

A typical exchanger will employ

anywhere from tens to thousands of

parallel tubes in a bundle, configured

so that one process stream flows

through the inside of the tube, and a

di+erent one flows over the outside

of the tube, exchanging heat through

the tube wall. Over time, the integ-

rity of this pressure boundary—the

tube wall—is compromised by corro-

sion, and when it becomes too thin,

the tubes must be replaced. This

exchanger needed its tube bundle

replaced.

Once the plant was shut down,

cleaned up, and prepared for main-

tenance work, operators discovered

that a key valve normally used to

separate the heat exchanger from

its supply piping was broken beyond

repair, and would no longer close.

Without closing this critical valve to

isolate the bundle, the maintenance

on the heat exchanger could not oc-

cur, and the plant would not be able

to return to service.

To complicate matters further, this

valve was on an eight-inch diameter

branch line o+ a 50-year-old cooling water utility system

that services several independent plants at the refinery,

and only this plant was scheduled to be out of service for

maintenance at the time.

One way of taking the line out of service to replace the

inoperable valve would require that the entire utility be

shut down, along with all the plants it serves. Unplanned

shutdowns of this nature usually cost refineries hundreds

of thousands to millions of dollars, so plant personnel

were eager to identify other ways to safely isolate the valve

for replacement.

■ ■ ■ evaluating and planningBesides a general shutdown of the cooling water system,

two other options for isolating the exchanger were evalu-

ated: A hot-tap and stopple, and a freeze plug.

The evaluation revealed that a nitrogen freeze plug

Not to scale

■ A schematic of the plant and the plan for a freeze plug: Ultrasonic measurements confirmed that the thickness of the pipe was well above the minimum to withstand hoop stress. A leaking plug was of concern

because a small amount of flow can prevent plug formation.

Not to scale


provided the best solution for this work due to its low

complexity and low cost. The more familiar hot-tap and

stopple—in which a welded sleeve is attached to the pipe, a

hole is drilled through the pipe wall inside this sleeve, and

an inflatable plug is inserted in the pipe for isolation—was

determined to involve higher complexity, and was expect-

ed to be more costly as well.

A freeze plug, unlike the hot-tap, does not compromise

the integrity of the pipe pressure boundary by welding or

drilling. The freeze plug is created by installing a bolt-on

jacket around the pipe through which liquid nitrogen (at

-321 °F) is circulated until the water in the line freezes. The

concept is simple, but execution must be well planned.

The company’s engineers were aware of freeze plugs,

which had been used successfully on many occasions else-

where by Chevron, but because no one on the immediate

team had direct experience with them, they resorted to

PCC-2 Article 3.2 for guidance. A third-party contractor

was brought in to perform the freeze plug, and Chevron’s

engineer worked closely with the contractor and other

owner representatives to ensure the procedure was com-

prehensive. The contractor’s trained and experienced per-

sonnel o-ered valuable insight into the job.

Prior to execution of the freeze plug, all parties involved

in the work gathered to assess the risks to health, safety,

and the environment. PCC-2 addressed the issues and

concerns regarding freeze plugs.

Some of the risks discussed include:

Flow in pipe preventing plug formation—a threaded

connection on the section of pipe to be isolated was

dripping. Even a small amount of flow can prevent plug

formation.

Determining positive isolation prior to beginning

maintenance—if the broken valve was unbolted prior to

achieving isolation, the flanges connecting the valve to the

pipe would leak and, with an influx of warmer water, the

plug would fail.

Downstream e!ects of ice plug—if the pipe was

returned to service prior to allowing the ice plug to

completely melt, the plug could flow downstream and

severely damage equipment and piping.

■ ■ ■ setting upPhysical setup for the freeze plug began with ultrasonic

thickness measurements taken in a 1-inch square grid for

the full length of the area to be occupied by the jacket. The

data revealed that the pipe was well above the required mini-

mum thickness for hoop stress required by the ASME B31.3

Process Piping code, and close to original thickness in many

places. The ultrasonic data gave confidence that the plug lo-

cation could endure the mechanical loads likely to be applied

while it was below the brittle transition temperature.

One of the key concerns on this job was minimizing

the potential for impact loading the frozen pipe. Before

■ The new valve (top) was installed without shutting down the entire water utility. The repair site was isolated by circulating liquid nitrogen through a jacket mounted several inches before the broken valve to create a dam of frozen water.


initiating the freezing opera-

tion, all bolts connecting the

valve to the pipe were changed

out one by one—in case any

of them had seized during the

course of their 50-year life—

with new lubricated bolts, and

every other one was removed

to minimize the amount of me-

chanical work necessary while

the pipe was frozen. Sca'old-

ing was erected to support a

chain hoist to ensure gentle

installation of the new valve,

and the written plan for the job

included carefully lifting out

the piping above the broken

valve and the valve itself using

a crane, which would immedi-

ately remove those components from the job site.

To minimize the duration of the mechanical work, all mate-

rials and tools required for the work were brought to the site

and organized prior to introducing nitrogen to the jacket.

In preparation for the unlikely event that the piping was

fractured during the freeze operation, operators of all po-

tentially a'ected plants were notified so they could review

their emergency procedures.

The section of piping to be isolated contained a branch

connection available for a pressure indicator and drain con-

nection, so pressure could be monitored and bled o' as the

ice plug expanded into the trapped volume. This pressure

rise is one of the indicators that a plug has fully formed.

■ ■ ■ executionThe jacket was installed on a vertical pipe 16 inches from

the upstream flange of the broken valve. Thermocouples

above and below the jacket monitored the pipe wall tem-

perature, which correlates with plug formation.

Upon completion of setup activities, the job was ready

to begin. The nitrogen trailer was pressured up to 35 psig

—enough to ensure that the freeze plug jacket remained

full of liquid nitrogen, and not the warmer nitrogen va-

pors. The trailer was sized to contain three or more times

the required volume for the work, to mitigate against un-

foreseen events.

The nitrogen was delivered to the jacket through a

¾-inch diameter nitrogen hose and nitrogen gas vented

from the jacket through two 1-inch diameter vent lines. The

lines vented downwind of all work areas in the vicinity.

It took 18 minutes for the liquid nitrogen to reach the

jacket, and just under two hours later, temperature and

pressure readings indicated the plug was fully formed.

This was verified using the bleed connection, and workers

were given the green-light to drain the pipe and begin the

valve replacement work. During this work, the contractor

continued to monitor the temperature in the jacket to en-

sure the plug integrity was properly maintained.

In less than 20 minutes the upper pipe section and the

broken valve were removed and lifted out of the way.

Once the old gasket—which had sealed the old valve to

the pipe—had been successfully scraped o' the flange,

the new gasket and valve were carefully set in place using

the chain hoist and gently bolted down. The space inside

the pipe between the ice plug and the valve was filled with

water to eliminate the possibility of the ice plug violently

dislodging during the thaw and damaging the new valve.

The valve was then closed, and the pipe was left to thaw

overnight.

Upon completion of these activities, the planned work to

replace the heat exchanger was able to proceed immediately.

The following day, after the pipe thawed, the new bolts on

the valve were tightened to a final value and the freeze jacket

was removed. The new valve was ready for permanent use.

Although none of the engineers on the team had worked

with freeze plugs before, after establishing that in this

case it was the safest alternative, they were able to imple-

ment one successfully on short notice, as part of a discov-

ery job within a planned maintenance window. Employing

a freeze plug proved more e0cient both in terms of cost

and schedule than the other repair alternatives, and was

executed safely and with confidence due to the guidance

provided in PCC-2.

It is clear that the ASME has once again delivered a stan-

dard that provides great business value, meeting a recog-

nized need and enhancing the safe and reliable operation

of existing process plants. ■

The authors would like to acknowledge management at the

Chevron Richmond Refinery and at Chevron Energy Technol-

ogy Co. for their support of this e$ort.

■ A view of the plant showing the repair location.


Did you ever work for a crusty old boss who has

seen and done about everything around your

facility? Well, I sure did. Never will forget him

giving me the following advice (in the midst

of a big equipment rebuild project—when things were a bit

behind schedule):

“Remember that about 95 percent of what you do in plant

engineering has already been done by someone else. This

stu+ is not rocket science, you know. If you are having some

di,culty, just go get some good advice from your peers. At

least, find out what not to do. Profit by their mistakes. It may

eliminate a lot of time-wasting e+ort and expense.”

Recently a company had

hired me to visit its plant and

conduct some pump train-

ing for sta+ engineers and

maintenance guys. About

mid-way through the first

morning session I learned

that the plant engineer was

new. The previous one had

been “let go.” Moreover, the

main reason that the compa-

ny wanted the training was

that the plant process water

pumps were experiencing

very high failure rates (like

one every six months).

There were three Goulds 100 hp end suction ANSI process

pumps that supplied all of the cooling and washdown water for

the site. Normally one pump operated continuously. During

daily washdowns a second unit would come on automatically

to supply the additional demand for two or three hours. The

units were rated for 300 gpm at 130 psig, but often ran out on

the curve to well over 700 gpm (therefore the large motors).

The system was an open-circulation design. Most of the

water discharged into trenches and returned to a large set-

tling basin for re-use. A shallow well reservoir pump replaced

evaporation and blowdown losses.

The problem with the 100 hp pumps was bearing and

mechanical seal failures. At a rebuild cost of $15,000 every six

months, the boss was quite frustrated. The maintenance guys

were doing the rebuilds with no success. I quickly learned that

the engineers were blaming maintenance and maintenance

was blaming the buyer in purchasing. They had even called in

the local Goulds service technician to handle a pump rebuild

and train the maintenance crew how to “do it right.” That

rebuild job also lasted only six months.

The maintenance guys took me to the pump house to check

out the equipment. The installation looked quite normal, but

vibration was high. So, how does a perfectly good pump that

was just rebuilt, aligned, and inspected have high vibration?

After collecting some data and making a quick sketch, I

asked to see the installation and operation manual. It took

over two hours to find the book (in the back of an engineering

department file cabinet).

The Goulds instruction book was for a Model 3796, size 4x4-

10 with a suction lift of eight feet nominal. Return water to

the pit entered through a concrete channel from the settling

basin. As such, there was a large stainless screen on the end of

the suction pipe to keep out rats, snakes, cattails, paper, etc.

The plant fabrication draw-

ing indicated 62 square inches

of opening in this stainless

mesh screen. The Goulds

manual clearly specified a

screen opening requirement

of three times the open area

of the pipe (86 square inches

for the recommended 6-inch

suction pipe ).

However, the suction pipe

was 4 inches with a short-

radius elbow bolted

directly onto the

pump 4-inch intake

flange. For 500 gpm

flow, I calculated a

net positive suc-

tion head available of 21.1 feet. Above 500 gpm, the NPSH

required is 25 to 35 feet.

Here was a classic case of cavitation gone wild, especially for

high flow rates before a second pump started up. The pressure

controller was a rudimentary device. Operating a single pump

above 400 gpm was cause for the cavitation related vibration.

I made a sketch of the conditions and pulled the plant engi-

neer aside the second day to show him what I’d identified. He

had suspected a technical issue, but was swamped with the

demands of the new job. He agreed with my suggestion that

“when all else fails–read the instruction book.”

At the end of day two all the maintenance guys agreed

that they had learned a lot during the training session. They

planned to get right into making system piping changes.

That crusty old boss had given me sound advice that still

applies today.

Gary Wamsley is an engineering consultant at JoGar Energy Services in Atlanta with over 30 years of industrial utilities experience. He can be reached at www.jogarenergy.com.

A Pump War Story:Back to Basics

BY GARY WAMSLEY

How does a pump that was just rebuilt, aligned, and inspected have high vibration? The schematic suggests some answers.

Process Water Pump Design Issues

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Serving Gas Turbine & Turbomachinery Professionals Worldwide for 57 Years

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ENERGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT:

SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL

PRINCIPLES, SECOND EDITION.

James A. Fay and Dan S. Golomb. Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York,

New York 10016. 2011. 384 pages. $90.48. ISBN: 978-0-47173-989-0.

Now updated in its second edi-

tion, Energy and the Environ-

ment: Scientific and Technological

Principles, explores fossil, nuclear,

and renewable energy technolo-

gies and explains their e#cien-

cies for transforming source

energy to useful mechanical or

electrical power. The focus is on

electric power and transporta-

tion vehicles, whose technological

improvements increase energy

e#ciency and reduce air pollutant

emissions. The authors also ana-

lyze the source of toxic emissions

to air, water, and land that arise

from energy uses and their e%ects

on environmental quality. Special

focus is given to climate change,

the contribution attributed to it by

energy uses, and the salient tech-

nologies that are being developed

to mitigate this e%ect. A bibliog-

raphy is presented in each chapter

for the reader who wants to pursue

some aspects of the exposition in

greater depth. This book is written

for upper-level undergraduate and

first-year graduate students, as

well as professionals in the fields

of energy and environmental sci-

ences and technology.

ENGINEERING DYNAMICS:

COMPREHENSIVE INTRODUCTION.

N. Jeremy Kasdin and Derek A. Paley. Princeton University

Press, 6 Oxford Street, Wood-

stock, Oxfordshire OX20 ITW. 2011. 704 pages. $97.52. ISBN: 978-0-6911-3537-3.

The authors say their intent is to

present an introduction for under-

graduate students to engineering

dynamics using an innovative

approach that is both accessible

and comprehensive. The book

combines the strengths of begin-

ner and advanced dynamics texts,

allowing students to solve dynam-

ics problems from the start and

guiding them from the basics to

more challenging topics. It spans

the range of mechanics problems

from one-dimensional particle

kinematics to three-dimensional

rigid-body dynamics, including

an introduction to Lagrange’s and

Kane’s methods. The authors aim

for an easy-to-read, conversational

style that addresses the physics and

mathematics of engineering dynam-

ics, and emphasizes the formal,

systematic notation students need

to solve problems correctly and

succeed in more advanced courses.

The textbook features a number of

real-world examples and problems.

STEEL STRUCTURES DESIGN.

Alan Williams. The McGraw-Hill Cos. Inc., 1221 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020. 2011. 888 pages. $154.56.

ISBN: 978-0-07-163837-1.

The purpose of this book is to

introduce engineers to the design

of steel structures using the

International Code Council’s

2012 International Building Code.

The theoretical background and

fundamental basis of steel design

are introduced, and the detailed

design of members and their

connections is covered. The book

provides interpretations of the

AISC Specification for Structural

Steel Buildings, 2010 edition, the

ASCE Minimum Design Loads for

Building and Other Structures, 2010

edition, and the ICC International

Building Code, 2012 edition. The

code requirements are illustrated

with 170 design examples with con-

cise step-by-step solutions. Each

example focuses on a specific issue

and provides a clear and concise

solution to the problem. This book

is intended for a wide audience

including practicing engineers,

professional engineering examina-

tion candidates, and undergraduate

and graduate students.

THE NEW EDGE IN KNOWLEDGE.

Carla O’Dell and Cindy Hubert. John Wiley & Sons Inc., 111 River

St., Hoboken, NJ 07030. 2011.

256 pages. $29.70. ISBN: 978-0-470-91739-8.

The authors present a source

for performance analytics, best

practices, process improvement,

and knowledge management, while

sharing their decades of experi-

ence at the American Productiv-

ity & Quality Center. This book

shows the reader how to imple-

ment a proven organization-wide

knowledge management strategy. It

details the American Productivity

& Quality Center’s framework for a

knowledge management program,

which includes determining an

organization’s most critical knowl-

edge, ensuring that knowledge

flows where it needs to, selecting

the right portfolio of knowl-

edge management approaches,

incorporating those approaches

into employees’ daily work life,

and measuring a KM program and

ensuring it continues to add new

value. This hardcover book is also

available as an e-book.

STEAM COFFIN: CAPTAIN MOSES

ROGERS AND THE STEAMSHIP

SAVANNAH BREAK THE BARRIER.

John Laurence Busch. Hodos

Historia LLC, distributed by

Independent Publishers Group,

814 North Franklin St., Chicago,

IL 60610. 2010. 736 pages. $35.

ISBN: 978-1-893616-00-4.

There has been some interest in

this book among ASME mem-

bers, many of whom have heard

the author speak at local chapter

meetings. That’s understandable

because the connection between

ASME and steam goes back to the

organization’s roots. Busch tells

the story of the Savannah, the first

steamship to cross the Atlantic

Ocean. The title of his book refers

to a nickname given to the vessel

by skeptical sailors. The Savannah

was equipped with side wheels and

a steam engine. The ship was lim-

ited in the amount of fuel it could

carry, so it was a vessel with hybrid

propulsion. When winds or cur-

rents were adverse, the crew could

deploy the paddle wheels and use

steam power. But the ship was also

fully rigged, and much of the time it

crossed the Atlantic under sail. But

this was a first, and it happened in

1819. Under Captain Moses Rogers,

the ship sailed from Savannah, Ga.,

to St. Petersburg, Russia, where

it stayed a while before returning

home. The story of the preparation

and crossing is told in detail, as is

the subsequent history of the ship

and its captain.

MEBOOKSHELF

Power Boilers: A Guide to Section I of the

ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code, Second Edition. John R. MacKay and James T. Pillow. Founding authors:

Martin D. Bernstein and Lloyd W. Yoder. ASME, Three Park

Avenue, New York, NY 10016-5990. 2011. 330 pages. $95;

ASME members, $76. ISBN: 978-0-7918-5967-4.

This is a completely revised and

updated edition of the classic

and comprehensive guide to the

construction rules for power boil-

ers—their intent, application, and

interpretation. This unique guide

to the current, 2010 edition of

Section I provides expert advice

and useful information for design

engineers, project managers,

architect engineers, manufactur-

ing engineers, boiler operators,

insurance inspectors, and other

power boiler professionals. It

also includes information on

other sections of the ASME Boiler

and Pressure Vessel Code that

affect construction, with chapters

on boiler life extension, repairs,

and alteration of boilers under

the rules of the National Board

Inspection Code.

Pipe inspection crawlerENVIROSIGHT LLC, RANDOLPH, N.J. The new ROVVER

X pipe inspection crawler has an extended crawl range

of 1,000 ft., with options up to 1,650 ft. A bolt-on car-

riage broadens the crawler’s

stance and raises its height,

to inspect pipes of 6 to 48 in.

with the camera centered.

The system captures a day’s

worth of MPEG video and

JPEG images, and logs obser-

vations for direct upload. The

crawler is operated by twin

joysticks, and macros auto-

mate everyday inspection

routines. ROVVER X has a

detachable remote-operated camera lift, three illuminated

onboard cameras (forward pan/tilt/zoom, cable view, and

elevated rear-view), integrated sensor package (dual lasers,

inclination, roll), and concurrent control for all system

functions. The crawler has a high-power, high-torque drive

train, proportional steering, and zero-radius pivot.

WWW.ME.HOTIMS.COM/34756-40 OR CIRCLE 40

Aero type gaugesPALMER INSTRUMENTS INC.,

ASHEVILLE, N.C. The new J-2000

series of aero type gauges features

a frictionless gauge movement.

The gauges can indicate low pres-

sures, whether positive, negative, or

di/erential. Magnetic components of

the spiral movement have been replaced

with a rubber film, a sensitive component in measuring pres-

sure. The design resists shock, vibration, and over pressures

without fluid fill. The result is no di2culty with evaporation,

freezing, or leveling. Pointers in green, yellow, and red let the

user set reminders of safe, warning, and danger ranges. The

gauge is designed to be readable from a distance.


Level transmittersEMERSON PROCESS MANAGE-

MENT, AUSTIN, TEXAS.

The Rosemount 5400 Series of

non-contacting radar level trans-

mitters are approved for safety

instrumented systems. The 5400

Series comes with the required

Failure Modes, E/ects and Diag-

nostic Analysis (FMEDA) report.

This means that companies in the

oil and gas production, refining,

petrochemical, chemical, and

power industries can benefit from

the superior performance of radar

technology, while ensuring compliance with the associated

International Electrotechnical Commission standards. The

FMEDA report provides safety instrumentation engineers

with the required failure rates per IEC 61508 and with proof

test recommendations. With a longer proof test interval, the

proof test can be co-ordinated with plant turnaround, mini-

mizing process interruption. The Rosemount 5400 Series

(with 4-20 mA output) was evaluated in accordance with the

hardware assessment IEC 61508 by the Technical Research

Institute of Sweden.


Clamp-on metersOMEGA ENGINEERING INC., STAMFORD, CONN. The model

HHM590 Series has more than 10 full-featured models of

meters to choose from. All clamp-on meters include a free set

of safety test leads, 9 V alkaline battery, type K beaded wire

thermocouple (for temperature models only), and a complete

operator’s manual. Each unit has a GS-Mark EN61010-1

approval Voltage Category III 600 V, Pollution Degree II, and

NEWPRODUCTS


ac/dc current clamp. These units have 1,999, 2,500, 3,999,

or 4,300 counts resolution. Models HHM592, HHM592D,

HHM596, HHM596C, and HHM599 come with auto-ranging

operation. Battery life is 200 hours. Their dimensions are:

250 mm x 100 mm x 46 mm (9.9 x 3.9 x 1.8 in.) and their

weight is about 320 g (10.8 oz). Prices start at $60.


Dewpoint transmitterKAHN INSTRUMENTS INC., WETHERS-

FIELD, CONN. The Easidew PRO I.S. is

a ruggedized version of the Easidew I.S.

Transmitter and is designed for continuous

measurement of moisture content of gases in

hazardous areas typically found in natural

gas, petrochemical and process industries.

It is FM/CSA certified for Class I, Div. 1,

Groups A, B, C, and D T4 hazardous location

use. It has a heavy-duty process type NEMA

4 / IP66, weatherproof stainless steel housing with half-inch

NPT conduit entry fitting. It withstands operating pressure

up to 5000 PSIG. The Easidew PRO I.S. transmitter has a

dewpoint measurement range of -148 °F to 68 °F, accuracy of

±3.6 °F and operates from any 12 to 28 VDC power source.


Digital pressure sensorSENSORTECHNICS GMBH, PUCHHEIM, GERMANY. HCLA

pressure sensors measure gauge or di5erential pressures

from 2.5 mbar (1 in. H2

O). The HCLA series provides a digital

I2C bus interface plus an analog

output signal at the same time.

The sensors can directly com-

municate with microcontrollers

without the need for additional

A/D converters. Digital SPI bus

and custom specific outputs

are available on request. HCLA

pressure sensors use a special compensation technique to

achieve a very high o5set stability and virtually no position

sensitivity. HCLA pressure sensors can be modified accord-

ing to a customer’s specific requirements.


Ground fault sensorsAUTOMATION DIRECT, CUMMING, GA. The GFS series of

ground fault sensors monitors current-carrying conductors

in grounded single and three-phase delta or wye systems.

Available in fixed-core models, the GFS series features

jumper-selectable set points of 5, 10 or 30 mA. The sensors

can accommodate up to 14 AWG copper wire and feature

mechanical relay outputs with either manual or auto reset.

They are UL- and CE-approved. Prices start at $136.


Compact servo motorsB&R INDUSTRIAL AUTOMA-

TION CORP., ROSWELL, GA.

The 8LV series servo motors

are equipped with an absolute

encoder system with a resolu-

tion of 262,144 (218) steps per revolution. In order to save

weight, installation space, and the amount of mass being

moved, gearboxes are mounted directly on the motor. The

new mounting system was made possible by totally recon-

structing the motor’s output flange and adapting it com-

pletely to the gearboxes. The center gear rests directly on

the motor shaft and replaces the input shaft on the gearbox.

This type of mounting renders an adapter flange, the clamp

system, and the gearbox input bearing obsolete.


Sound level metersSCANTEK INC., COLUMBIA, MD. The NL-42 and NL-52 data-

logging, integrating sound level meters meet both ANSI and

IEC specifications and di5er only by Class type (2 or 1, respec-

tively). They have dust- and water-resistant cases, 3-in. high

contrast color TFT screen, 26-hour battery operation using

regular or rechargeable batteries, and available software.


August 2011 | MECHANICAL ENGINEERING 63me.hotims.com/34755-15 or circle 15


Shop Online at

© COPYRIGHT 2011 OMEGA ENGINEERING, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

For Sales and Service, Call TOLL FREE

Visit omega.com/f-series-rtd

OMEGAFILM® Flat Profile Thin Film Platinum RTD Elements for OEM Applications

Glass coating over wire bonds

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Actual Size2.0 x 2.0 x 0.8 mm

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Packages of100

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CIRCLE ON READER SERVICE CARD, OR VISIT WWW.MECHENG.HOTIMS.COM/34756 AND CLICK ON NUMBER 64 MECHANICAL ENGINEERING | August 2011

A bimonthly listing of the industry’s

latest technical literature and

product information available FREE

to Mechanical Engineering readers.

in by using the color key to the left.

number on the Reader Service Card or visit

www.mecheng.hotims.com/34756 and click on

the number.

Instrumentation & Control

Power Transmission & Motion Control

Fluid Handling

Materials & Assembly

Engineering Tools

Other Products & Services

BENTLY CIRCLE 205

Prototyping

Custom Manufacturing

R&D

Education

Home/Business

Personal CNC

Enable Your Ideaswww.tormach.com

$10,5403 Axis Mill

(plus shipping)includes 3 axis mill, coolant system, computer and accessory arms

TORMACH CIRCLE 204SMALLEY STEEL RING CO. CIRCLE 203

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Cablestyle

mini DINstyle

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PX409 SeriesStarts at

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DRTB-RAIL-3575,$9, sold separately.

Visit omega.com/drtbThermocouple TerminalBlocks with Built-inConnector

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NOW I THINK IN 3D.

AND MY DESIGNS JUST KEEP

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dimensionprinting.com/me4

Durable. Lightweight. INNOVATIVE.Corrosion resistant and oil-less, the small 319 Series DC pump is perfect for mobile applications.

The 319 Series oil-less, WOB-L® Piston DC

pump and compressor from Thomas is small,

lightweight (5.1 lbs/2.3 Kg) and is manufactured

with die-cast aluminum components for

strength and durability. The 319 Series includes

EMI suppression and is RoHS compliant.

Please visit gd-thomas.com/me8.

COMPUTER ENGINEERING, INC. CIRCLE 206


SWAGELOK CIRCLE 208

Forest City Gear uses the latest technology for gearmaking, as we constantly reinvest to stay ahead of the pack. Customers who need the very best gears for medical devices, instruments, avionics, aerospace (we’re on the Mars Rover) and even high-performance consumer products (we helped the America’s Cup winner cross the

�nish line �rst), look to us for top quality and innovative engineering support.

FOREST CITY GEAR CIRCLE 207

POINTWISE CIRCLE 213

PROTOLABS CIRCLE 214

COMSOL CIRCLE 211CLIPPARD

FREE Pneumatic Control DevicesCatalog

Clippard, a manu-

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CIRCLE 209 STRATASYS-DIMENSION CIRCLE 210

CIRCLE ON READER SERVICE CARD, OR VISIT WWW.MECHENG.HOTIMS.COM/34756 AND CLICK ON NUMBER

THOMAS DIVISION CIRCLE 212

More than just basic stainless

steel tubing

Swagelok offers instrumentation grade, seamless 316L stainless steel tubing in fractional, metric, and imperial sizes.

The stainless steel tubing is chemically and thermocouple-cleaned to comply

with specific ASTM standards. Ultrahigh-purity stainless steel tubing

is also available.

http://www.swagelok.com/products/tubing-tube-accessories.aspx

Contact: [email protected]

Phone: 440-349-5934

C-FLEX CIRCLE 217


MASTER BOND CIRCLE 216YASKAWA

Yaskawa’s Sigma-5 Catalog contains information relating to all Sigma-5 servo products including rotary, linear, direct drive servo motors and servo amplifi ers. The catalog also includes speed/ torque curves, dimensional drawings, and other

accessories such as option modules. Sigma-5 delivers the highest performance in the industry with a wide range of models and options to match your individual application requirements.

Yaskawa America, Inc.Waukegan, IL

Toll Free: (800) 927-5292

Web: yaskawa.comE-mail: [email protected]

AC Servo Drives Series

Product Catalog

CIRCLE ON READER SERVICE CARD, OR VISIT WWW.MECHENG.HOTIMS.COM/34756 AND CLICK ON NUMBER

CIRCLE 215

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Sponsorships of opening reception, keynote presentation, Cyber Café, buffet lunches, delegate bags, lanyards

10’ X 10’ exhibition space

Complimentary registrations to the conference sessions

Bonus: advertising in Mechanical Engineering Magazine

November 13-16, 2011

Colorado Convention Center Denver, Colorado

Reserve Your Booth Space at the2011 ASME International

Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition.

CONTACT:

Joyce Ginsburg at

[email protected]

or

1-773-456-2153

Coming in September

Focus on Design:

> Human factors in mechanical design

> Designers for the world’s poor

Also:

> Clothes that monitor vital signs

> Tech Focus: Materials and assembly

Special Supplement:

> Design Engineering Division

TENURE-TRACK POSITIONS

The Department of Mechanical, Materials and Aerospace Engineering (MMAE) of the University of Central Florida (UCF) invites applications for tenure-track faculty positions in multiple areas of Mechanical or Aerospace Engineering. Of particular interest are candidates with research interests in A) human motor control, B) rehabilitation/ medical robotics, C) GNC, D) novel methodologies for complex systems design, E) all aspects of turbomachinery, and F) multi-scale modeling and simulation. Of particular interest are candidates with broad teaching interests in one or more areas of mechanics, mechanical systems, thermo-fluids and aerospace engineering with a desire to be involved in teaching engineering design. A doctoral degree in a relevant Engineering field is required. UCF is seeking candidates at Assistant, Associate and Full Professor levels to support its rapidly growing engineering program. The successful candidates will have an excellent opportunity to build collaborative partnerships with nearby industry including Lockheed Martin, Siemens, Boeing and Harris as well as the Kennedy Space Center and many other companies located within close proximity to the UCF campus. The Central Florida Research Park is located adjacent to the UCF campus and is home to the nation’s largest cluster of government agencies and industries specialized in training and simulation R&D. For more details regarding the department, visit www.mmae.ucf.edu or e-mail [email protected].

Review of candidates will begin on August 15, 2011 and will continue until the positions are filled. Candidates should submit (a) a cover letter with a subject line identifying one or more interest areas listed above , (b) curriculum vitae, (c) a brief one page description of research and teaching plans, (d) the names and contact information of at least three referees, and (e) an application at www.jobswithucf.com/applicants/Central?quickFind=76538.

The University of Central Florida is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer.


POSITIONSOPEN

An Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer MF/D/V Committed to Diversity in the Workplace

Southwest Research Institute®

Benefiting government, industry and the public

through innovative science and technology

Research Engineer/Senior Research Engineer

(Mechanical Testing) Job Code: 18-00835

SUMMARY: Develop and lead large complex experimental efforts in support of multidisciplinary in experimental-analytical and numerical, materials modeling, structural integrity analysis, and reliability assessments. Define experimental approaches designed to quantify the required mechanical behavior for complex life prediction models and actively participate in model development; prepare proposals, reports, and technical papers for both government and commercial clients, research should ultimately lead to the development of a sustained program area. Lead multi-discipline teams in the development of innovative testing and instrumentation methods; participate in and lead individual and collaborative research projects as well as develop, promote, and write proposals for research programs. Interact with both commercial and government client; manage tasks and projects to successful completion within technical, budget and schedule constraints.

EDUCATION/EXPERIENCE: Requires a MS degree in Engineering Mechanics or Mechanical Engineering with 0-3 years experience in experimental mechanics, test protocol development, servo-hydraulic test machines, fixturing and instrumentation, and data acquisition. PhD Degree preferred. Must have at least a 3.25 GPA. Must be intimately familiar with developing, defining and performing fracture, fatigue, and fatigue crack growth testing; understanding of solid mechanics, including theoretical and analytical and numerical mechanics is required; hands-on experience with servo-hydraulic test machines, instrumentation, (e.g., strain gages, extensometers, strain gages); must have understanding of non-visual crack length measurement; ability to design intricate test fixtures and specimens. Environmentally-assisted corrosion-fatigue experience is considered a plus; project or team management experience is required; must be able to develop technical approaches to meet customer requirements and research activities to successful conclusion; must be able to promote activities and proposal development experience is considered a plus; must have good oral and written communication skills; must be an effective team member; must be able to work independently with relatively little supervision and function effectively as part of project teams; supervisory experience of lab personnel desired but not required. A valid/clear driver's license is required.

SPECIAL CONSIDERATIONS: Applicants selected will be subject to a government security investigation and must meet eligibility requirements for access to classified information.

SwRI offers competitive salaries and a comprehensive benefits package. Interested applicants may apply at www.swri.jobs. The selected candidate will be subject to a background investigation and must be a United States Citizen.

Southwest Research Institute® (SwRI®) is recruiting

for the following position located in our San Antonio, TX office.

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University is the largest government-funded tertiary institution in Hong Kong in terms of student number. It offers programmes at Doctorate, Master’s, Bachelor’s degrees and Higher Diploma levels. It has a full-time academic staff strength of around 1,200. The total consolidated expenditure budget of the University is in excess of HK$4 billion per year.

DEPARTMENT OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERINGThe Department of Mechanical Engineering is one of the five academic units in the Faculty of Engineering. It offers a wide range of programmes, at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, over a large spectrum of topics including product analysis and design, environmental technology and transportation, aerospace and aviation, design and manufacturing, computer aided engineering design, etc. To underpin teaching, the Department is presently engaged in the following research areas: combustion and pollution control, fluid-structure interactions, materials and mechanics, sound and vibration, and product design and development. Please visit the website at http://www.me.polyu.edu.hk for more information about the Department.

Assistant Professor in Thermodynamics and Energy UtilizationThe appointee will be required to (a) teach at undergraduate and postgraduate levels; (b) conduct research that leads to publications in top-tier refereed journals and awards of research grants; (c) engage in scholarly research/consultancy; and (d) undertake academic and departmental administrative duties.

Applicants should have (a) a PhD degree in a relevant discipline plus several years of teaching/research/practical experience; (b) solid research and publication record or strong potential to publish in top-tier refereed journals; (c) strong commitment to excellence in teaching and research; and (d) competence in teaching subjects such as Thermodynamics, Heat Transfer and Energy Technology.

Remuneration and Conditions of ServiceSalary offered will be commensurate with qualifications and experience. Initial appointment will be made on a fixed-term gratuity-bearing contract. Re-engagement thereafter is subject to mutual agreement. Remuneration package will be highly competitive. Applicants should state their current and expected salary in the application.

ApplicationPlease submit application form via email to [email protected]; by fax at (852) 2364 2166; or by mail to Human Resources Office, 13/F, Li Ka Shing Tower, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong. If you would like to provide a separate curriculum vitae, please still complete the application form which will help speed up the recruitment process. Application forms can be obtained via the above channels or downloaded from http://www.polyu.edu.hk/hro/job.htm. Recruitment will continue until the position is filled. Details of the University’s Personal Information Collection Statement for recruitment can be found at http://www.polyu.edu.hk/hro/jobpics.htm.

ics and systems and design, who can comple-ment existing strengths within the department. (Refer to webpage http://www.engr.uky.edu/ME/ for more details). The department is rapidly growing, centrally located to the automotive and aerospace industries and housed in the new Ralph G. Anderson Building with state of the art computational facilities, research labs and classrooms. Opportunities for multi-disciplinary research exist with a number of college-affiliated centers and institutes.To apply for a position in any of the four technical areas a UK Academic Pro�le must be submitted to http://www.uky.edu/HR/UKjobs/ using the corresponding job num-ber as follows: manufacturing systems and pro-cesses, job# SM536332; heat transfer and �uid mechanics, job# SM536337; computational me-chanics, job# SM536340; systems and design, job# SM536331. If you have any questions, con-tact Human Resources, phone (859)257-9555 (option 2), or email [email protected]. The application deadline is September 30, 2011 and applications will be reviewed on a continuing basis beginning October 1, 2011; the application deadline may be extended as needed. Upon offer of employment, successful applicants for certain positions must undergo a national background check as required by University of Kentucky Hu-man Resources. The University of Kentucky is an equal opportunity employer and encourages applications from minorities and women.


POSITIONSOPEN POSITIONSOPEN

DIRECTOR, NATIONAL GAS MACHINERY LABORATORY AND FACULTY POSITION KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY The KSU Na-tional Gas Machinery Laboratory (NGML) con-ducts research and testing programs related to large-bore and medium size industrial internal combustion (IC) engines with full-scale labora-tory facilities to support these activities. The Di-rector has overall administrative responsibility for NGML including development and conduct of funded research programs and services. The Director is a member of the Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering Faculty and holds a ten-ured or tenure track appointment with rank com-mensurate with quali�cations. The Director is a full member of the faculty, supervises graduate students, and teaches courses related to her or his expertise. A detailed position description may be found at: www.ngml.ksu.edu Requirements for the position include:

closely aligned �eld

turbo machinery, or other �elds related to the gas pipeline industry

record of extramural funding

research leadership, and research program development

quality instruction

Applications and nominations should be directed to NGML Director Search, Engineering Experi-ment Station, 1048 Rathbone Hall, Manhattan, KS 66506-5202 or sent by e-mail to <[email protected]> with “NGML Director Search” in the title line. Ap-plications should include a resume, a two-page maximum cover letter summarizing the candi-date’s quali�cations, and contact information for �ve professional references. Initial review of ap-plications will begin on September 1, 2011 and will continue until the position is �lled. Kansas State University is an equal opportunity em-ployer. Kansas State University actively seeks diversity among its employees. A background check is required.

THE MECHANICAL AND AEROSPACE ENGI-NEERING DEPARTMENT (MAE) AT THE UNI-VERSITY OF MIAMI (UM) invites applications and nominations for tenure-track positions at any professorial level in all areas of mechanical and aerospace engineering, with the emphasis on aerodynamics, energy, and biomechanics. MAE is seeking candidates with a strong record of scholarship with a focus on obtaining external funding, a demonstrated excellence in graduate and undergraduate teaching, and a thoughtful commitment to university and professional ser-vice. For a senior-level appointment, a proven record of extramural funding support is required. A Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, aerospace engineering, or a related discipline and one year work related experience is required prior to the appointment. Salary: Competitive. Quali�ed ap-plicants should mail (a) a letter of interest, (b) a resume and (c) at least three (3) references to: Dr. Shihab Asfour, Associate Dean for Academ-ics, College of Engineering, University of Miami 1251 Memorial Drive, McArthur Engineering Bldg., Room 247, Coral Gables, FL 33146. The University of Miami offers competitive salaries and a comprehensive bene�ts package includ-ing medical and dental bene�ts, tuition remis-sion, vacation, paid holidays and much more. The University of Miami is an Equal Opportu-nity/Affirmative Action Employer.

FACULTY POSITION IN HYBRID ELECTRIC VEHICLES: MECHANICAL ENGINEERING-ENGINEERING MECHANCIS DEPARTMENT. World-Class Research with Outstanding Col-leagues: Michigan Technological University’s ME-EM department invites applications for a tenure-track faculty position at the Assistant

POSITIONSOPEN

Professor level. Outstanding applications with experience at the Associate Professor and Pro-fessor levels will also be considered. Applicants for the position must have earned doctorates in Mechanical Engineering, or a closely related �eld that contributes to the strategic initiatives of the department. ME-EM seek to attract ex-ceptional candidates whose interests and ca-pabilities align with recent initiatives in energy, speci�cally those with a research thrust in hybrid vehicle technologies such as powertrain sys-tems and their components. This faculty position leverages existing and expanding facilities and a multidisciplinary undergraduate and graduate program (http://www.doe.mtu.edu/hybrid_ve-hicle_engineering). Available facilities include vehicle and powertrain component laboratories along with a mobile HEV lab for education and research. Successful candidates are expected to create and sustain an active research pro-gram, advise graduate students and develop and teach courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Michigan Tech is a state insti-tution dedicated to both teaching and research, with an excellent reputation in engineering edu-cation and research. For 2011, the US News & World Report ranked the ME-EM Department’s Graduate Program 48th among doctoral-grant-ing mechanical engineering departments in the U.S. For 2008 the Undergraduate Program was ranked 22nd among doctoral-granting mechani-cal engineering departments in the U.S. In the NSF Research Expenditure rankings for FY2008 the ME-EM Department ranked 18th among all ME departments in the U.S. at $12.695 million. The Spring 2011 graduate student enrollment was 267, of which 103 are PhD students. The ME-EM Department and Michigan Tech encour-ages minority and female applicants. Michigan Tech is an ADVANCE institution, one of a limited number of universities in receipt of NSF funds in support of our commitment to increase di-versity and the participation and advancement of women in STEM. Michigan Tech has a Dual Career Assistance Program (DCAP), which fa-cilitates the hiring of partners. The website for our DCAP is http://www.dual.mtu.edu/. Lake Su-perior is just a few miles from campus and the surrounding area is perfect for four seasons of outdoor activities. For full consideration, applica-tions should be received by November 1, 2011; however, applications will be considered until the position is �lled. Applicants should submit a vita, teaching and research interest statement, names and contact information of three refer-ences, experience with diversity issues, diverse students, working in multicultural environments, and copies of three publications to: William W. Predebon, Chair, Department of ME-EM, Michi-gan Technological University, 1400 Townsend Drive, Houghton, MI 49931-1295 (www.me.mtu.edu). Only complete application packages are guaranteed full consideration. Michigan Techno-logical University is an Equal Opportunity Edu-cational Institution/Equal Opportunity Employer.In addition to the present search, a search to �ll ten growth positions in “Transportation” and “Water” are under way and quali�ed candidates are encouraged to send a separate application, following the “How to Apply” guidelines at www.mtu.edu/sfhi. Visit www.me.mtu.edu for more in-formation about the ME-EM Department.

THE DEPARTMENT OF MECHANICAL EN-GINEERING AT THE UNIVERSITY OF KEN-TUCKY invites applications for multiple tenured/tenure-track faculty positions at the Lexington campus beginning spring or fall semesters 2012. These positions require a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering or a closely related discipline and a commitment to excellence in research, teach-ing and professional service. Preference will be given to those at the assistant and associate professor ranks, and to those in the targeted areas of manufacturing systems and processes, heat transfer and �uid mechanics (CFD and experimental �uids), computational mechan-

National Sun Yat-Sen University Department

of Mechanical and Electro-Mechanical

Engineering

FACULTY RECRUITMENTFaculty Opening: Several AssistantProfessors, Associate Professors, and Professors from August 2012.Specialties: Mechanical and Electro-Mechanical Engineering.Application Process: The followingdocuments are needed:• Curriculum Vita (including studying and working experiences, specialties, teaching interests, and research interests)• One hardcopy of degree certification• Grade reports of both undergraduate and graduate program• One piece of representative work of SCIE (including accepted ones)• At least one piece of referable work of SCIE (including accepted ones)• List of publications• One hardcopy of ID (both sides)

Please submit to: Dr. Der-Min Tsay,Chairman of Department of Mechanical and Electro-Mechanical Engineering, National Sun Yat-Sen University, No. 70, Lien-Hai Rd, Kaohsiung 80424, Taiwan.

Application Deadline: August 15, 2011

Further Information: please contact:Phone: 886-7-525-2000 ext: 4202FAX: 886-7-525-4299E-mail: [email protected]: e13.nsysu.edu.tw/ www.nsysu.edu.tw


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CONSULTING

Victoria A. Rockwell assumed her role as President

of ASME in June during the ASME Annual Meet-

ing held in Dallas. Rockwell is the 130th person in

the history of the society to take on that role.

During her inaugural comments, made during the Presi-

dent’s Dinner, Rockwell expressed enthusiasm for the

future of ASME. She said that the contributions of the Soci-

ety’s membership can make a di( erence in the world.

“These are exciting and dynamic times for ASME,” Rock-

well said. “The only thing that can hold us back is our lack of

imagination, drive, and focus.

“Our mission a+ rms our desire to serve our diverse global

communities by advancing and applying engineering knowl-

edge for improving quality of life and communicating the

excitement of engineering,” she said.

Rockwell has been an active member of ASME for more

than 30 years, and she has held a variety of Society leadership

positions, including a term on the Board of Governors from

2006 to 2008 and as senior vice president of the Strategic

Management Sector. A strong advocate of engineering educa-

tion, she also served on the ASME Council on Engineering

Education and on the Board of Pre-college Education.

Rockwell stated that ASME has at its core continuing edu-

cation and professional development, and that the Society’s

publications, conferences, and courses keep ASME mem-

bers current as existing technologies expand and evolve,

and new technologies emerge.

“I have great confi dence that our profession will take the

lead in shaping our world’s future through engineering

innovation and determination,” Rockwell said. “More than

any other profession, engineers have the opportunity to

improve the lives of billions of people. I see ASME making a

world of di( erence.”


ASMENEWS

Rockwell Becomes ASME President

Compiled from ASME Public Information dispatches.

The ASME Nominating Committee

named Marc W. Goldsmith

president-nominee. Goldsmith’s

nomination and that of several other

ASME offi cers were announced at the

Annual Meeting.

Goldsmith is president of Marc

Goldsmith & Associates LLC. He is a

registered Professional Engineer in

California and holds a Master of Science

degree in nuclear engineering from

Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Goldsmith, an ASME Fellow, has

served in a number of leadership

positions during his 24 years with

ASME, including a term on the Board

of Governors from 2007 to 2010

and terms as chair of the General

Management Board of the ASME

Innovative Technologies Institute and

vice president of the Center for Public

Awareness. He is also a recipient of the

ASME Dedicated Service Award.

ASME also recognized incoming

Society offi cers and standing committee

chairs who began their terms in

June 2011:

Members-at-Large

on the Board of Governors

Betty Bowersox

Julio Guerrero

Charla Wise

Senior Vice President,

Standards & Certifi cation

Ken Balkey

Vice Presidents

Guido Karcher, Pressure

Technology Codes and Standards

Richard Swayne, Nuclear Codes and

Standards

Andrew Taylor, Leadership and

Diversity

Richard Williamson, International

Petroleum Institute

Chairs of the Board of Governors

Standing Committees

Sam Zamrik, Committee of

Past Presidents

Robert Pangborn,

Committee on Governance

Bob Simmons, Executive Director,

Evaluation and Staff Compensation

Karen Thole, Committee on Honors

Goldsmith Named President-Nominee, Other O# cers Announced

m (Left to right) Marc W. Goldsmith, president-nominee (2012-2013), ASME President Vickie Rockwell, and Immediate Past President Bob Simmons.

Rose-Hulman Institute of Technol-

ogy and Montana State Univer-

sity were the top winners in their

respective categories at the ASME

Human Powered Vehicle Challenge West.

Students from 18 universities designed

and built prototypes of advanced human-

powered vehicles for the competition, held

in May at the Montana State campus in

Bozeman. The vehicles built by the stu-

dent teams were tested for their overall

performance, speed, safety, and

technical design.

The team from Rose-Hulman in

Terre Haute, Ind., placed fi rst over-

all in the unrestricted vehicle cat-

egory with its entry Helios, winning

the $800 top prize. The teams from

Missouri University of Science and

Technology and the South Dakota

School of Mines placed second and

third in the category.

ThunderCat, the entry from host

school Montana State University,

fi nished fi rst in the overall speed

vehicle class, winning that category’s $650

fi rst prize. The California State University,

Northridge, team was the runner-up in

the speed class, and students from San

Jose State University placed third. Unlike

vehicles in the unrestricted category, those

in the speed class compete only in the speed

races, not the endurance challenges, and

are not judged on their practicality.

ASME and Knovel Corp. co-sponsored

the event.

The vital role that science, tech-

nology, engineering, and math

education plays in both prepar-

ing and inspiring pre-college

students for future opportunities in the

engineering workforce was the theme

of the 2011 Roe Lecture, delivered

by Ioannis N. Miaoulis at the ASME

Annual Meeting in June.

Miaoulis is the president and direc-

tor of the Museum of Science in Boston

and his address, “Re-Engineering the

Curriculum,” was the featured talk at

the 2011 Roe Lecture and Luncheon,

sponsored by the ASME Foundation.

Miaoulis explained the importance

of fostering scientifi c and technical

literacy in men and women begin-

ning with K-12 students. “Engineering

brings math and science to life, dem-

onstrating that they are relevant and

motivating students to pursue them,”

Miaoulis said.

Miaoulis and the Museum of Science

launched the National Center for Tech-

nological Literacy in 2004 to enhance

knowledge of engineering and technol-

ogy for people of all ages and to inspire

the next generation of engineers, inven-

tors, and scientists. Through the NCTL,

the museum is integrating

engineering as a new discipline

in schools via standards-based

K-12 curricular reform and

developing technology exhibits

and programs.

“Technological literacy is basic

literacy for the 21st century,”

Miaoulis said. “We live in a

technological world. We need to

understand how human-made

things like shoes and bicycles

are created and how they work.”

A mechanical engineer, Miaoulis was

dean of the School of Engineering at

Tufts University in Medford, Mass.,

prior to joining the museum in 2003.

Miaoulis will receive the ASME Ralph

Coats Roe Medal, during the 2011 Hon-

ors Assembly at the ASME Congress

in November. The medal is bestowed

on individuals who have made out-

standing contributions toward a better

public understanding of the engineer’s

worth to contemporary society.


Miaoulis: STEM Education Cultivates Engineers

NE

IL H

ET

HE

RIN

GTO

N

p This student entry from Missouri S&T

won the Knovelty Award for Innovation.

Rose-Hulman, Montana St. HPV Champs

K&C ENCOMM TALKING POINTSIn order to provide technical infor-

mation in a condensed, easily digest-

ible format to maximize its value to

the public, the Knowledge and Com-

munity Energy Committee has begun

issuing a series of Energy Talking

Points containing nonpartisan, techni-

cal information.

The ETPs seek to incorporate the

collective expertise of K&C EnComm

members to identify energy-related

opportunities and challenges. They

provide highly technical peer-reviewed

data, and their release is based upon

consensus by the EnComm.

The Energy Committee comprises 40

members from 17 divisions of ASME,

representing approximately 40,000

ASME members. The ETPs are issued

as K&C EnComm “public statements”

and do not represent the views of

ASME as a whole.

The fi rst Energy Talking Point to be

released was “Three Signs the End

of Oil Exports Is Coming.” The paper

suggests that action is needed now to

ensure a stable supply of oil to reduce

the risk of economic disruptions.

The ETPs are available to review at the

Knowledge and Community section of

ASME.org, located at http://www.asme.

org/groups/centers-committees/

knowledge---community-sector-(1).

m Ioannis N. Miaoulis presents the 2011 Roe Lecture.


he European Robotics

Association has chosen

Germany’s KUKA

Roboter GmbH for its

2011 Technology Trans-

fer Award. While the

company’s humanlike

robotic arm is impres-

sive, the awards highlight just how fast

the industry is moving away from plain

vanilla industrial robots. Finalists

included an interactive birth simulator,

virtual fi tting room, surgical robot, and

dual-armed robot.

KUKA’s Lightweight Robot originat-

ed at the German Aerospace Center,

which needed a robotic arm for a 1993

space mission. To make it a+ ordable

to boost into space, the researchers

needed to slash its weight-to-payload

ratio by an order of magnitude. They

did it by building from carbon-rein-

forced composites.

They designed an arm with human

fl exibility (seven degrees of freedom)

and integrated power and signal pro-

cessing electronics. Other innovations

included active vibration damping and

programmable joint sti+ ness.

Another new feature, contact detec-

tion, is especially important,

because the arm stops if it makes

the slightest contact with a human

worker. “The LWR is the fi rst robot

to be rated safe to operate without

a protective fence—a

historic milestone,”

said Ralf Koeppe,

who received

the award for

KUKA. The

LWR weighs

only 14 kg

and users can

program it by

guiding it by hand

through the desired

motions.

Martin Hägele, a

jury member who

heads robot systems

at Fraunhofer IPA,

called the robot a

“mature technology that could open up

numerous robotic applications in our

daily life, such as in manufacturing,

services, and medicine.”

The second prize went to 3B Scien-

tifi c’s SIMone, an interactive birth

simulator developed by Technical

University München, the Swiss Federal

Institute of Technology Zurich, and

3B Scientifi c. The simulator enables

doctors to practice deliveries, deter-

mine how patients respond to di+ erent

medications, and learn the proper use

of forceps and vacuum tools. It

also simulates complications

that few medical interns see

on a regular basis.

The robot, which models

a pregnant woman’s

abdomen and the fetal

head, uses advanced

haptic feedback

to simulate a real

delivery. The robot

mimics forces gener-

ated by friction, tissue

elasticity, uterine

contractions, and

attempts to extract

the baby. The

company asked

51 doctors to

evaluate SIMone.

Four out of fi ve

found it “highly”

or “very highly”

realistic. 3B

claims it has sold 50 systems worldwide.

The runners-up were equally inno-

vative. Fits.me, an Estonian start-up,

teamed with Tallinn University to

create a virtual fi tting room for online

clothing companies. Customers enter

their measurements and they can see

how di+ erent clothing of di+ erent sizes

and cuts would fi t. The company claims

its software boosts sales 57 percent

(primarily for higher-ticket items) and

reduces returns by 28 percent.

Italy’s Surgica Robotica worked

with University of Verona to develop

Surgenius, a surgical stereoscopic

vision robot. Germany’s pi4_robotics

collaborated with Fraunhofer Institute

for Production Systems and Design

Technology to produce Workerbot, a

reconfi gurable, two-handed robot that

can be programmed by moving the

arms through their routines.

ALAN S. BROWN

INPUTOUTPUT Technology Transfer AwardsShow O! Robot Advances

TWINNERS:

1 KUKA won the European Robotics Association’s top tech transfer honors for an innovative carbon fi ber robot, the fi rst designed to work around human beings without a gate. 2 Runner-up 3B Scientifi c’s SIMone, simulates birth so doctors can practice simple and complicated deliveries. 3 Fits.mewas third with a virtual fi tting room. K

UK

A3

B S

CIE

NT

IFIC

FIT

S.M

E

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