Body-builders: developing cyborg organs

Scientists are combining biological tissue with synthetic materials to create a new class of “cyborgans”.

When Barney Clark went into hospital, he didn’t expect to survive more than a few days. But after receiving the world’s first permanent artificial heart transplant in December 1982, the Seattle dentist went on to live for almost four more months. The second patient to receive the Jarvik-7, developed by US doctor and engineer Robert Jarvik, astounded his doctors even further by living for more than a year and a half after his operation.

Of the more than 10,000 people in the UK who are currently waiting for an organ transplant, three die every day because of a lack of donors. The development of the artificial heart means that those on the six-month NHS waiting list have an option if their situation deteriorates while they are holding out for a transplant.

Technology has improved hugely since the Jarvik-7, which was powered by a large console that made it impossible for patients to leave the hospital. Earlier this year, a TV documentary even brought together the latest developments across the spectrum of artificial organs to create a ‘bionic man’, which was until recently on display at the Science Museum in London.

Source: Science Museum

The Bionic Man project showcased the latest in artificial organs

But doctors have yet to develop a true replacement for the real thing. And with the worldwide number of patients in need of a transplant far exceeding the small number of available donors, the need for a longer-lasting alternative certainly hasn’t gone away.

One of the key problems with artificial organs is ensuring biocompatibility, the ability of materials to provide a good environment for living cells to grow and function around them. Artificial hearts, for example, need to be haemocompatible otherwise they can destroy red blood cells or create life-threatening clots.

As scientists have become better at growing human cells in a lab, the idea has taken hold that we might be able to produce entire biological organs based on a patients’ own cells. This could not only bypass the problem of biocompatibility but also reduce the likelihood of the body rejecting the organ as a foreign body, as can happen with transplants, and of causing an infection by providing a welcome surface for bacteria. However, growing an organ for use in a patient has not proven simple.

‘In the late 1990s, people started working on developing organs using a tissue-engineering approach, and everybody thought in the next 10 years we would be growing all organs,’ said Dr Alex Seifalian, professor of nanotechnology and regenerative medicine at University College London (UCL), who was the scientific lead on the bionic man project.

‘They were trying to simulate what nature is; trying to grow, for example, a nose or ear; trying to make exactly the same cartilage and grow cells on some bio-absorbable material that disappears to leave the cartilage, and that will be placed in the patient.’

‘Everybody thought in the next 10 years we would be growing all organs’

But scientists, including Seifalian, have encountered problems with this approach. ‘In 1997 we had a grant to develop artificial arteries with tissue engineering,’ he said. ‘In animals it worked very well and then when we went to humans it just didn’t work very well because the people who needed arteries were over 50 years old, their cells weren’t growing, they’d get infections.’ The other problem was making the technology commercially viable: growing organs in a lab is a costly, time-consuming process and Seifalian’s collaborator company pulled out.

Proponents of biological organ replacements have recently been encouraged by the development of 3D tissue printing, which offers the tantalising possibility that we might build organs mechanically, layer by layer — a much faster process than growing them in the lab. But printing complex internal organs like the liver or heart is still some way off, and the technology will face similar issues to traditional tissue engineering when it comes to implanting.

In the meantime, some scientists are pursuing a different approach, combining biological tissue with synthetic materials and/or mechanical and electronic components to create what could be called hybrid or even cyborg organs (cyborgans, if you will), which are more easily manufactured, longer lasting and more successful once implanted into the body.

On one level this means incorporating some biological material into a largely man-made device. French firm Carmat, which is owned by aerospace and defence company EADS, has begun animal trials on one of the world’s most advanced designs for an artificial heart, which includes some biological elements.

Source: Carmat

The Carmat artificial heart includes a biomembrane

The two chambers inside the Carmat heart are each divided by a biomembrane that separates blood on side from hydraulic fluid on the other. Tiny motors controlled by an electronic sensor system pump the hydraulic fluid in and out of the chambers, in turn causing the membrane to pump the blood.

To increase haemocompatiblity, the membrane is made from animal tissue that helps move the blood without damaging cells. Microporous biological and synthetic biomaterials also cover every other surface that comes in contact with the blood, in order to prevent material from sticking to them. If trials are successful, Carmat hopes its heart could achieve a lifespan of at least five years, and potentially up to the nine years of extra life reached by 50 per cent of transplant patients.

But scientists are also combining biological and synthetic materials in a more fundamental way, creating permanent artificial structures or scaffolds and then growing living cells around them. Seifalian is already preparing to clinically trial blood vessels and tracheae (windpipes) made in this way, and is also developing urethrae, bladders and cardiac patches for healing hearts.

Although Seifalian’s organs are grown along similar lines to those based on temporary moulds and scaffolds that gradually disappear, providing the same increased biocompatibility and reduced the risk of infection, he argues that permanent internal structures provide several additional advantages.

‘The nondegradable material is more reliable,’ he said. ‘If you make a tube you can make it mechanically similar and sometimes better than a real trachea, so if you squash it, it goes back to its original shape [etc.] Also the surgeon knows the material is going to be there forever. If you put in an artery and the polymer disappears after three months, if the body doesn’t take over then the patient will die. But if you know the artery is going to be there forever then you will feel much better.’

Source: UCL

Prof Seifalian’s material has been used to produce part-biological, part-synthetic windpipes.

The material is a nanocomposite polymer that goes by the name polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane-poly (carbonate-urea) urethane, or the much more manageable POSS-PCU for short. It’s strong, relatively cheap to synthesise and easy to manipulate into a range of complex structures. The silicon in it helps make it biocompatible, although scientists aren’t exactly sure why. And the material’s nanostructure, which was inspired by butterfly wings Seifalian studied at the Natural History Museum in London, also makes it hydrophobic, meaning it repels water and therefore prevents bacteria from growing and causing infections.

The other benefit is commercial, he added: having a physical product to sell is a more attractive proposition for manufacturers. ‘If you have a material scaffold it can be tailored to patients or just made in different sizes and you can sell it. You can then add cells and put it into the patient.’

This biological tissue can be grown either in a lab or, in some cases, after the artificial structure is implanted into the body. Seifalian’s blood vessels, for example, contain molecules that take stem cells from the blood and convert them into the endothelial cells that line the body’s own vessels. As well as reducing the risk of rejection, this also means the structure can be implanted as soon as it is needed, rather than having to wait several months for the cells to be grown in the lab.

The next big challenge is to build one of the body’s more complex organs such as a liver, by creating a synthetic scaffold and culturing stem cells around it that then turn into hepatic (liver) tissue. This could prove even more difficult than building an entire working heart, said Seifalian. ‘A liver stores vitamins, takes poisons out of the blood and so on, so a liver virtually is factory. To make the whole organ to become functional is quite complex.’

Several other research teams are studying the use of scaffolds to build organs, but one group in particular has managed to produce tissues that most closely fit the label ‘cyborgan’. The team, which comprised researchers based at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), was able to add electronic sensors to a tissue scaffold that could be used to monitor electrical activity or other changes in the cells around it.

Source: MIT

A 3D fluorescent image of an electronic tissue scaffold

Previous work had led to flat layers of cells grown on electrodes or transistors, but the MIT/Harvard researchers were able to build a porous epoxy scaffold embedded with silicon nanowires that carry electrical signals to and from the tissue grown around it, and detect activity of less than one-thousandth of a watt — about the level of electricity that might bee seen in a cell. They demonstrated the sensors could detect electrical activity related to cell contraction and changes in pH.

One of the researchers, Dr Tal Dvir, is now based at Tel Aviv University in Israel and working on making the sensors operate wirelessly without being attached to a semiconductor base so they can be incorporated into a cardiac patch. The idea is that the patch would help regenerate the heart after an attack, while the sensors monitor its progress by detecting electrical activity as the heart contracts to ensure the cells were acting synchronously. Eventually it could also operate as a pacemaker by using the nanowires to emit electrical signals or control a drug-delivery system.

‘In cardiac tissue engineering you want to see that the tissue you engineer is doing what you want it to do,’ said Dvir. ‘We put sensors within the scaffold and were able to record from each of these spots. It was like having a map of the contractions or the beating of the cells in three dimensions.’

The researchers also demonstrated the technology with blood-vessel cells and neurons, and Dvir believes arteries that monitor blood flow or patches that could help heal or stimulate the brain could also be possible, and perhaps one day even cyborg eyes or muscles.

The development of hybrid organs raises the question of whether they’re merely a stopgap until we can produce better biological replacements, perhaps with 3D printers as the enabling technology, or whether synthetic materials and electronics will allow us to enhance what nature has given us.

Source: Tal Dvir

Researchers at Tel Aviv University are developing tiny sensors to implant in lab-grown organs.

Dvir thinks additive manufacturing could actually be what delivers the full possibility of cyborgans, rather than making them redundant. ‘When I think about 3D printers I immediately think about the opportunity to combine electronics with engineered tissue,’ he said. ‘So in my opinion, I think there is great potential for these cyborg tissues. If it works with patches it will work with fully engineered organs.’

Seifalian goes a step further. He sees the future as fully synthesised organs that work even better than the real thing, based on biocompatible, functional materials, perhaps with embedded electronics. ‘With growing organs we will move forward but I don’t think that’s the future. Why can’t we make a heart from functionalised material that works very well and doesn’t break, doesn’t get calcification and so on?’

‘There is great potential for these cyborg tissues. If it works with patches it will work with fully engineered organs.’

We’re actually already seeing similar ideas become reality, for example De Montfort University has developed an artificial pancreas that releases insulin via a glucose-sensitive material (see below). And Seifalian is playing around with the idea of a synthetic heart made from ionic polymers that contract when an electrical signal is applied.

‘Unfortunately it’s not as strong, it’s not fast enough to replace the heart muscle so we’re still working on it,’ he said, adding: ‘I don’t think we’re very far away from it. I think in 10 years’ time somebody will come up with such a thing.’ If that’s the case we could find ourselves going full circle and jettisoning biological replacements altogether. Perhaps the future isn’t cyborg organs but android ones.

Artificial pancreas

The need to more carefully regulate type 1 diabetcs’ insulin intake has led to several attempts to create an artificial pancreas that removes the need for sufferers to perform their own injections. Most designs include an implanted insulin pump and electronic glucose sensor regulated by an external device, but researchers led by Prof Joan Taylor at De Montfort University in Leicester have developed a self-contained implant that manages insulin release automatically and more precisely. Insulin is stored behind a polymer gel that softens in the presence of glucose molecules, releasing insulin to the liver in the right amount until the glucose drops.

Although the researchers have yet to incorporate living tissue to improve the device’s biocompatibility, the design represents how functional materials performing a more natural process can operate better than mechanical and electronic components alone. ‘It has dose-related activity just by virtue of the fact that it works on a molecular level,’ said Taylor. ‘So you don’t have to build this in digitally; it responds naturally as an absolute function of glucose content.’

This article first appeared on The Engineer.

Come together: towards machines that build themselves

Self-assembly is finding applications in areas from space to medical implants.

If humanity is going to fulfil its dreams about space — exploring it, mining it, colonising it — then we need to learn how to build in it. The kinds of large structures required for launching deep-space missions could be made much simpler if we could construct them in orbit rather than packaging them up for launch from Earth. And to build in one of the most extreme environments we know, we’ll have to take human involvement out of the picture. Automated construction equipment is one solution. But there may be another possibility: self-assembly.

‘Solar power is a huge problem for communication satellites,’ says Kim Ward, head of space engineering and technology at Harwell-based research centre RAL Space. ‘The traditional way of doing solar panels is they all have to be joined together and have a fancy deployment. But if you could have 30 or 40 free-flying solar panels that joined together then you could assemble huge panels. And if they’re really smart, they could get hit by a bit of space debris but then reconfigure and regenerate.’

Source: Magna Parva

RAL Space is developing hexagonal craft that autonomously join-up to form a larger structure once in space.

RAL Space is working with Qinetiq Space and technology firm Magna Parva on a proposal for the European Space Agency (ESA) to develop what it calls a “hex swarm”, a fleet of seven dinner plate-sized hexagonal spacecraft that could be launched into space in a stack and then autonomously join together to form a larger structure. To convince ESA it will work, Ward’s team is building a test rig to that can demonstrate how the craft will use locate and then dock with each other.

Ward calls the hexagonal craft “worker bees”, referring to their fairly limited capabilities: they would align using the Sun as a reference point, find each other using infrared signals and rendezvous with one of two techniques RAL Space is testing (and not yet revealing). But they would be overseen by a “queen bee” that could communicate with them and with mission control.

As well as forming the basis of large structures like solar panels or communication dishes, the craft could share power or computing resources. ‘The whole idea of assembling structures on the Moon or Mars is equally relevant,’ says Ward. ‘In a sense it’s easier because you’re doing it in two dimensions, but you still have the same problem of things moving around that join together to make potentially very large structures.’

Source: Magna Parva

The hexagonal craft would be stackable for easy launch.

Several studies over the last few years have proposed similar self-assembling or reconfigurable spacecraft concepts, although Ward claims RAL Space is the first group to run a demonstration project. Another recent idea put forward by Skylar Tibbits, founder of the Self-Assembly Lab at MIT, is to build components made from specially designed materials that can change their shape and purpose in space, for example from a solar panel to a parabolic antenna.

‘If you can reconfigure from one state to another and make extremely functional systems in between then you have more robust scenarios,’ he says. ‘Right now, a lot of the technologies are one-off and so you ship up a lot of equipment, you need human space walks and construction up there.’

Tibbits points out that this idea is different from that of true self-assembly — there’s no coming together of constituent parts. And RAL Space’s vision of robotic components that link up is far from the principle of natural molecular self-assembly used to build nanostructures. But what they all share is the notion that adding an aspect of autonomy to a structure or material and removing human intervention can increase its functionality. And this concept is increasingly being employed across several other areas of manufacturing.

‘If you can reconfigure from one state to another and make extremely functional systems in between then you have more robust scenarios’

Skylar TIbbits, MIT Self-Assembly Lab

Scientists have long looked enviously at the efficiency with which nature manufactures things. The processes by which proteins in living cells are formed, folded and combined don’t require external energy or direction and are instead driven by the natural movement of molecules and the various forces between them. The other advantage of this molecular self-assembly is the complexity of the structures that can be formed at the nanolevel, something that traditional “top-down” manufacturing techniques cannot replicate.

For this reason, molecular self-assembly has become a popular technique for scientists experimenting with adding special functions to material surfaces or creating tiny structures with incredible properties. For example, a team at the University of Sheffield is using it to develop self-propelled nano-devices that can deliver drugs to a tumour within the body.

Chasing tumours

Drug delivery has already become pretty sophisticated. Using magnetic fields or other stimuli, doctors can guide tiny packets of cancer drugs through the body to the site of a tumour, meaning other organs aren’t exposed to their toxic effects. But scientists at Sheffield University want to go a step further and create self-assembling autonomous nano-devices that guide themselves to the tumour by following the trail of chemical signals it releases into the bloodstream.

The devices are based on spherical polymer molecules each with a catalyst patch to drive a reaction that creates thrust. These particles naturally self-assemble into groups that form the structure of the drug delivery device. ‘The neat thing about it is depending on how they join together you get different types of motion,’ says research leader Dr Stephen Ebbens. ‘So if they join with the catalysts perfectly aligned they’ll move in a straight line. If you have an offset you’ll get devices that spin around. And this all emerges from this natural self-assembly process.’

If Ebbens’ team can control the self-assembly process by changing the molecules’ design in a certain they will be able to tailor the devices to move in the desired way. ‘One of our ideas is to grow a long chain where the individual units are flexibly linked to make a snake-like structure,’ he says. Alternatively, making larger round devices that spin could be used to mix substances in microfluidic devices more precisely.

But this kind of self-assembly isn’t quite yet an option for commercial mass production. That’s why microchip companies are hoping to instead use the concept to make manufacturing tools that could produce the next generation of electronic components at much tinier scales than is currently possible — thereby helping to maintain the “Moore’s Law” development of ever-faster processors.

This method of “directed self-assembly” (DSA) relies on materials known as block copolymers, chains of at least two types of monomer molecules that are grouped into sections. The different monomer groups are linked but naturally want to separate, causing the molecules to arrange themselves into specific shapes — spheres or cylinders for example — depending on their structure. These copolymers can be used to create lithographic masks with features smaller than the wavelength of light, which in turn could mass-produce chips with much finer detail than those made by traditional photolithography.

Source: MIT

Self-assembly can help make microchips with far smaller features than conventional methods.

Until last year, researchers had only been able to create two-dimensional masks, but a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has developed a way to build several layers of self-assembled structures to produce more complex 3D configurations. The technique involves dissolving the polymer and spin-coating it onto a silicon substrate covered with tiny posts that repel the polymer and so guide the self-assembly process.

‘We can put a set of cylinders going in one direction and above it a layer of cylinders going in the other direction and have junctions in between the two,’ says Prof Caroline Ross, who has been working on DSA since 1997. ‘So you can imagine making a three-dimensional structure in one go rather than building it up layer by layer.’ Ross’s team have also been able to use DSA to produce square shapes typical of existing electronics design, rather than the hexagonal shapes the self-assembled molecules naturally want to form.

Molecular manufacturing

For DSA to be used in commercial manufacturing, companies need to find ways to scale and speed up the technique and reduce the number of defects that occur. But over a decade of research like that at MIT has reportedly helped push the concept onto the R&D agenda at major firm such as Intel. And molecular self-assembly has also started to work its way into other areas of manufacturing research, not just in the creation of tiny devices but also in the production of materials themselves. A team at Manchester University, for example, is using the principles of natural self-assembly to mimicking the DNA building process in order to create a more efficient chemical manufacturing process.

Proteins and other molecules in living cells don’t form spontaneously but rather are constructed by tiny “molecular machines” that grab small molecules and join them together in specifically ordered chains. Researchers at Manchester University led by Prof David Leigh hope that by replicating this concept with their own molecular machines, they can produce a new, more efficient way of synthesising chemicals that doesn’t rely on multi-step batch processing that uses up lots of energy.

Their first machine is based on the ribosome that links amino acids into proteins according to the code laid out in DNA. The machine’s movements are driven by the random motion of molecules and its structure means that each stage of the process occurs in the right order. In this way, molecular manufacturing is another example of taking the human intervention out of the process and instead using a form of self-assembly. But the complexity offered by such a precise and programmable manufacturing method means the obvious application for it might be in creating new materials rather than replacing current techniques for making existing chemicals.

Self-assembly is even being used to create substances that mimic some of the properties of biological tissue but without the difficulties created by it actually being alive. Scientists have been able to coat water droplets with a membrane of fatty molecules known as lipids to approximate cells and, because the lipids have both water-loving and water-repelling parts, when the droplets are surrounded by oil they self-assemble into a specific structure. Inserting other biological molecules into the membranes gives these “cells” useful and controllable properties, for example conducting ionic currents or transducing light into electricity. Unlike living tissue, however, these droplet structures don’t need a supply of oxygen or food and they can’t die or grow uncontrollably.

A team from Oxford University recently developed a means to manufacture these structures on a larger scale by building their own version of a 3D printer that injected the water droplets into a bath of oil and lipids in a pre-detemined pattern. Gabriel Villar, one of the researchers and now an employee of technology transfer firm Cambridge Consultants, says the technique could be used to print functional structures for biocompatible medical implants, without the hassle of printing and maintaining fully living tissue.

Source: Oxford University

Oxford University researchers have created tissue-like structures from self-assembling water and fat droplets.

‘By including the right kinds of biomolecules and chemicals you might be able to get these droplets to talk to a living tissue in a very well defined way,’ he says. ‘With living cells it’s very difficult to tell exactly what they’re going to do. One big problem is to stop cells from becoming carcinogenic, from creating tumours in a printed structure, or differentiating into the wrong kind of cell.’

Again, the advantage of these bio-inspired, self-assembled structures over simple electrical machines is their complexity, he adds. ‘The power in using biological processes is you can really manipulate matter much more generally. You can use them to control the flow of matter or to construct new molecules in a controlled way or to analyse or detect a presence of a specific molecule in a solution or in the air.’

The development of 3D printing could be important in scaling up production of self-assembling materials and structures but also in applying the principles to much larger objects. Skylar Tibbits of MIT’s Self-Assembly Lab has actually coined the term “4D printing” to describe the use of 3D printers to make objects that can change shape or function after they’ve been printed, although again he stresses that these items are transformational rather than truly self-assembled.

Using a Stratasys Connex printer that can make structures from two different polymers and experimental Autodesk design software known as Project Cyborg, Tibbits has been able to create a plastic string that very slowly folds up into a pre-programmed shape when placed in water. Its joints are made from a polymer that expands by 150 per cent when wet, and combining that with sections of a rigid, non-absorbing plastic creates an object that can change its shape without the need for motors and actuators — just the ambient energy input of submerging it.

Source: MIT

Combining different materials with additive manufacturing can produce

You can imagine how this idea might be used to produce bigger strings or flat sheets that can fold themselves into large objects such as furniture without the need for human assembly, just as protein molecules fold themselves into shapes that give them functionality. But Tibbits has more unusual concepts in mind, not just the transforming space structures but also pipes that change their shape to reduce water flow or even that grow and constrict rapidly to pump water along — an idea he is working on with Boston-based engineering firm Geosyntec.

However, it’s not entirely clear how much of a role 3D printers and additive manufacturing will play in spreading self-assembly. For example, Tibbits questions whether 4D printing will actually be the technique he uses to produce the transforming pipes because of its size limitations.

‘Right now you can print up to a few feet in all dimensions on the biggest of the Connex machines and a lot of people are looking at how we can scale up printing,’ he says. ‘In the future we might be able to use a process like that for the pipes but it’s more about the mindset that you can program these materials in elegant ways to transform.’

‘The multi-functionality and the self-assembly comes out of the freedom of design that you can only get from an additive approach.’

Richard Hague, Centre for Additive Manufacturing

At the other end of the scale, 3D printing isn’t yet precise enough to manipulate molecules, for example to set up self-assembly for electronics manufacturing. ‘With 3D printers you’re looking at tens of microns and it’s a different magnitude,’ says Caroline Ross. On the other hand, the researchers at Oxford University overcame several issues to use 3D printing technology to build their water-droplet networks. They used an extruded glass tube the width of a human hair to place the droplets precisely and developed control software to compensate for the way this print head would drag the droplets after it had printed them.

Richard Hague, director of the EPSRC Centre for Additive Manufacturing at Nottingham University, argues that self-assembly essentially is a form of additive manufacturing. ‘Most additive manufacturing is at the micro scale really, so moving to the nanoscale throws up a whole bunch of different problems and you’re looking at a different bunch of physics.’

But, he adds, there is immense possibility for the technology as it progresses. ‘With the additive approach the most important thing is the design freedoms you get, the ability to make these complicated parts. The multi-functionality and the self-assembly comes out of the freedom of design that you can only get from an additive approach.’

This article first appeared on The Engineer.

Interview: Arup boss and infrastructure expert Terry Hill

A lifetime leading major infrastructure projects has made Terry Hill a preacher for their powers of regeneration. But now, he says, the sector needs a revolution.

Terry Hill, board of trustees chair, Arup

The key factor behind London’s successful bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games — according to Arup’s Terry Hill — wasn’t the legacy plans, the environmental credentials or David Beckham. It was the Channel Tunnel. Or rather it was the rail link between London and the tunnel, also known as High Speed 1 (HS1), which not only connected the UK to the rest of Europe but also stopped at the Stratford area of east London that would become home to the Olympics.

‘Stratford before HS1 was a difficult place to get to — unknown, forgotten,’ Hill said. ‘HS1 meant you could get from the centre of London to the Olympic site in seven minutes. I remember taking the International Olympic Committee through the tunnels between Kings Cross and the Stratford site and they were blown away with the ease [with which] you could get to the Olympic Park. No Olympics had ever achieved that before. And that, to my mind, was what brought the Olympics to London and contributed to its great success.’

Hill, who was technical director of HS1 and chairman of Arup when it worked on Heathrow Terminal 5 and the Beijing Olympic stadium, and recently received the Royal Academy of Engineering’s President’s Medal for promoting excellence in the field, is a great evangelist for the transformative power of infrastructure. Connect two places, he believes, and business, investment and regeneration can follow. ‘This is the thing I have worked all my professional life for, and that is infrastructure as regenerating the economy and region,’ he said. ‘Infrastructure is a fantastic stimulus to creating fantastic new areas.’

‘Infrastructure is a fantastic stimulus to creating fantastic new areas.’

The 16km Öresund Bridge that links Sweden and Denmark is his prime example: since the opening of the Arup-designed crossing in 2000, the previously declining Swedish city of Malmö has become a gentrified, skyscrapered centre of knowledge industries. And back in London, the areas around St Pancras and Stratford stations have also seen major regeneration, which Hill attributes to the arrival of HS1.

It’s hard to argue that infrastructure hasn’t made a difference in these cases, but it’s often one of many factors in regeneration. Malmo’s revival was sparked not just by the bridge but also by a new university and a major housing exposition. East London’s transformation arguably began in the 1990s with a creative scene fuelled by cheap rents and eventually followed by a planned regeneration scheme that included the Olympics. Surely this was more important than the building of a high-speed line to Paris?

HS1: Key to the Olympics?

His response is that infrastructure is what enables regeneration to happen. ‘Great cities — you think of them because of their icons, their culture, their society. But actually it’s totally underpinned by efficient infrastructure, which we take for granted but actually makes the difference between a busy and crowded place and a world city.’

For all his enthusiasm for what infrastructure can achieve, however, Hill thinks there’s a problem. The world is changing dramatically as more and more people move to the cities, but the way we deliver infrastructure has yet to move with it. And if it doesn’t, then we face a crisis, he argued. ‘In the provision of infrastructure for cities, we’ve not had the transformation that we’ve had in other economic areas. If you look at the digital revolution, the quality of product from the automotive industry, the efficiency that comes with the research that goes into aviation technology, I don’t think we’ve had that in construction and infrastructure.’

This poses a huge challenge. ‘The amount of people living in cities is going to double over the next 40 years. Everything that’s been built and provided and run and operated and maintained in cities but has developed over the last 5,000 years has got to be done again in the next 40. If we don’t do that smarter then there is a looming crisis as to what the cities are. The cities we know and love and cherish now are going to be overwhelmed by this tide of humanity rushing in.’

A big part of the problem has to do with cost. Arguably, we do have more capable and efficient infrastructure that has benefited from digital monitoring and control systems. But as a 2010
report led by Hill highlighted, infrastructure isn’t getting any cheaper. ‘Everything else that you know, whether it’s food, mobile phones, cars, clothing or whatever, the trend is for things to get better, quicker, cheaper. And yet there doesn’t seem to be any trend that way [in infrastructure],’ he said.

It’s a particular problem in the UK: Hill’s report for the Treasury found infrastructure costs in Britain were significantly higher than in Europe, placing the blame on a range of factors including unnecessary standards, blurred decision making in government and a lack of long-term certainty. Hill also pointed to the government’s lack of understanding of the risk of big projects and the tendency to throw money at a situation rather than attempt to reduce costs, which means that we don’t necessarily get the best value for money.

‘People are naturally conservative and think “goodness me, this is going to go over budget — I better have a big budget”, and the trouble is when you have a big budget you tend to spend it. So there’s almost a behavioural nature that ends up in a spiral of increasing costs rather than decreasing costs.’ It’s partly driven by a perception that was formed in previous decades by over-running projects such as the Jubilee line underground extension and the Channel Tunnel itself, he added.

But one could argue that we’ve now learnt from our mistakes and our fear of overspending has made us better at meeting, or at least setting, targets. The Olympics budget was tripled from its original estimate but then met without further overspend. ‘HS1 was not just done on time and on budget; it opened on the day we had predicted six or seven years before,’ said Hill. ‘We’ve done the first order improvement. We now can predict the outcomes and we can deliver against those. I think the second order is just making it far more efficient and that means taking some risks and seeing if we can do things quicker or at a lot lower cost than at the moment.’

HS1 was completed on time and budget.

It’s not surprising to discover Hill is in favour of the new high-speed rail link between London and northern England. He argues that people always object to big projects because they disturb the comfort of a familiar if unsatisfying status quo, yet once they are finished the public tend to accept the change. But just because people might accept a project in the long run doesn’t mean it’s necessarily the best option.

‘People would be less sensitive if we could deliver infrastructure more efficiently.’

‘That’s where I disagree with you,’ he said. ‘I don’t think you have to get infrastructure exactly right, because what happens is the world forms around it. Was that bridge between Denmark and Sweden put in exactly the right place? People, jobs, investment start moving and forming round the new thing. Yes, we’ve got to put the emphasis on getting it as least intrusive as possible. But that should not deter us from getting on and providing it. Because every year it’s not provided there are people who are not benefiting from it and, when it’s done, they will.’

Once again, he believes innovation is the key to overcoming public opposition to major projects. ‘People would be less sensitive if we could deliver infrastructure more efficiently. Imagine if we could do the equivalent of keyhole surgery with infrastructure. We are not doing a bad job with Crossrail: most of it is hidden from view while we’re getting on with it. Imagine if we could do that with railways, with power stations, with waterworks and so on. The equivalent of keyhole surgery for infrastructure would mean that politicians and financiers would take decisions a lotmore readily.’

This article first appeared on The Engineer.

Young people want more than just money (though it helps)

It’s great being an engineer. That’s the belief of the vast majority of students and recent graduates considering an engineering career who took part in a recent survey. Over 80 per cent of those still studying were happy with their course while over 90 per cent of graduates see themselves staying in the profession long term.

But things aren’t as rosy as this suggests. Surveys such as this one, conducted by GTI Media, should always be taken with a pinch of salt: they represent a small, self-selecting sample of people and ignore those who have already given up on engineering.

We’re constantly told that the UK needs more science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) graduates – 40,000 extra a year according to the Social Market Foundation. And figures in the most recent Engineering UK report show around one third of engineering and technology graduates obtain work unrelated to their degrees. So it makes sense that keeping more people in the industry has to be part of the strategy of addressing the skills shortage.

The question is what to do about it. The obvious answer many will immediately shout is higher salaries. But it’s not as simple as that. Of students considering a career outside engineering, 44 per cent said the potential to earn more elsewhere was a factor. But this was second to the potential to do more interesting or fulfilling work (55 per cent).

Compared to students considering careers in banking, accountancy, IT and law, those looking at engineering were the least likely to be influenced by money and had the lowest salary expectations. Instead, they were the most likely to be motivated by the profession’s contribution to society. And, surprisingly, they were the least likely to be tempted into another sector.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, those interested in banking were the most likely to be motivated by money (although they were also the most likely to take a job in another industry). Realistically, engineering firms will never be able to offer graduates City-level salaries because of the more long-term nature of their business. So targeting those for whom money is most important seems like something of a waste of time.

That’s not to say higher salaries wouldn’t make a difference. And as one surveyed student put it, there’s little clarity or consistency on what a “competitive” starting wage is. But perhaps most people just aren’t that materialistic and we’d be better combining monetary reward with greater outreach to students, to show and explain to them how rewarding and intellectually stimulating engineering can be.

The other problem that emerges from the survey is that over a quarter of students applying for jobs are not confident they will find one. Part of this is probably due to the high levels of graduate unemployment in general. Still, figures in the Engineering UK report show that engineering and technology graduates are slightly more likely to be out of work or further training than the average for all degree subjects (10.9 per cent compared to 9.2 per cent). And things are even worse for the computer science graduates who are apparently in such demand (14.6 per cent).

Ask the students what the obstacles to getting a job are, and by far the most common responses are the lack of opportunities and the difficulty of obtaining work experience. If the engineering industry wants to retain higher numbers of graduates it must find a way to hold their interest even at times when jobs aren’t plentiful. More and better internship programmes could be a way to do this, especially if they started targeting students from a younger age.

You don’t have to look far to find anecdotes of young engineers not being prepared for the world of work. And one comment pulled out of the survey highlighted the extra difficulty for first-year students in securing placements. Perhaps building stronger relationships with students over the course of their degrees, using open days and pre-internships or ‘spring weeks’ such as the finance sector does, will make young people more likely to hold out for an engineering job once their studies are over.

Of course, the other side of the argument is the need for better skilled graduates, an issue often brought up by industry. Over 60 per cent of graduates surveyed felt their course only prepared them “quite well” for work and just under 50 per cent felt they had limited preparation in terms of technical skills.

But perhaps this is another area where greater interaction with engineering firms over the course of a degree could help. If industry wants more and better employees, it needs to take a greater role in helping train and attract them.

This article first appeared on The Engineer.

New technique paves the way for 3D-printed aircraft wings

Source: BAE Systems Advanced Technology Centre

Aircraft wings built with 3D printers could be a step closer thanks to a technique developed by BAE Systems.

The company has developed a process to prevent large metallic structures made using additive manufacturing from distorting or building up internal stress during printing, potentially paving the way for making components strong enough to use in aircraft.

The technique involves an established way of making metal parts stronger by rapidly and repeatedly striking them using an ultrasonic tool – a form of peening – applied as each layer of the component is laid down by the 3D printer in order to relieve stresses and improve the material’s microstructure.

Civil aircraft manufacturers including Boeing and Airbus are already using 3D printing to produce small components such as hinges as a way of reducing waste of expensive materials such as titanium.

Scaling up the process to large and complex metallic parts could also the enable the creation of more complex shapes – for example hollow and therefore lighter wings – and make production of a small number of these components more cost effective.

But increasing the size of 3D printed parts raises the chance that the internal stresses that build up as the material cools will lead to problems, said Andy Wescott, a senior research scientist at BAE’s Advanced Technology Centre.

‘As the material contracts it creates residual stress that is locked into the part,’ he told The Engineer. ‘This can manifest as distortion but also affects the mechanical performance.’

With BAE’s technique, a layer of material is laid down, melted into shape using a laser and left to cool before being cold worked using the ultrasonic impact treatment (UIT). The next layer is then deposited, heated and the process starts again.

‘It’s not just the cold working step that produces the positive result,’ said Jagjit Sidu, the ATC’s technical leader for additive manufacturing. ‘It’s the combination of the cold working with the heat treatment. It all becomes part of the deposition process.’

Source: BAE Systems Advanced Technology Centre

A comparison of the microstructure of 3D-printed parts made with and without the treatment.

UIT is typically used to treat welded areas in metallic structures in the rail and oil and gas industries to increase their fatigue life.

An ultrasonic transducer causes the tool head to vibrate at a very controllable rate and impart powerful compression forces while only placing a small load on the tool itself, allowing it to be handheld – or in this case fitted to a robot, meaning it could be easily integrated with additive manufacturing systems.

The BAE team, which also included group leader for materials engineering Stephen Morgan, developed a feedback system that uses load cells in the base plate, onto which the structure is printed, to measure the strains as they form and adjust the UIT to correct them in real time.

Asked how much time the treatment added to the 3D printing process, Westcott declined to give a specific figure but said: ‘It is a quick manual or automated process. From the measurements obtained from our strain measuring system, the surface quickly becomes saturated and no further amount of treatment has any effect.

‘Obviously, if you treat every layer it is a longer process than if you treat every five layers, but optimising the process will be the subject of further work.’

The company has demonstrated the technique by producing 3D printed structures up to 1m in length and has applied for patents on the UIT process and the feedback system.

Now the researchers plan to further optimise the process and build a better understanding of where to apply the UIT in larger and more complex parts, in order to be able to move towards prototype components.

This article first appeared on The Engineer.

Putting our faith in a fracking dream is a dangerous mistake

Perhaps it’s the sunshine, but I desperately wanted to write about a new sense of optimism in UK industry this morning. We may be a long way from true recovery but positive economic statistics, billions of pounds of foreign investment, new infrastructure development and a renewed focus on industrial research give us real reasons to be positive about the future.

The Olympics may or may not have created a £10bn boost to the economy but it appeared to represent a mental turning point. As I was reminded at this week’s Royal Academy of Engineering Awards, British engineering has a lot to be proud of and we are now far more confident in showing it off to the world.

But my mood has been sadly disrupted by news that George Osborne is ramping up his “dash for gas” and plans to halve the tax bill for fossil fuel companies who start fracking the English countryside. The promise of a glut of cheap gas that brings down the heating bills of hard-pressed families and helps cut the UK’s carbon emissions by displacing coal – and creates thousands of jobs at the same time – is an attractive one.

But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and, so far, evidence is severely lacking. Yes, we’ve seen the reports that Britain may be sitting on top of trillions of cubic metres of shale gas, but how much of it we can viably extract and what impact it will have on prices are still big unknowns.

A recent inquiry by industry and academic experts led by a former Tory energy minister and a Labour peer was the latest to conclude that the amount of economically recoverably shale gas in the UK remained highly uncertain, the environmental risks were poorly understood, and the near-term impact of fracking would be to diversify Britain’s energy exports rather than significantly lower prices.

The US may be reaping the benefits of its own shale gas revolution but the UK is a very different place. Instead of wide-open and sparsely populated plains that can be industrialised with little opposition, we have a crowded island where green countryside is preciously guarded and environmental damage would be more keenly felt.

The £100,000 per well that Osborne is offering to communities that host fracking sites won’t go far in an era of massive public spending cuts and seems small fry compared to the tax cuts (from 62 per cent to 30 per cent) being offered to an already wealthy industry that could make billions more. How easily will fracking operations be set up in the Tory shires that display such opposition to windmills?

We also have tighter regulations making operations more costly and an energy market that is tied more closely with that of our neighbours. As the Carbon Connect report put it: ‘Our liberalised and highly interconnected market would prevent prices remaining artificially low compared with neighbouring markets.’

With so many uncertain factors, it would be immensely foolish to tie ourselves to a strategy of more gas-fired power stations when we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to move away from a reliance on fossil fuels. If the shale gas dreams turn out to be nothing more than hallucinations, we’ll be left at the mercy of an international market struggling with ever-increasing demand from rapidly developing countries.

Then, of course, come the environmental issues. Fears about earthquakes are a red herring – research has found fracking represents a similar a threat in this sense to coal mining and that resulting tremors would unlikely be felt at the surface. But what of the chemicals pumped into the ground and their impact on the water supply? Water firms have this week warned again of the dangers fracking pose both from its chemicals and its high water usage.

The Environment Agency says companies will only be allowed to use non-hazardous substances and the UK oil and gas industry likes to boast about its strong safety and environmental record. Behind the scenes, however, some experts are not so confident the rules will be strictly followed, and oil and chemical leaks are still common on North Sea rigs.

Perhaps most importantly of all, fracking will not reduce carbon emissions. Shale gas might help the UK meet its medium term CO2 targets but a greater supply of fossil fuels will put downwards pressure on prices and deter countries from decarbonising. We’re already seeing it happen in Europe, where coal consumption has increased thanks to a surge in US exports as the country switches to shale.

Simply put, the more fossil fuels the world takes out of the ground, the more carbon it will emit and the greater the risk of runaway climate change. There are so many uncertainties around fracking but we can be sure of one thing: it’s not the answer to the world’s climate problem.

This article first appeared on The Engineer.

Interview: Olympic bike designer Dimitris Katsanis

Composites specialist Dimitris Katsanis was one of the secrets to team GB’s cycling success at the London Olympics. 

Dimitris Katsanis

When British Cycling gave Dimitris Katsanis six months to build the best bike in the world, it was a challenge not every engineer would have risen to. But then not every bike designer has been an international competitive track sprinter. The Greek-born expert in composites had moved into the aerospace industry in the years since his professional cycling career but he had kept hisconnections with the sporting world and had been among the first to apply expertise in carbon fibre to building bikes for several national teams.

So when the UK’s governing body for cycle racing wanted to address problems with the bikes used in the 2001 racing season, Katsanis was well placed to put forward his ideas. He also benefited, he says, from the organisation’s open-mindedness and willingness to take risks. ‘One of the great advantages when British Cycling came to me was they gave me a free hand. Not “we want this, that and the other”, just “make us a frame: if it is good we’ll take it; if it is no good, forget about it”.’

Despite this freedom, Katsanis’s ideas weren’t revolutionary. They were more about addressing component quality and supply-chain reliability, making use of the ample data that British Cycling provided on the amount of power and torque the riders were producing. ‘Many people like to glamorise it but in reality it’s just common-sense engineering,’ he says. ‘It doesn’t matter if you’re designing [a bike or] an aeroplane wing: you have your loads, you have where the thing is supported, where the loads are going through. You just have to make it strong enough to do the job.’

And, he says, he took a conservative approach to the sport’s regulations, even though he suspected other teams were stretching the rules, which he claims weren’t consistently enforced at the time. ‘The worst thing that could happen would be the British cycling team getting to the starting line at the Olympic Games and then finding out they cannot race.’

The results, however, spoke for themselves. ‘Chris Hoy used it straight away,’ he remembers. ‘He broke his own record straight away by quarter of a second. A quarter of a second on the sprint is actually quite a difference.’ A 12-year partnership followed, during which, Katsanis claims, his bikes have won 51 gold medals in the World Championships and Olympic Games, including Team GB’s hauls in Beijing in 2008 and in London last year.

Though the UK has gradually risen to the top of the world’s cycling ranks, the technology in the bikes hasn’t changed that much since Katsanis’s early designs for British Cycling. Carbon fibres had been refined in other industries, most notably aerospace, so it was more a case of bringing that knowledge across into the sport than inventing something new, he explains.

‘Ten years ago the materials weren’t really that different compared with what they are today, in terms of things you can actually use… I would need to do quite a lot of testing to prove that something is actually better. Carbon nanotubes and so on are still not quite there as a structural material.’

What has changed is his and other manufacturers’ ability to work with the materials, primarily thanks to improved analysis techniques, which helped Katsanis make large strides in making the bikes more aerodynamic. ‘Twelve years ago if you were trying to do aerodynamic simulations and so on you could only do some very crude bits,’ he says. ‘Structural analysis was more common than CFD [computational fluid dynamics] but, still, it was quite cumbersome. So in fact, information technology is probably the most important factor that has sped things up quite considerably.’

However, Katsanis doesn’t like to rely completely on software and simulations — partly because they sometimes throw up anomalies that need to be manually identified and partly because he likes to stay in control of the engineering process. ‘I favour doing a number of different solutions. You look at the results, you pick the one that perhaps is the best and you run with that,’ he says. ‘A lot of people do the simulation by running hundreds of different solutions and letting the software manipulate the shapes — I’m not keen on that.’

This emphasis on keeping a firm grip on the engineering was mirrored by Katsanis’s desire to stay close to the users of his creations — the riders — rather than have their views filtered through managers and coaches. And this was where his own cycling experience came in useful too. ‘It gave me a little bit of background information that you cannot tease out from the riders,’ he explains. ‘They will give you that bit of a hint that they think is not really crucial but you realise this is something that can make a difference.’

Katsanis’s professional cycling career didn’t last long, although he did once come up against British Olympic gold-winning racer Chris Boardman, with whom he would later collaborate on one of the UK’s time-trial bikes. ‘He was one or two places ahead of me at that time; he improved a bit since,’ he laughs. But it was Katsanis’s interest in racing that eventually made him return to an earlier fascination with engineering.

After realising that his sports-science degree and a career in coaching wasn’t going to satisfy him, he thought back to his youthful exploits of taking apart motorbikes and trying to make them go faster. At the same time he had been building his own bicycles from steel tubes and looking around for the next step in bike technology. He found it in the field of composite materials, which had yet to fully emerge into the world of sports engineering, even in motor racing, and began to experiment.

‘The very first full composite structure I did was a racing wheelchair back in Greece in 1992 [for the Barcelona Paralympics],’ he says. ‘It was a full carbon chair with carbon disc wheels — very primitive but it was lighter, stiffer and more aerodynamic.’ Amazingly, this was before he had even begun to study composite engineering, which he would go on to do at Plymouth University. ‘I bought a book about composites. My English was so-so, my engineering knowledge was very basic and a lot of things were not making sense. But I used it as well as I could and it worked quite well. So when I actually went to study composites engineering I had already done some.’

Now Katsanis has come full circle, having helped design a carbon-fibre racing wheelchair for the UK that will be used at this year’s World Championships.He’s also continuing his work with UK Sport, helping in preparations for next year’s Winter Olympics — a field in which he already has some experience, having helped design parts for the British bobsleigh. He also recently contributed to the Pinarello bike Bradley Wiggins used in his unsuccessful Giro Italia attempt that Team Sky is also using for the Tour de France.

But he’s also looking at a return to aerospace and hoping to expand his own engineering company, Metron Advanced Equipment. ‘In terms of performance, all the research and development comes from aerospace — the Cold War was great for engineers,’ he jokes. ‘It has very long development times usually. In Formula One, for example, if they get a sniff that they can do something veryquickly and get a tiny percentage increase they will go for it. Whereas in aerospace they will test it again and again and document it, which actually produces a vast amount of literature for the rest of the engineers to look into.’ Perhaps going back to the sector will provide Katsanis with the fuel for the next great sports technology innovation.

This article first appeared on The Engineer.