Engineering news

Engineering

Safer all-solid-state sodium battery could cut grid storage costs and reduce lithium dependence

Lithium-ion batteries dominate the market for large-scale energy storage today. However, the element's uneven global distribution and rising costs are driving the search for alternatives. Sodium is roughly a thousand times ...

Engineering

Transparent oxide glass tops 130 GPa using conventional melt-quenching

Glass is a versatile material used in a wide range of applications, from light bulb casings to optical fibers. Recently, high-strength glass has become an important focus of materials research, as new technologies demand ...

Robotics

Robotic collective flows like matter, adapting without centralized control

Cornell engineers have developed a robotic collective that behaves less like a machine and more like a material that flows, reshapes, and adapts to its environment without centralized control. The system, called the Cross-Link ...

Engineering

These brick walls are built to come apart, move, and rise again after demolition

The construction sector still has some way to go in terms of reducing the consumption of resources and greenhouse gas emissions. One of these relates to the construction waste produced during the demolition of buildings. ...

Engineering

Custom device maps carbon capture reactions in real time

Removing carbon dioxide (CO2) directly from the air, a process called direct air capture (or DAC), is one of several approaches being developed to help reduce the concentration of this greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Among ...

Engineering

Building the future with robotic construction

On April 24, the Architectural Robotic Construction Lab ( ARC Lab) in The University of Texas at Arlington's College of Architecture, Planning and Public Affairs demonstrated its new large-scale 3D printing technology.

Engineering

Basalt could be the key to greener and cheaper cement

Ideas to reduce carbon emissions often revolve around renewable power, electric vehicles and energy efficiency. But there's another, less colorful character that's often overlooked: cement.

Engineering

Laser cladding technology on track to improve railway repair

The University of Sheffield Rail Group hosted industry partners at British Steel on 7th November to see laser-clad field-demonstrations, which showed how additive manufacturing can repair railway infrastructure and provide ...

Robotics

Grasshopper wings inspire gliding robot design

A collaboration between Princeton University engineers and entomologists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign began with the researchers chasing grasshoppers in a hot parking lot. Their eventual focus on the hindwings ...

Engineering

New research shows promise of liquids as thermal conductors

Imagine a device that lets you move heat very quickly from one place to another, yet needs no power, no electricity, no pumps and no moving parts. You might think, "Sure, that's what metals like copper or crystals like diamond ...

Engineering

A cost-effective solution for monitoring aging infrastructure

The partial collapse of the Carola Bridge in Dresden in September 2024 was a wake-up call for Germany's infrastructure policy. At least 8,000 highway bridges and roughly 18,000 kilometers of railroad in Germany are now considered ...