Engineering - young people want to be informed

Young people in developed nations recognise the contribution that science and technology make to society and acknowledge their importance now and in the future, yet few view their study as leading to interesting careers. Some countries are taking action to raise interest in science, technologies, engineering and mathematics and increase the number of students studying these subjects. One of the barriers to young people pursuing engineering is their limited or distorted perception of it - they associate it only with building and fixing things. Young people rarely encounter engineers, unlike other professionals, engineering has little or no advocacy in the media and there are few opportunities to experience engineering. Many of the pupils surveyed at the start of Engineering the Future, a three year EPSRC-funded project, wrote “don’t know what engineering is” and/or “would like more information”. This paper reports on work with researchers, policy makers and practitioners in Scotland to develop a sustainable model of activities and interactions that develops pupils’ understanding of the nature of engineering, embeds experiences of engineering within the school classroom and curriculum and promotes engineering as a career. After learning about engineering through the activities the pupils’ perceptions had improved. Almost all considered it important that young people know about engineering, because it is an essential part of everyday life and, in the words of one pupil - “If we know more about it, our minds wouldn’t stay closed to it. We would maybe take it up.

Advanced interpretation of Venturi meter measurements in multiphase flow

The Venturi meter is commonly used in combination with other sensors for the measurement of gas fraction and water cut as part of a multiphase flow meter system for the measurement of oil, water and gas flowrates. The Venturi differential pressure signals are generally interpreted using empirical corrections to a momentum equation to give a solution for volumetric flowrate. In this project the use of advanced processing techniques and neural networks have been used to examine the potential improvement in measurement performance which may be obtained from a system incorporating a standard Venturi tube in combination with a gamma densitometer. The data is pre-processed before being applied to a neural network using simple statistical methods combined with some signal processing techniques. It has been found that this neural network solution performs extremely well when only predicting the gas and liquid phases. Poorer performance was registered when trying to predict all three phases, indicating the need for a water cut sensor

Testing analogue circuits with binary sequences : a feasibility study

This paper provides a feasibility study of testing analogue circuits with binary sequence

A digital system and method for testing analogue and mixed-signal circuits or systems

A method of optimising a digital test signal for testing an analogue or mixed-signal circuit comprising determining a measure, for example a figure of merit, that is indicative of differences between the output of a fault free and the output of a known faulty circuit in response to an applied digital input signal. The digital input signal is then varied and another figure of merit is calculated for the fault free and the known faulty circuit for the new input signal. This is repeated a number of times, the digital input signal being varied each time. An optimum test signal is selected based on the determined figures of merit

Using optimisation algorithms and CFD to improve the performance of ultrasonic flowmeters

This paper looks at using optimisation algorithms and CFD to improve the performance of ultrasonic flowmeter

Engineering the future: a sustainable concept?

Engineering the Future (EtF) is a 3 year EPSRC funded Project based in the Universities of Strathclyde and Glasgow which seeks to explore original ways of addressing the challenges posed by the predicted shortfall between the numbers entering university engineering courses and the growing demands for high quality graduate engineers

Engineering: young people want to be informed

Young people in developed nations recognise the contribution that science and technology make to society and acknowledge their importance now and in the future, yet few view their study as leading to interesting careers. Some countries are taking action to raise interest in science, technologies, engineering and mathematics and increase the number of students studying these subjects. One of the barriers to young people pursuing engineering is their limited or distorted perception of it - they associate it only with building and fixing things. Young people rarely encounter engineers, unlike other professionals, engineering has little or no advocacy in the media and there are few opportunities to experience engineering. Many of the pupils surveyed at the start of Engineering the Future, a three year EPSRC-funded project, wrote “don’t know what engineering is” and/or “would like more information”. This paper reports on work with researchers, policy makers and practitioners in Scotland to develop a sustainable model of activities and interactions that develops pupils’ understanding of the nature of engineering, embeds experiences of engineering within the school classroom and curriculum and promotes engineering as a career. After learning about engineering through the activities the pupils’ perceptions had improved. Almost all considered it important that young people know about engineering, because it is an essential part of everyday life and, in the words of one pupil - “If we know more about it, our minds wouldn’t stay closed to it. We would maybe take it up.

Embedding and sustaining engineering in the school curriculum

Paper on how engineering can be embedded in the school curriculum in a sustainable way

CREAM, a Cosmic Radiation Effects and Activation Monitor for space experiments Part 1; design and construction of experimental packages for flight on a NASA shuttle mission

Work done for Space Dept., RAE under MOD contractAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:9091.9F(AERE-R--12916) / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreSIGLEGBUnited Kingdo