A Swiss aircraft project will advance composites technology for the aircraft industry by a factor of two to three, says Andre Borschberg, CEO of a company called Solar Impulse, which will launch its first test flight next year of the manned solar-powered airplane. I caught up with Borschberg on the floor of one of the close to 20 buildings at the sprawling K 2007 in Düsseldorf, Germany. “Its unusual, for example, to use high-modulus carbon fibers,” said Borshberg. Get this: the wing span on the final model will be 80 meters, the same as the Airbus A380, which weighs 560 metric tons. The craft Borshberg will help pilot around the globe in about 12 four years will weigh just two tons. It will be powered by the latest in electric motor technology. The solar panels will only provide enough electricity to light up a very large Christmas tree, requiring enormous effort to keep weight low. The planes will fly at night on battery power. Solvay Advanced Polymers of Alpharetta, GA is a development partner for the plane and is already well along on a shielded throttle housing.
Ford and Unifi, maker of Repreve, will gather and recycle 2 million plastic bottles at CES and other shows for conversion into the Repreve seat fabric used in the 2012 Focus EV.
Thanks to embedded electronics, medical devices are getting smaller and smarter than ever. Pacemakers and implantable defibrillators are now able to call physicians. MRIs, CT scanners, and ultrasound machines are gaining mobility. And the venerable Band-Aid may soon be able to detect illnesses ranging from fevers to heart arrhythmias. On February 21, join Design News senior editor Charles Murray for a wide-ranging discussion, "Embedded Angles for Medical Products," which will explore the latest developments in medical electronics. The discussion will examine advances in medical device technology and offer an inside look at the embedded electronics behind it.
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