Developments

200 kilometres in eight minutes: powering the e-mobility revolution

What started as a small start-up in one of ABB’s business units almost a decade ago is now an integral part of the company’s innovative push for sustainable mobility. One innovation after another is coming from ABB developments in electric-vehicle (EV) chargers. The Terra HP is the world’s fastest EV-charger, adding up to 200 kilometres of range to an electric vehicle in just eight minutes. With the number of electric vehicles on the road rising, the global demand for powerful and energy efficient vehicle charging stations is ever increasing. ABB EV-chargers, like the Terra High Power charger, are the driving force behind the efforts of nations to reach sustainability targets and charges have become a critical part of sustainability policies. With more than 7,000 DC fast charging stations installed in 60 countries, ABB is a global leader in that segment. The technology behind e-mobility is truly coming of age, which is also shown in ABB’s partnership with the ABB FIA Formula E Championship. ABB is bringing its name, innovation and technology leadership to the first fully electric motor sport series. The ABB FIA Formula E Championship perfectly supports ABB’s belief that we can run the world without consuming the earth. The series’ next race will be in Zurich on June 10. The ascendance of sustainable mobility and the charging infrastructure required to keep electric vehicles moving is evident by the increasing number of ABB EV charging projects around the world. German energy supplier EnBW alone has 185 EV fast chargers on German motorways and in April, ABB was selected to supply its Terra HP charging stations as part of the biggest electric vehicle infrastructure project to date in the United States. The chargers were selected for deployment by Electrify America, which plans to place hundreds of charging stations within and around 17 […]

3D printing of human heart

Scientists in Israel have unveiled a 3D print of a heart with human tissue and vessels, a first and a “major medical breakthrough” that advances possibilities for transplants. Scientists hope one day to be able to produce hearts suitable for transplant into humans as well as patches to regenerate defective hearts. The heart produced by researchers at Tel Aviv University is about the size of a rabbit’s. It marked “the first time anyone anywhere has successfully engineered and printed an entire heart replete with cells, blood vessels, ventricles and chambers. People have managed to 3D-print the structure of a heart in the past, but not with cells or with blood vessels. But the scientists said many challenges remain before fully working 3D printed hearts would be available for transplant into patients. Journalists were shown a 3D print of a heart about the size of a cherry, immersed in liquid, at Tel Aviv University as the researchers announced their findings, published in the peer-reviewed journal Advanced Science. Researchers must now teach the printed hearts “to behave” like real ones. The cells are currently able to contract, but do not yet have the ability to pump. Then they plan to transplant them into animal models, hopefully in about a year. Maybe, in 10 years, there will be organ printers in the finest hospitals around the world, and these procedures will be conducted routinely. However, hospitals would likely start with simpler organs than hearts.

Researcher creates ‘smart silicone’ that reacts to heat and light

Wellington nanotechnology researcher Andreas Zeller has created new techniques to make high value smart elastic silicone by incorporating nanocrystals and quantum dots. The smart elastomers have a wide range of commercial applications from smart bandages that change colour when they need changing, to soft robots for delicate surgical manipulation, to eco-friendly paints that could control their environment by absorbing or reflecting heat depending on the season. Dr Zeller started his Emerging Innovator project to identify the beach-head application for the ‘smart silicone elastomer’ technology as a Research and Development Scientist at the MacDiarmid Institute at Victoria University of Wellington. He is continuing his research project in his new role as a member of Callaghan Innovation’s Microfabrication Team, with ongoing support from the MacDiarmid Institute and Principal Investigator, Professor Thomas Nann. “Silicone is an important material as it is biologically inert, highly elastic, optically transparent and easily moulded. Its excellent properties lend it to widespread and diverse applications from lab-on-a-chip devices for point of care diagnostics to solar cells and holographic displays,” says Dr Zeller. “I’ve taken this silicone a step further by adding nanocrystals and quantum dots to add photochromic and thermochromic characteristics, which means it has new high value function as it can react to heat and light.” Silicone functionalised with photochromic nanoparticles responds quickly to UV light as a reversible reaction darkens the film, which naturally returns to normal over time. “So thin photochromic silicone film could, for example, be used as UV and sun protectant on windows,” says Dr Zeller. To create colour changing silicone that responds to changes in temperature, Dr Zeller has added thermochromic nanoparticles. “Thermochromic functionalised silicone has a diverse range of potential applications including smart industrial seals that signal if a device is overheating and medical devices that give feedback as to when […]

Demand for higher quality parts and products to drive generative design

Generative design enables the design of lighter, cheaper components while maintaining strength and solidity, ultimately creating a higher quality product. For that reason, the adoption of generative design software is taking off in aerospace and defence, automotive, footwear and clothing, furniture, industrial machines, and oil and gas industries and leading to an uptick in engineering throughput in each of them, finds ABI Research, a market-foresight advisory firm providing strategic guidance on the most compelling transformative technologies. “The rise of the sharing economy and additive manufacturing will drive both demand for and the ability to produce higher-quality goods,” explained Pierce Owen, Principal Analyst at ABI Research. “Generative design expands design possibilities by creating shapes different from those that humans would create. It idealizes the design by creating something that best fits the constraints to optimise the products for various requirements.” For several years now, industrial companies have used geometric topology optimisation – eroding the geometric shape of a product given a set of constraints to improve performance – and are using it more as the use cases for additive manufacturing have increased. Generative design takes that another step by creating, or generating, the geometric shapes from an engineer’s requirements rather than changing existing shapes. Also, unlike topology optimisation, generative design creates many iterations, variations and/or alternatives for engineers to compare, rather than simply removing unnecessary pieces or particles. Additive will drive both generative design and topology optimisation as it provides greater build freedom to fulfill a wider variety of designs. Traditional Computer-Aided Design (CAD) vendors such as Dassault Systèmes, Siemens and recently, PTC, already have or will have embedded generative design capabilities within their CAD environments as plug-ins or kernels. PTC acquired Frustum in November 2018 to do exactly that within Creo. Several of Siemens products, including NX, NX Nastran, HEEDS, […]

Future of Design: the Quadro RTX 4000

The Quadro RTX 4000 graphics card — the company’s first midrange professional GPU is powered by NVIDIA Turing architecture and NVIDIA RTX platform. Unveiled at the annual Autodesk University Conference in Las Vegas, the Quadro RTX 4000 puts real-time ray tracing within reach of a wider range of developers, designers and artists worldwide. Professionals from the manufacturing, architecture, engineering and media creation industries witnessed a seismic shift in computer graphics with the launch of Turing in August. The field’s greatest leap since the invention of the CUDA GPU in 2006, Turing features new RT Cores to accelerate ray tracing and next-gen Tensor Cores for AI inferencing which, together for the first time, make real-time ray tracing possible. The Quadro RTX 4000 features a power-efficient, single-slot design that fits in variety of workstation chassis. Other benefits include: ● Significant performance improvements — 8GB of ultra-fast GDDR6 graphics memory technology provides over 40 percent more memory bandwidth than the previous generation Quadro P4000. ● 36 RT Cores — enable real-time ray tracing of objects and environments with physically accurate shadows, reflections, refractions, and global illumination. 288 Turing Tensor Cores for 57 TFLOPS of deep learning performance — accelerate neural network training and inference, which are critical to powering AI-enhanced rendering, products and services. ● Hardware support for VirtualLink — new open industry standard meets the power, display and bandwidth demands of next-generation VR headsets through a single USB-C connector1. ● Improved performance of VR applications — new and enhanced technologies include Variable Rate Shading, Multi-View Rendering and VRWorks Audio. ● Video encode and decode engines — accelerate video creation and playback for multiple video streams with resolutions up to 8K. OEM support Leading OEMs have voiced their support for new Turing-based Quadro RTX 4000 GPUs: “AI and real-time ray tracing are enabling […]

JEC Asia gathers the composites industry in Korea for its 11th edition

JEC Asia will be held November 14-16, 2018 at COEX Centre, Seoul, South Korea After the record-breaking figures of the 2017 edition, that marked the move of JEC Asia from Singapore to Seoul, the event is returning to the capital city of the Republic of Korea with a strong program, not only on the exhibition floor, but also in the conference sessions and all services at the disposal of every attendee. “We are very grateful for the support of the industry, government bodies, and academics, regarding the evolution of JEC Asia, that has led to the success of the platform. Indeed, 90% of the show floor is already booked boding well for the preparation of the event.” Commented Christian Strassburger, Events Director Asia for JEC Group. “On top of that, the event is truly international, as 45% of the exhibitors are coming from outside Asia. JEC Asia will welcome pavilions from Germany, France, Italy, Japan, China and Singapore, as well as the major composite clusters in Korea.” He added. Focus on the automotive industry The future of mobility is a hot topic for composite materials and JEC Asia will represent, promote and provide information about the increasing integration of composites in automotive developments. Numerous programs will be offered, such as a whole day conference on Composites in Automotive, a Leadership Composites Circle, an Auto Planet, showcasing parts, a B2B meetings program, a JEC Innovation Award category and Composites tours (site visits of composite related facilities). Finally, for the second time, JEC Asia will host the International Carbon Festival, organised by KCTECH and the Jeonju region, with top-notch conferences and international speakers. \

Smart cities in Southeast Asia

By Jonathan Woetzel, Diaan-Yi Lin, Mukund Sridhar, and Su-E Yap Cities are the engines of economic growth in Southeast Asia. But the breakneck pace of urbanisation has left many cities struggling to provide adequate housing, infrastructure, and services to meet the needs of a surging population. Now smart technologies that could tackle some of these issues have reached maturity. Recent research from the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) highlighted the fact that smart cities worldwide are incorporating data and digital technologies into infrastructure and services—and they are delivering tangible quality-of-life improvements as a result. Building on that work, Smart cities in Southeast Asia (PDF–4MB) takes a more focused look at how cities across the region can make better use of data, digital tools, and smart solutions to solve specific public problems and make the urban environment more livable, sustainable, and productive. MGI finds that smart cities could have substantial impact for the region as a whole. Among its findings: Smart solutions could eliminate up to some 270,000 kilotons of greenhouse-gas emissions annually. Some 5,000 lives lost each year to traffic accidents, fires, and homicides could be saved through mobility solutions, crime prevention, and better emergency response. Intelligent traffic and transit solutions could save up to eight million man-years in annual commuting time. Deploying smart healthcare solutions for the urban population could reduce the region’s disease burden by 12 million disability-adjusted life years—not only extending overall life expectancy but adding years of good health. By creating more efficient and productive environments for business and hiring, Southeast Asia could add almost 1.5 million jobs. Residents could also save as much as $16 billion annually as smart solutions contribute to better housing optionsand lower energy bills. There is already a wave of activity and innovation across Southeast Asia. It includes digital citizen apps, homegrown ride-hailing apps, data-driven transit planning, intelligent traffic systems, data-driven disaster-risk assessment, advanced construction […]

Swisslog’s islands of automation signpost the future of automated processes

Swisslog’s logistics automation technologies look at end-to-end supply chain and how to optimise product movement through the system, while maintaining reliability and traceability. Islands of automation are offering a solution to problems bedevilling automated processes across a broad range of industries, such as pharmaceutical, warehousing, engineering, logistics, materials handling, food and beverage and transport. Global robotics and logistics automation technology leader Swisslog has found that as automation accelerates, a common concern is that if a machine goes offline, the entire system suffers. But this is becoming less and less of a problem through the use of islands of automation, explains Jamie D’Souza, Swisslog Pharmaceutical Consultant, Jamie D’Souza, who has more than 8 years’ experience in the pharmaceutical logistics industry. Mr D’Souza’s expertise focuses particularly around the megatrends driving digitalisation and industry 4.0 – such as urbanisation, ageing society, increased health focus, e-commerce, increasingly digital lives and regulations – and how industry can best utilise technology to optimise supply chains and achieve tangible benefits. Islands of automation “The concept of islands of automation means can have several automated processes working in isolation, which can be linked up with Automatic Guided Vehicles (AGVs), with end-to-end integration,” says Mr D’Souza. The major benefits of this approach include: Redundancy – if one cell goes down, there are several others accessible, or use of a temporary manual cell. Flexibility for growth with additional cells, and ability to grow in specific areas Full integration of robots and AGVs Swisslog is currently working on a major logistics automation project in Australia with a leading bio-pharmaceutical company, where islands of automation are being utilised to optimise flexibility and redundancy. This advanced solution involves Swisslog’s robotic palletising, shrouding, wrapping and labelling technologies, linked with platform AGVs on two levels to manage all pallet logistics. Crucially, there are no major […]

Accelerated computing powering world’s fastest supercomputer

Call it the most powerful scientific tool ever built. Call it a new paradigm of computing. Just don’t call it slow, because whatever number you look at, Summit — which made its debut at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory — is flat-out fast. This massive machine, powered by 27,648 of Volta Tensor Core GPUs, can perform more than three exaops, or 3 billion billion calculations per second. That’s more than 100 times faster than Titan, previously the fastest U.S. supercomputer, completed just five years ago. And 95 percent of that computing power comes from GPUs. Built for the U.S. Department of Energy, this is a machine designed to tackle the grand challenges of our time. It will accelerate the work of the world’s best scientists in high-energy physics, materials discovery, healthcare and more, with the ability to crank out 200 petaflops of computing power to high-precision scientific simulations. This is, literally, a scientific time machine. The story behind the story: The team at Oak Ridge was the first to realise — almost a decade ago — that a new kind of computing was needed. The old paradigm of piling one transistor on top of another wouldn’t deliver the efficiency they needed. They took a risk and built Titan in 2012, the world’s fastest supercomputer, with one GPU in every node. That courage paid off. Now over 550 HPC applications are accelerated with GPUs, and all of the 15 most widely used ones. Their work reshaped supercomputing. Writing Computing’s Next Chapter Summit is the next chapter. Not just for ORNL, but for all of computing. The research team has been working with the DOE for more than 11 years on advanced technologies, including the Volta GPUs and NVLink high-speed interconnect technology at the very heart of Summit. Instead of one GPU per node, Summit has six Tensor Core […]

Will fine circuit traces soon become ubiquitous?

In the manufacture of industrial applications, more and more industry sectors are turning to a new technology as an alternative to classic PCBs. The revolution is called 3-D MID (Moulded Interconnect Devices or Mecha-tronic Integrated Devices) – injection-moulded plastic parts with conduc-tive traces integrated by using laser direct structuring (LDS). This technique adds power to the trend towards miniaturisation in the electronics industry and provides product developers with new design op-portunities. The projects from Multiple Dimensions, illustrates the diversity of possible ap-plications for 3D-MID. They simplify the operation of household appliances, improve driver experience in power steering systems and open new ways of saving space — for example in sensing and industrial electronics. These fine, golden traces on formed plastic are transforming industrial produc-tion. The basis of all 3D-MID applications is a thermoplastic material: Using injection- moulding, first manufacture the part to fit the customer’s application, using different types of thermoplastic, which contain an additive that can be activated by laser. A laser ray then engraves the surface of the plastic and activates the additive. A copper bath then follows, which lets the conductive traces form directly on the thermoplastic. Depending on the type of application, the MID parts may have to be extremely robust or temperature-resistant. Some even must be acid or sweat-resistant, for example applications for hear-ing aids or headphones. In a final step, a barrier layer of nickel is applied and then conditioned with a thin layer of gold to ensure good solderability. What differentiates the company from the competition is that it produces trac-es in almost microscopically small dimensions. Their manufacturing expertise can compete with anyone in the world, especially their uniquely fine trace width and the narrow spacing between traces. Most suppliers are currently working with 300 – 400 µm spacing between trac-es. At Multiple […]

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