*** *** THE DAILY TELEGRAPH THURSDAY, JANUARY 15, 2009*** ***| VINNOVATION CAREERS IN ENGINEERINGGOING TO EXTREMES ENGINEERING GENIUS HAS MADE LIVING, EXPLORING AND EVEN ART APPRECIATION POSSIBLE IN THE MOST HOSTILE OF ENVIRONMENTS, SAYS ADAM RAMSAY Anything’s possible: The Halley VI Antarctic research lab, left, a computer image of the Louvre project off the coast of Abu Dhabi, top, Subsea 7’s autonomous underwater vehicle, above, and the St Francis Towers in Manila, belowLIVING ON THE ICE SHELF The Antarctic is one of the coldest, windiest, and remotest places on earth, and the Brunt Ice Shelf, the location of the British Antarctic Survey’s latest research lab, Halley VI, is so far south that more than 105 days of the year are spent in continual darkness, with temperatures as low as -56C and never rising above zero. “The environment in which Halley VI has been built is truly extreme,” says Peter Ayres, design director with consulting engineer firm Faber Maunsell, who led the project with Hugh Broughton Architects. “It is not built on rock, but on a massive floating ice shelf 150 metres thick. Every year there is about 1.5m of snow and because the temperature doesn’t rise above freezing the snow never melts. It simply accumulates, burying buildings and equipment.” The harsh winds blow the snow into dune-like banks. Moreover, the ice shelf is in constantmotion, travelling about 400m annually, so any structures also have to be adapted to this. The whole base is designed to be relocated periodically throughout its lifetime. The foundations of each module are basically giant steel skis, more than 4m long, which are locked in place with rudder-like dagger boards. When the buildings are moved, each module is lowered on its hydraulic legs, the dagger boards are pulled up and the building is towed, like a sledge, to its new location. The modules’ mechanical legs are also engineered to enable them to climb out of the snow after a heavy fall. But it’s not only the environmental challenges that engineers have had to overcome with Halley VI. “The scientists tend to live there for two years at a time so understanding the human dynamics of isolation is possibly even more important than dealing with the technical problems,” explains Ayres. “Halley VI is effectively isolated from the outside world for nine months of the year and it is only possible to reach it by ship for three months in the summer. We had to organise the space tomaintain a real sense of community for the small number of people living there.”HOW COOL IS DESERT ART? A new cultural development called the Louvre, linked with the Paris museum of the same name, is due to be built by 2013 on an island just off the coast of Abu Dhabi. The burning question for the project engineers is how to keep the new Louvre free from the uncomfortable heat and humidity outside. “In the heat of the summer, the peak temperature in the shade can be 55C,” says Tim Page, leading the project with Buro Happold, structural engineers. “And because it is at sea level the environment is extremely humid.” To counter the heat of the midday sun, the museum has been designed to resemble a traditional Arab Souk market, with a 180-metre diameter dome covering the buildings beneath. “The dome is made up of a webof steel, designed in a similar way to the aerofoil on an airplane, to direct wind into the area below to create a cooling breeze,” explains Page. “This aerodynamic engineering means the structure creates a calm, quiet and dappled microclimate beneath the dome, in stark contrast to the heat and sand outside. “Buildings always act as a store of heat, so the domed roof will have a low emissivity surface on the underside and a normal surface on the upper side. This will direct the stored heat back out, away from the interior. “We’re also planning to engineer solar PV cells, which convert sunlight to electricity, to draw cold water from deep below the site and circulate it through the walls. This would turn the walls from a source of heat to a cooling mechanism.”ROVING AROUND THE SEABED The challenge of engineering on dry land can be difficult enough, but there are also companies who are prepared to employ theirexpertise at extreme depths under water. “The projects we are undertaking with the oil and gas industries are going deeper and deeper beneath the sea,” says Sarah Churchill, engineer with marine specialists Subsea 7. “This brings all sorts of exciting new challenges. “Working at depths down to 3,000 metres, everything is reliant on precision-engineered, remotely-operated, underwater vehicles (ROVs), with experts on the surface operating the cranes and guiding them by screen. “It is a logistical nightmare trying to lower vessels to these sorts of depths so to overcome some of the problems we have helped engineer new cables made from fibre ropes that have the same strength as steel but are practically weightless under water.” Subsea 7’s expertise is in engineering the pipelines and “umbilicals” in the deep offshore oil and gas industry. The umbilicals connect the wells on the seabed to a surface structure and can extend from five to more than 100 kilometres. “We have to position any piping or rigging with precision, often within a couple of metres, morethan 2.5km below the surface,” says Churchill. “To achieve pinpoint accuracy in a turbulent environment is a huge challenge. We are operating the ROVs on the deep sea bed with water pressure as high as 3,000 pounds per square inch — equivalent to a 1.5 ton elephant on every square inch — changeable weather at the surface, including strong winds and high waves, plus deep-water currents.”TALL ORDERS IN A QUAKE ZONE Constructing tall buildings in earthquake zones might seem risky, but there are some engineers who specialise in designing seismic skyscrapers. Engineering firm Arup’s twin St Francis Towers in Manila rise 212 metres above the ground and are in a quake zone that falls into Category Four, the highest rating covered by the US seismic engineering code and comparable to that of California. “In America, there is a prescriptive code for engineers designing buildings in seismicareas,” says Michael Wilford, fellow and director at Arup. “This means that tall buildings in earthquake zones can only be designed along a limited number of models and sometimes, with very tall buildings, this code is not enough.” In China and Japan, seismic buildings are tested on a performance-based system andare not designed to prescribed codes. Wilford continues: “The St Francis Towers had originally been designed to the American code, but when Arup came in, we used a performance-based modelling system to test the structural stability and found that the concrete walls at the base needed strengthening and the building’s ductility needed to be increased by using steel girders to take any strain from seismic activity. “At Arup we have a very sophisticated computer modelling software called LS-DYNA, which is also used in vehicle crash simulation. It allows the engineer to simulate ground motion and see which parts of the building would be susceptible and what the damage would be at varying seismic levels. “This means that there is no prescription on how structural forms and buildings like the China Central Television headquarters in Beijing can be erected. Engineers simply have to show how the building would react in an earthquake.”@JOBS ONLINE: jobs.telegraph.co.uk/ careers-insiderNASA/SCIENCEPHOTOLIBRAR WILL PRYCEWATCH THIS BUILDING FOR DRAMATIC EFFECT Leicester’s exciting new theatre, Curve, which opened last month, has attracted a great deal of attention for its revolutionary design by American architect Rafael Viñoly. Instead of hiding the back-stage business of scene-shifting, rigging and other mysteries of theatre, Viñoly’s design puts them on show. But what about the skills that made it all possible? “The whole concept of the building was an ‘inside-out’ idea,” says Jim Dunn, associate director of Adams Kara Taylor, London-based structural engineers on the Curve project. “The theatre wanted to display the workings of the back of house — the back-stage performance — to the outside.” As its name suggests, the street front of Curve is all futuristic lines and glasswork, giving passersby a glimpse into the public foyer areas that loop around the edge of the building. The effect is achieved by a 120-metre long, louvered glass “curtain”, which fronts the building, hanging down from the roof to within 5m of the ground. “Probably the most exciting engineering achievement of the building is the huge 800 tonne steel-framed roof, which is one-and-a-half times the size of a football pitch,” adds AKT partner Hanif Kara. “The roof is made up of a series of steel trusses and acts like a huge bridge on top of the building, sitting on four columns. Below it there is no supporting structure at all. Everything simply hangs from it.” In the huge space created beneath the roof are two theatres, with 750 and 350 seats apiece. These share a central stage divided by a raisable acoustic wall, engineered so that a rock concert could take place in one theatre and a poetry reading in the other. The two steel curtains beside the stage, 20 metres high and weighing 30 tonnes each, can also be raised to allow people in the foyers to see on to the stage, as well as acting as “wings” for actors off-stage. If these steel curtains and the acoustic wall are raised then the whole space can be converted into a 1,000-seat theatre-in-theround. ADAM RAMSAYTHE UK’S TECHNICAL KNOW-HOW IS GREATLY SOUGHT AFTER AS SOLAR SYSTEM EXPLORATION GATHERS PACE, WRITES BARBARA LANTINDo you want to listen for ‘moonquakes’ and help to create the first lunar cellphone network? Space engineering offers opportunities which are literally out of this world, including the chance to join the proposed UKled MoonLITE project to probe the interior of the moon. The mission, recently announced by the British National Space Centre, involves sending four vehicles to the Moon, creating a telecommunications relay station and charting the rumblings of the lunar landscape. A NASA-supported study of the project is currently underway and due to report later this year. Positive results could see MoonLITE launched by 2014.Those who want to go further afield, to Mars for example, have plenty of opportunities too. In fact, British engineers are currently involved in more than 30 space exploration missions, including the joint European Space Agency (ESA) ventures ExoMars, BepiColombo (to Mercury) and the James Webb Space Telescope — the successor to Hubble — all of which will launch in the next eight years. The UK space and satellite telecommunications industry is growing — it has an annual turnover of around £5.8 billion and employs 19,000 people, 20 per cent of whom have a second degree. The planned ESA research centre at Harwell in Oxfordshirewill provide more opportunities for engineers and scientists. Part of the work there will be to develop technology for the next stage of planetary exploration, including robotics and novel power sources such as transportable systems that use nuclear energy. So why is there so much UK investment in the space race? “Firstly, space exploration brings scientific rewards in terms of knowledge about our solar system and our scientists and engineers are in the forefront of that,” says Dr Ralph Cordey, business development manager for science and exploration at Astrium, the global aerospace company. “Secondly, it brings the possibility of spin-offs that can be applied in other sectors. Forexample, the technology used to design and build unmanned spacecraft could have military and scientific uses. Finally, it is an advertisement for British science and engineering that sends a powerful message to students and others.” British scientists and engineers have developed a range of specialist skills much valued in the space industry. “We have expertise in building lightweight but strong structures for spacecraft such as those used in the Mars Express and Venus Express missions — currently sending back data to earth — and also the propulsion systems that place the craft into orbit,” says Dr Cordey. British engineers designed the crafts’ equivalent of a car’s chassis and motor. Thermal engineering is another speciality of British engineers. BepiColombo will go relatively close to the sun, protected by materials that have been developed by UK companies. And the UK leads the field in robots and remote intelligence. Given theAll these developments have applications in defence. “There is increasing demand for unmanned aircraft and small submarines that have autonomous capabilities, so the technology has many other uses.” Reliable and affordable communication and navigation systems are key to space exploration. The days of huge spacecraft with budgets to match are fast waning, says Andy Phipps, systems engineer at Surrey Satellite Technology. “Space agencies want a greater return in a shorter time-frame, and for less money, and this comes in the form of low-cost micro-satellites that use advanced, off-the-shelf mobile phone-type technology. The moon itself will be a “stepping stone” to more complex and distant space missions, believes Phipps. “For example, if there was a medical emergency on a space station near Mars it would take nine months to get the astronauts back. The moon provides a safer environment nearer home on which to try out dealing with emergencies.” “In time, experiments currently beyond our imaginations will be conducted there.”‘‘SPACE‘‘distance of Mars from the earth and the length of time it would take communication signals to arrive, it is essential to have rovers which can “make decisions” based on the local environment and terrain. “It is impossible to control a rover on the surface of Mars like a toy car,” says Dr Cordey. “By the time it received a signal from earth telling it what to do, it would have crashed into something. We are developing a sophisticated software system linked to sensors, cameras and motors that enables the craft to think for itself according to what it finds.”Our involvement in the race is an advertisement for British engineering that sends out a powerful message
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*** *** THE DAILY TELEGRAPH THURSDAY, JANUARY 15, 2009*** ***| VINNOVATION CAREERS IN ENGINEERINGGOING TO EXTREMES ENGINEERING GENIUS HAS MADE LIVING, EXPLORING AND EVEN ART APPRECIATION POSSIBLE IN THE MOST HOSTILE OF ENVIRONMENTS, SAYS ADAM RAMSAY Anything’s possible: The Halley VI Antarctic resea
*** VI*** *** THURSDAY, JANUARY 15, 2009 THE DAILY TELEGRAPH|***CAREERS IN ENGINEERING THE INTERNETPeople expect the net to work the same way they expect water to run from the tapoptimisation) engineers, internet developers and those who work for website hosting companies. “The internet jobs market,
*** *** THE DAILY TELEGRAPH THURSDAY, JANUARY 15, 2009*** ***| VIIRAILWAYS CAREERS IN ENGINEERING GETTYPLATFORM FOR CHANGE EVERY DAY MILLIONS STRUGGLE THROUGH CROWDED OLD STATIONS. ADAPTING THEM AND BUILDING NEW ONES REQUIRES INGENUITY, SAYS JAN BARDENMany of our railway stations are masterpieces of
*** VIII*** *** THURSDAY, JANUARY 15, 2009 THE DAILY TELEGRAPH|***CAREERS IN ENGINEERING BRIDGESGOING FORTHDEMAND FOR A NEW BRIDGE ON SCOTLAND’S EAST COAST PRESENTS AN EXCITING CHALLENGE, WRITES RICHARD MILTONA computer-generated image shows the proposed new Forth Road Bridge, left, the existing bri
