Browsing Mechanical Engineering Magazine Select Articles by Issue Date
Now showing items 1-20 of 112
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Glitter Bombs Aren’t Rocket Science
(The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), 2019)Fed up of the mail left in front of his house getting stolen every so often, a California-based engineer Mark Rober built a glitter bomb to trick parcel thieves. The glitter bomb certainly did that, surprising and shaming ... -
Vital Design
(The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), 2019)Engineering and medicine has been intertwined for a very long time and in the recent years the relationship has been getting stronger and more important to the advance of healthcare. Surgeons and engineers are collaborating ... -
Second Nature
(The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), 2019)Animals are the key to discovering new, physical ways of dealing with the world—to learning how to accomplish difficult tasks that many life forms undertake very efficiently like moving around, eating, drinking, storing ... -
Blockchain Enables New Power Markets
(American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), 2019)Traditional generating stations that produce baseload power measured in hundreds of megawatts are either closing or struggling, unable to compete with inexpensive power produced by solar, wind, or natural gas-burning plants. ... -
Old and New
(American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), 2019)As prime movers go, gas turbines are virtually brand new, compared to, say, wind and water turbines which have been around for millennia. But they have also reached a considerable level of maturity. Gas turbines now dominate ... -
Disaster Reconnaissance Using Multiple Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
(American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), 2019)Small rotorcraft unmanned air vehicles (sUAVs) are valuable tools in solving geospatial inspection challenges. One area where this is being widely explored is disaster reconnaissance [1]. Using sUAVs to collect images ... -
Electric Highway
(American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), 2019)Electric and autonomous vehicles will change the layout and rhythm of our lives. Entwined with this story of change are the fuels and forms of energy we used to enable the engines and motors to propel us forward. In this ... -
Looking Back Over the 6+ Years of the DSC Magazine
(American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), 2019)Since this is the last issue of the DSC magazine in its current form, this article is a chance to look back over the years and reflect on what the magazine offered over that time. -
New Manufacturing Takes Flight
(The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), 2019)Pratt & Whitney’s Industry 4.0 initiative marks a major transformation from the labor-intensive manual processes that once defined manufacturing to those that are now digitized and automated. The changes here helped ... -
Requiem for Rethink Robotics
(The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), 2019)Universal Robots and Rethink Robotics burst onto the scene ten years ago with seemingly similar breakthrough products—collaborative robots, or cobots—that were safe enough to work next to people on the factory floor. Rethink ... -
Standard Advantage
(The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), 2019)Proper fabrication and regular inspection of chemical holding tanks can head off problems before they become serious. But those steps entail a cost that many companies often would rather put off. So far, only Delaware has ... -
5G Unleashes the Future
(The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), 2019)The new data sharing network that defines so many technical applications would be almost impossible without 5G. Because it transmits data more efficiently, 5G has the potential to be 40 times faster and suffer shorter lag ... -
Heat in a Bottle
(The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), 2019)Concentrated solar plants have been designed to store thermal energy so as to produce power after sundown, but heat storage should also be of interest to operators of nuclear power plants. Adding heat storage to light-water ... -
As Predictable as the Tides
(The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), 2019)The first live test is underway off Maine for a new technology that relies on strong tides and currents to power underwater generators. It took innovative engineering and precision execution to make the first test happen, ... -
Startup Suns
(The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), 2019)A number of startups have attracted millions of dollars from tech investors with the goal to buld a commercial fusion reactor by the end of the next decade. Befitting the merging of plasma physics and startup culture, each ... -
Additive Manufacturing for Serial Production of High-Performance Metal Parts
(American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), 2019)Additive manufacturing (AM) is a process that builds parts layer-by-layer from sliced CAD models to form solid objects. Just a few years ago, 3D printing was primarily used for rapid prototyping. Due to improvements in ... -
The New Industrial Data Economy
(American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), 2019)Data-driven approaches are increasingly valuable as our ability to store massive amounts of it, the computational power to crunch through it, and the advanced analytics to make sense of it have come to maturity. These ... -
The Drone and the Honey Bee
(American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), 2019)While scientists rush to pin down the cause of colony collapse disorder and race to find a cure, engineers have wondered whether we might one day supplement real bees with mechanical ones. Called DelFly, a miniature robot ... -
The State of American Manufacturing 2019
(American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), 2019)U.S. manufacturers had a great 2018, but concerns continue to accompany every positive trend. There were some bright spots as well as concerns - both count because manufacturing still matters. It accounts for 70 percent ... -
Gas Turbine Powered Campus Update
(American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), 2019)An updated report is given on the University of Connecticut’s gas turbine combined heat and power plant, now in operation for 13 years after its start in 2006. It has supplied the Storrs Campus with all of its electricity, ...