Engineering news

Engineering

Cleaning up toxic solar panels to bring them indoors

Safer and more environmentally friendly indoor solar panels could soon help power electronics in homes and offices, thanks to University of Queensland researchers. A team of chemical engineers led by UQ's Dr. Miaoqiang Lyu ...

Engineering

Perovskite solar cells skip yellow phase, degrade more slowly with key additives

Halide perovskites are gaining ground on silicon as a critical material for solar cell technologies: A new study published in the journal Science reports a method to make perovskite-based photovoltaics more durable, allowing ...

Engineering

Ultralight carbon fiber lattices achieve aluminum-level performance at a fraction of the weight

Researchers at Seoul National University have developed a new class of ultralight structural materials that combine the load-bearing strength of engineering materials with the weight of foam. Using a method called 3D node ...

Engineering

A virtual violin produces realistic sounds before wood is ever carved

There is no question that violin-making is an art form. It requires a musician's ear, a craftsperson's skill, and a historian's appreciation of lessons learned over time. Making a violin also takes trust: Violin makers (luthiers) ...

Engineering

A precise measurement method for better diamond coatings

Diamond coatings are considered a key technology for numerous industrial applications—from power electronics to optics to sensors. To enable these high-performance coatings to fully realize their potential, uniformity is ...

Robotics

How fish muscles became blueprints for smarter underwater robots

Researchers at the Intelligent Biomimetic Design Lab at Peking University have developed a bio-signal framework showing that fish muscles do far more than generate swimming motion. In a series of studies led by Xie Guangming, ...

Engineering

Study uncovers why pedestrian deaths continue to rise in the US

Vision Zero begins with a simple but powerful premise: No loss of life on the transportation system is acceptable. Despite the ambitious nature of this goal, the United States has made little meaningful progress toward its ...

Engineering

Smart yarn tracks muscle activity in the body

Created from noise-resistant, conductive threads, a high-tech new smart fabric could find uses in health monitoring, sports performance and rehabilitation. The work is published in the journal Science Advances.

Engineering

Strengthening wood with needle and thread

Wood laminates are used in many different ways, for example, in the manufacture of skis and snowboards or in components for vehicle interiors. However, their weight advantages for lightweight construction also have disadvantages. ...

Engineering

What 100,000 simulations reveal about the US power grid

On August 13, 2003, a single transmission line near Cleveland, Ohio, sags into an overgrown tree limb and short circuits. Within minutes, nearby lines overload and trip one after another, triggering cascading failures across ...

Engineering

Why solid-state batteries keep short-circuiting

Batteries that use solid metal as their charge-carrying electrolyte could potentially be a safer and far more energy-dense alternative to lithium-ion batteries. Unfortunately, these solid-state batteries have been plagued ...

Engineering

Harvesting heat and electricity from the sun, when you need it

Solar energy is abundant and frustratingly ill-timed. A sunbeam can become either electricity (useful for running modern life) or heat (useful for keeping spaces warm). But conventional solar hardware is single-minded: Photovoltaic ...

Engineering

Mach 1.5 tests reveal noise feedback loops from supersonic jets

Researchers from the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering and the Florida Center for Advanced Aero-Propulsion, or FCAAP, are helping to solve a safety challenge in military aviation: the extreme noise generated by supersonic jets ...