July 2006 Archives

One of our graduates recently told us an incredible and inspirational story that we couldn't wait to share. A version of the story that follows will eventually run in an edition of UMR Magazine...

Most engineers rely heavily on the so-called left-brained skills associated with literal analysis, and Thomas “Trent” Givens is no exception. But Givens, who earned a mechanical engineering degree from UMR in 1988, no longer takes his ability to think like an engineer for granted. In fact, Givens no longer takes anything for granted.

“I have survived two brain tumors and have managed to climb up the ladder in the engineering field despite my memory deficits,” says Givens, a deputy branch chief within the Schreiver Space Center at Los Angeles Air Force Base. “Fortunately, the location of the tumors left my engineering skills intact, but I will never be able to write poetry.”

He is quick to add that he wasn’t necessarily a poet before the tumors.

Today, Givens enjoys coaching youth soccer. But his son was just one-year old back in 1995 when Givens suffered a Grand Mal seizure during a business trip to Seattle. “At some point, the EMTs had to resuscitate me,” he says. “I was dying.”

The good news keeps rolling in for Antonio Nanni, Fabio Matta and their crew. UMR's Greene County bridge project is the cover story of August's Composites Manufacturing magazine, the official magazine of the American Composites Manufacturers Association.

Congrats to Antonio Nanni, Fabio Matta and their cohorts for snagging a nomination for the Construction Innovation Forum's NOVA Award for Outstanding Innovation in Construction.

UMR received the nomination for its Greene County Bridge project. Bridge 14802301, a 73-year-old bridge located on Farm Road 148 in Springfield, Mo., was in need of upgrade due to severe structural and functional inadequacy. Its replacement, having the state’s first bridge deck constructed using prefabricated glass fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) reinforcement, combines the corrosion resistance of FRP internal reinforcement with the speed of installation of lightweight, stay-in-place, modular FRP panels. This new technique promises to benefit bridge owners by minimizing maintenance costs and reducing disruption of traffic during construction.

A lot of attention has been paid to the ceramic tiles that keep the space shuttle from burning up on reentry. But two UMR researchers say that won't be a problem for long. “We’re going back to Apollo-style lunar missions,” says Dr. Greg Hilmas. “The push is to go back to the moon and then on to Mars by 2020. They won’t need a reusable reentry vehicle like the shuttle in the decade ahead. NASA is looking to use capsules with a shield that erodes some as it is heated. For that, they can use carbon-based material instead of the dense ceramics we’re developing at UMR.”

The ceramics Hilmas and research partner Dr. Bill Fahrenholtz are trying to develop can withstand temperatures up to 3,000 degrees Celsius, which is hot enough to incinerate just about everything on Earth. By contrast, the ceramic tiles used on the space shuttle can only withstand temperatures of about 1,350 degrees Celsius.

So why do we need materials to protect against temperatures more than twice as high as those generated during shuttle reentry? Think missiles that can go more than five times the speed of sound.

U.S. Sen. Kit Bond's latest announcements of appropriations from the Senate Defense spending bill includes funding for two UMR projects:

St. Louis residents are still dealing with the terrible devastation that last week's thunderstorm unleashed on the city. The frighteningly strong storm toppled semis and massive trees and left hundreds of thousands without power. But UMR experts say the kind of natural destruction the city saw last week is nothing to what is building up underground. KOLR-10 in Springfield caught up with DJ Belarbi and J. David Rogers to find out more about the looming major earthquake that threatens the New Madrid Seismic Zone.

“It would be a lot more grim than people realize,” explained Rogers. “We have tremendous vulnerability for transportation structures which passes through our state.”

The lush rainforests of Bolivia provide a picturesque educational setting for the 250 students studying at the Rio Colorado Technical Agricultural High School. But ironically, despite the campus's 400-acre, rainforest location, the school is struggling to provide enough water for its students, who stay in dormitories on campus and go home only on weekends.

That's why -- at a time when most college students are packing up to return to campus -- a team from UMR's Engineers Without Borders (EWB) chapter is heading to Bolivia next month. The UMR team’s goal is to gather enough information about the water supply and geology surrounding the campus so they can return next spring and develop a safe and sustainable water supply for the school.

This is the fourth project for the UMR EWB chapter, which was formed on campus in 2004.

First they got Ted Koppel, and now they've got Larry Grayson. Discovery Times, part of the Discovery Channel empire, was out at UMR's Experimental Mine today -- it was nice and cool underground -- to shoot footage for an upcoming edition of the new show "Decoding Disaster." (Incidentally, the first "Decoding Disaster" episode was about nightclub disasters, specifically the deadly nightclub fire that was sparked during a concert by the 1980s big hair band Great White.) The crew is at the UMR mine to do recreations (with help from Grayson and other UMR experts) of two mining disasters -- the 2001 explosion at the Jim Walters Resources mine in Alabama and a 2003 explosion at a Kentucky coal mine. We'll let you know when and where you might be able to catch the episode shot underground in Rolla; it's expected to air on cable about four months from now.

Ever wonder where the state's economic development prowess is located? John Gardner, vice president for research and economic development for the University of Missouri, makes a compelling case that research universities -- like the University of Missouri -- are now the dominant source of cutting-edge scientific discoveries.

Consider the numbers of new Missouri businesses formed, or where the patents were filed from 1975-1999 with data from the Department of Economic Development ... They are clustered around the two urban centers of Kansas City and St. Louis (which host public and private research universities), the University of Missouri campuses in Columbia and Rolla, and counties which have a presence of public higher education.

Story via John's Journal.

Back in April, the PBS show History Detectives called UMR historian Diana Ahmad to verify the authenticity of a purported Chinese opium scale found by a woman in Missoula, Mont. The program will air Monday, July 24.

Around here, you can tune in to KETC Channel 9 at 9 p.m.

Ahmad is something of an expert on opium. In fact, she's working on a manuscript about it called The Opium Debate and Chinese Exclusion Laws in the Nineteenth Century American West.

Read more about next week's episode here. If you happen to see the trailer, Ahmad's hands are playing with a ball of "opium."

If you missed last night's KOLR-10 broadcast, you can catch the story about UMR's aerospace camp here.

UMR engineering management students talk with TechnoFiles about their efforts to mix textbook concepts with reality for Rolla's new Huddle House, a franchise that operates mostly in the southern and eastern parts of the country. The students spent the semester serving up market intelligence, analyzing consumer behavior, and planning promotions for the restaurant.

Grab the mp3 here. Like what you hear? Go ahead and subscribe directly to TechnoFiles in iTunes, Yahoo or supply the following URL to your podcast receiver: www.mst.edu/podcast/sample.rss. Or browse the episode archive and listen online at Yahoo.

While on campus, KOLR-10 in Springfield also stopped in to watch DJ Belarbi conduct a few tests on a bridge pier. The tests are part of larger project that have UMR and four other universities studying the complex loading -- twisting, pushing and bending -- that can occur all at the same time and in every direction in bridge structures during earthquakes.

The research team will develop minimum design guidelines that will help future bridge engineers design safer bridges. In addition to UMR and UNR, the team includes the University of California-Los Angeles, the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign and Washington University-St. Louis. The five-member team will eventually work directly with Japanese researchers to understand earthquake bridge design at a more international level.

“We are in an earthquake-prone area close to the New Madrid fault line, the most active fault east of the Rockies,” says team member Dr. D.J. Belarbi, Curators’ Teaching Professor of civil, architectural and environmental engineering at UMR. “One of the nation’s largest devastating earthquakes happened in this area in 1812. We know that the infrastructure in this area is prone to behave very badly if an earthquake hits.”

FYI -- Belarbi and Pedro Silva talked to TechnoFiles back in February about their work. Catch the interview here.

Tom and Huck were pretty resourceful, but they didn't have to build their raft out of cardboard and duct tape. Cardboard boat racing is one of the highlights of UMR's aerospace camp for kids, which also features robot design (see image below), NASA simulations and homemade rocket launches.

At first glance, cardboard boat racing might seem out of place at an aerospace camp. But the idea is to get the boys and girls interested in design and engineering; and they also have to learn how to work on a problem in teams. Here’s what each team had to work with: a couple of big cardboard boxes, a few trash bags and a roll of duct tape.

Most of the boats sank, which was great fun. But a few teams managed to paddle their cardboard contraptions across the swimming pool and back. In addition to possibly majoring in aerospace engineering some day, methinks some of these kids might have a future on the concrete canoe team.

P.S. KOLR-10 in Springfield visited aerospace camp yesterday. Their story should run during newscasts this coming Monday.

I love this headline and I'm going to use it everywhere -- here on the blog, in the electronic newletter, in the magazine. Everywhere. Anyway, we now have a site featuring the award-winning video work of Tom Shipley, video communications manager at UMR and radio star of Brewer and Shipley folk-rock fame. To be magically transported to the site where you can catch moving pictures of all of the cool stuff Tom has captured on camera, click here.

Check out the 25 Hottest Articles in materials science. UMR's Rajiv Mishra is the lead author of the No. 11 hottest article, which is on friction stir welding.

Jefferson Parish officials expect to complete the first of its eight safe houses next week. Kontek Industries of New Madrid, Mo., designed and built the safe rooms, which will rest atop 21- to 27-foot concrete platforms. UMR researchers helped the company duplicate the power of large flying debris in its High-Bay Structures Lab on campus.

From the TImes-Picayune:

Don Utz, president of Kontek Industries, said the safe rooms were designed with some of the same principals that his firm uses in developing combat shelters for the Department of Defense. After building them to specifications given by the parish, Kontek tested their strength by hurling pieces of 2-by-4 wood at the structures at speeds topping 100 mph to simulate flying debris.

"If we're going to put people in harm's way, let's look at the worst-case that they'd have to experience," Utz said. "If we're going to sustain these people and they're going to be effective, they're going to need electricity and everything to continue to operate that safe house."

VIsions got the chance to witness the tests back in February.

If global warming is a big problem, then it stands to reason that engineers should be the ones to fix it. A few days ago, we asked Visions readers if they had any big ideas for saving the planet. Well, UMR freshman Trevor McWilliams has some ideas about energy alternatives. A lot of ideas. It's nice to know that some college students still care about stuff like saving the world. Trevor's email follows. (Keep the dialogue going by emailing news at umr dot edu -- for now, that's our only way to receive comments.)

I attended Nuke Camp at Rolla several years ago and they presented a very nice option to current problems with the energy infrastructure. Can you guess? Yup, nuclear energy! Although nuke got a bad rep from the "disaster" at Three Mile Island and the much larger problem at Chernobyl, it has since become a key component to any long-term scenario presented by those advocates of green energy. It turns out CO2 emissions from nuke plants approach zero and they are considered safer to live next to than a similar coal-fired plant. Coal plants- in addition to the CO2- also put out trace amounts of arsenic, lead, mercury, and a few other nasties as well. Over a period of time that stuff collects. Now I wouldn't personally consider it a real threat (asteroids hitting me while I sleep concern me more...) but that goes to show you how safe nuclear energy is.

The guys who make nuke plants don't mess around. To them, triple-redundancy is the norm and safety factors are very large. Besides, Chernobyl could not happen here b/c we use reactors that are designed to shut down when they fail (Chernobyl had a problem where the reaction rate increased as temperature rose- our reactors are oppositely designed) and we use 3 foot concrete and steel containment buildings. Further more, we don't use flammable moderators :) Beyond this, our engineers (including those at Rolla!) are currently redesigning American reactors to a single design known as the Gen IV Reactor. In this system, reactors are built in a semi-modular form and all reactors would adhere to a standaradized safety and control system. Nuclear power is just waiting for a favorable public opinion and legislators who don't take money from the coal guys.

Now that takes care of the electricity market, but how about the automobile market? What needs to happen is to connect the automotive fuel market to the commerical electrical grid. This IS debatable, but I'll give you one good (though well used) exaample. Hydrogen cars. Now, I know that there are more advanced projects in the works, and hydrogen gets a lot of crap, but it is a source that can work. The biggest problem is currently how to store the hydrogen safely, and that is not a killer problem. I recently read about new tanks that use an adsorbtion process to physically constrain hyperactive H atoms to the surface of an extremely porous material. When you need it, simply heat the tank up a little. And this process means that the tank is not under pressure and can contain a vast amount of hydrogen versus a gaseous form. (I would like to note that this isn't perfect- it takes a long time to fill the tank, currently. But hey, that's why ENGINEERS ARE NEEDED TO SAVE THE PLANET!)

The rest of Trevor's email is after the jump....

In one of our earliest posts on this blog, we told you about UMR Professor Richard Hall's brush with cyber-celebrity via the wildly popular video blog (vlog) known as Rocketboom. The post even elicited a comment from Rocketboom's very own Amanda Congdon.

But now, Rocketboom is apparently no more. As Congdon explains on her website, and in a recent vlog entry, she and business partner Andrew Baron have parted ways. Baron says Rocketboom will be back, but it won't be the same without Congdon. We'll miss her.

Meanwhile, Hall's the Richard Show goes on.

Technorati tag: rocketboom

In today's Washington Post, Robert J. Samuelson says engineers may be our only salvation when it comes to global warming. Samuelson points out some sobering truths about the situation:

From 2003 to 2050, the world's population is projected to grow from 6.4 billion people to 9.1 billion, a 42 percent increase. If energy use per person and technology remain the same, total energy use and greenhouse gas emissions (mainly, carbon dioxide) will be 42 percent higher in 2050. But that's too low, because societies that grow richer use more energy. Unless we condemn the world's poor to their present poverty -- and freeze everyone else's living standards -- we need economic growth. With modest growth, energy use and greenhouse emissions more than double by 2050.

Inconvenient, indeed. So what can we do? Samuelson continues:

The practical conclusion is that if global warming is a potential calamity, the only salvation is new technology. I once received an e-mail from an engineer. Thorium, he said. I had never heard of thorium. It is, he argued, a nuclear fuel that is more plentiful and safer than uranium without waste disposal problems. It's an exit from the global warming trap. After reading many articles, I gave up trying to decide whether he is correct. But his larger point is correct: Only an aggressive research and development program might find ways of breaking our dependence on fossil fuels or dealing with it. Perhaps some system could purge the atmosphere of surplus greenhouse gases?

The trouble with the global warming debate is that it has become a moral crusade when it's really an engineering problem. The inconvenient truth is that if we don't solve the engineering problem, we're helpless.

Any engineers out there with some big ideas? Or do you think Al Gore made up the whole global warming issue kinda like he invented the Internet? We'd like your feedback. Unfortunately, spammers have rendered us powerless to receive comments through this site -- but feel free to email us at news at umr dot edu (we have to get cryptic to stay one step ahead of the spammers). If we get any good emails on this subject, we'll post them here.

By the way, UMR has a program in environmental engineering.

Choregraphed fireworks displays will light up skies tomorrow night across the country, generating numerous "ooohs" and "ahhhs." But do you know the science behind the sound? Paul Worsey does.

According to Worsey, whose pyrotechnic students often perform fireworks shows at local events, computer programs now allow shows to be run entirely from music. The process of setting a show to music begins by measuring the amount of time a particular type of firework takes to explode after leaving the ground and recording this number in a database. Next, the music to be used in a show is translated to time code, so that it can be read by the computer. From there, show designers must simply determine when they want specific types of fireworks to detonate during the show, and using the database, the computer will calculate how far in advance it needs to launch a firework so that it will explode at just the right time. Once the program is set, the fireworks are grouped together and numbered, connected with Ethernet cables, and then commanded by the computer when to fire, based on the time code.

“It’s becoming very, very technical,” said Worsey. “And it’s becoming a lot safer, since you don’t have people lighting the fireworks and blowing themselves head over heels.”

A summer rerun courtesy of JOM.