As the weather turns spring-like, winter's ice build-up on power lines, windshields, and airplane wings becomes a fading memory. Professor Victor Petrenko, of Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College (Dartmouth, NH), hopes to keep it that way. The physicist discovered that applying a small electric voltage across an ice-metal interface can break the bond between ice and metal surfaces. Technically, Petrenko says, ice is a semiconductor--included in a small class of substances in which protons, rather than electrons, carry an electrical current. When an electrically-charged surface comes into contact with any other surface, the charged surface induces an opposite charge in the facing surface and, because opposites attract, the two surfaces are drawn together. "This simple attraction accounts for most of ice adhesion," says Petrenko. Breaking the bond between ice and metal, he reasoned, should be as simple as neutralizing the surface charge with an equal amount of its opposite. He tested his theory using a sheet of ice, a globule of mercury--which stays liquid until temperatures dip below -40F--and a small battery with two wires attached. He touched one wire to the ice, the other to the mercury. The mercury drew itself up and away from the ice. Petrenko repeated the experiment using steel and other solid metals. In each case, the electricity caused the ice to lose adhesion. The effect could also be reversed, causing a surface to stick more firmly to the ice. "It may be possible to prevent or significantly reduce icing on the wings of an airplane using a battery no bigger than the one in your car," Petrenko theorizes. Surface-to-surface interactions are also important in manufacturing and machinery. Call: (603) 646-2117.
Gigabit and PoE are two networking technologies moving ahead in tandem as industrial users power remote Ethernet devices such as IP security cameras at 1,000 Mbps over existing CAT5 cable.
New disc magnet motors fit into the design trend of stepping up to closed loop performance while maintaining the cost advantage of stepper motor technology.
At the Design News webinar on June 27, learn all about aluminum extrusion: designing the right shape so it costs the least, is simplest to manufacture, and best fits the application's structural requirements.
A new battery design, which replaces lithium with abundant and low-cost elemental sulfur, is still in its nascent stages but shows real promise for giving batteries more energy potential.
From Dell / Intel® New Paradigms in Design Work Scott Hamilton, vertical market strategist for Dell Precision workstations, 5/2/2013 5
Early in my career, I worked as a draftsman and remember the days of drawing on vellum with numbered pencils and Mylar with plastic lead. This was a fun experience in the sense that I ...
I've been using workstations for more than 10 years and love finding ways to get more performance from my system. With demanding professional applications that require more power each ...
A lasting memory from my first job as an engineer in an auto assembly plant is standing on hard concrete at six in the morning, vending-machine coffee clutched in hand, listening to ...
For industrial control applications, or even a simple assembly line, that machine can go almost 24/7 without a break. But what happens when the task is a little more complex? That’s where the “smart” machine would come in. The smart machine is one that has some simple (or complex in some cases) processing capability to be able to adapt to changing conditions. Such machines are suited for a host of applications, including automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, computers and electronics, telecommunications, consumer goods, and so on. This radio show will show what’s possible with smart machines, and what tradeoffs need to be made to implement such a solution.
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