Engineering

Hello, I am looking for help because I am in WAY over my head (ANY HELP IS APPRECIATED)! I started a science fair project with two other people and we're planning on completing it this year. We decided to do a project involving unmanned drones. We have narrowed our project down to creating a 3D imaging vehicle that operates autonomously in land, water, and air. I am planning on using the XBOX Kinects in order to do the 3D imaging and hook it up into an "omnothopter - esque" machine, basically our mechanical engineer plans to implement a variety of different small engines for air and a few gripped engines for aquatic conditions ( I will post a rough blue print once he fini…

Yes, it's me with an airplane disaster-related question again.. Still recovering from shivering induced by watching a scary documentary about the Alaska airlines flight 261 crash, I ask myself why the trim tabs (is that correct terminology?) are designed in the way they are (at least on the MD-80). As far as I understand, control of the aircraft was irrevocably lost when a jammed jackscrew finally disintegrated and the control surface pitched violently up around its hinge due to the airflow. To me, it seems intuitively safer to reverse the design and have the jackscrew located behind the hinge. In case of total jackscrew failure, which I believe is less unlikely than…

Some slight confusion on the part of electricity and the conversion to mechanical force; I believe I understand enough about circuits, current flow, capacitors and the like to know that side of the question, but what I don't see is how electricity is converted to large scale (relative to an electron) motion. For example, if I wanted to make an extremely basic fan, how would I go about doing it so that the electric potential stored inside the batteries powers the movement of the blades?

I've got a general question about how something's shape affects it's, uh, strength? Perhaps an example would be more helpful; when eating pizza, the front of the slice will fold down unless the eater bends the slice vertically, what's up with that? A similar scenario occurs with a flat piece of paper, it'll droop unless folded to make a parabolic shape, why does this occur?

The EM pulse thread got me thinking of this. It is possible to make high speed police chases obsolete, IF all cars manufactured have some kind of sensor on the back bumper. Old cars can be retrofitted with this at not much cost. This sensor is tamper proof and is connected to a system that shuts off the gas, or whatever you need to shut off to bring a speeding car to a gradual stop. You don't want to lock their steering. The police simply point a special device at the speeding car, trigger it and it activates the shut down system in the bad guy's car. Anyone know how to do this?

I have just finished watching air gear anime and was wondering if it is possible to build them or if they are already being sold if you have any schematics I would be glad to run it through and see if I can build it

Please send me, the proof of fourier series

A conventional house, made of bricks, wood, metal pipes etc... takes many professionals a long time to construct and so is expensive for labour costs and relies on there being people with these skills available. If the process was simplified but kept to resemble a conventional house, for example: Bricks shaped like jigsaw pieces at either end requiring no cement. Those bendy pipes made of many small segments like the sort you get for showers that screw on either end. etc... such that the house could be built by anyone from simple instructions then do you think the extra cost of production would outweigh the labour cost saving?

Does any know the difference between "Impedance signature analysis" and "Motor Current Signature Analysis". And which technique is better for fault traceability and Why with solid reason…

Can the videos be explained mathematically?

Hi, this article about production of foam glass, in our university we want to create new technic production from bottle waste. If somebody may help me with this question please write. As a foaming agent we use coal As a active agent we use boric acid It's the main question what do agents we may use instead of boric acid coal for extraction of carbon and oxygen? Also what kind of agents we can use for intensification of foaming process and for decrease of foaming process if the size of glass particle is 5-10 micron

Power is a feature of any machine. What are the limitizers to the power of any machine? Is it only Energy per element, together with the rate? Or, also friction, design, load, .......? Conceptually, is there another or just one?

I am 2nd year electronics engg. student.. I wanna ask that How the Integrated circuits are named like 'IC 7486', 'Ic 7408','Bc157'......etc? Are there any special methods to give names to diodes, transistor ?

How much viscosity is a part of the air resistance (naming)? Although surface is much away, surface of air and atmosphere?

Have been reading the "how life begins" thread and about irreducible complexity as it applies to the flagellum. It crossed my mind that there may be examples of human created irreducible complexity in the realms of engineering and computer software. Might the internal combustion engine be an example of this. Modern internal combustion engines are so precision engineered and so finely tuned that removal of any component or even slight alteration of any component will cause the engine to cease functioning. But is it the case with very early iterations of the internal combustion engine that they are more robust in that you could remove some components or alter t…

I am a college student doing a report on AC hot water heat recovery systems. Several AC professionals and alternative energy specialist tell me that in the 80's they recommended and installed many of these heat recovery units, but they no longer recommend them or install very many. They said that modern AC units make heat recovery less beneficial and can, in some cases, create problems with the AC systems. After looking into the question, I am having difficulty understanding what are the problems with the heat recovery systems as an add-on to modern AC units. Can some of you AC professionals out there please point out some of the specific problems as you unde…

Hello everybody! A less known attempt to D-T fusion, apart from laser compression, Z striction, and tokamaks, is magnetized target fusion, where a magnetic field confines a plasma, and increasing quickly the induction - typically by squeezing some conductive rings and the flux in them - increases the plasma's density and temperature to ignite fusion, and hopefully harvest more energy than was invested. After a naval lab explored this approach few decades ago, a company in British Columbia called General Fusion wants to try again, with a design that combines many nice features. Their description begins here and spans several clear pages: http://www.generalfu...m/…

Hi guys. Just starting to build a new coilgun, and I was wondering if we could ever use them as viable military weapons. If not, why? My guess would would be either reliability or finding a power source. Maybe they will be used, in a form such as this: http://www.thinkbotics.com/military.htm Any ideas, feel free to post.

There are many chemical companies in the world. The chemical company use many chemical reactions for making products. And the chemical reaction is established by electron movement. How about using these chemical reactions for making electric power? I think fertilizer plant or petrochemical plant, e.t.c., are good source for extracting electric energy.

Hello everyone, In a bicycle, if I want to go uphill, I put gear 1, change the chain and it is easier to pedal and I move less. In a car also you have to put gear 1 up a hill. Now how can I relate bicycle gears to car gears, what does easier to pedal mean in terms of car gears. Thanks

Dnt knw where to put this topic. Is it possible to make an auto mobile higher efficient engine using NITINOL? If possible then how? Are they patterned?

Hello everyone, I don't know if this is the right section to post this but I want to know what does the clutch in a manual car do. I have absolutely zero knowledge on car mechanics and would be greatful if someone can explain this to me simply. 1. Why do you need a clutch? In a car, you need a clutch because the engine spins all the time, but the car's wheels do not. In order for* a car to stop without killing the engine, the wheels need to be disconnected from the engine somehow. The clutch allows us to smoothly engage a spinning engine to a non-spinning transmission by controlling the slippage between them. I don't understand what they are saying in thi…

In another forum, I was engaged in a sizable conversation with an aerodynamics student specializing in propulsion about the feasibility of capturing NEOs with vast amounts of mineral wealth into the Earth-Moon System and then mining them for profit through import of precious metals to Earth's surface so as to establish large amounts of self-sustaining space infrastructure that would bring us substantially closer to being able to construct and maintain space colonies. It has come to my attention that some nickel-iron asteroids, such as 1986 DA, possess in excess of $6 trillion worth of Platinum embedded in, in this instance, dimensions of a 2km rock composed primaril…

I do not have any engineering background but I am in need to help for solving a engineer problem. Please review the following two examples. Let's assume the cylinder object has 0 weight. I would be much appreciated if you could show me the calculation. Thanks. What would be the load/weight/pressure of each support beams in both example?

I do not have any engineering background but I am in need to help for solving a engineer problem. Please review the following two examples. Let's assume the cylinder object has 0 weight. I would be much appreciated if you could show me the calculation. Thanks. What would be the load/weight/pressure of each support beam in both examples?