No one said it would be easy to conduct scientific experiments robotically on Mars. And in fact the Phoenix Mars Lander continues to run into nagging problems. What’s very interesting is how engineers working with scientists on Earth are developing workarounds to solve the problems. It’s engineering at its best, and it reminds me a little of the steps taken on the ill-fated Apollo 13, although the Mars mission is not life-or-death.
In the latest problem, soil dumped on a screen is clumping, and not passing through to analysis equipment, even after vibration. Engineers decided to employ a motorized rasp on the scoop that was actually designed to dig out granite-like ice below the polar surface. Tests show that the scoop, when tilted, does drop fine particles of soil while it is being vibrated by the rasp. Previously, the scoop was just dumped outside down, dumping the soil.
Look for tests in a few days that will chemically analyze the soil.
A new process for laser-welding large-scale, steel-aluminum foam sandwich structures for lightweighting ships, which eliminates intermetallic phase, has been demonstrated.
A major advance in repairing composite structures combining robots and lasers bodes well for commercial aircraft such as the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and Airbus A350XWB, which contain composites in large proportions of their structures.
Against a backdrop of mounting product complexity and a need to keep a lid on development costs, companies are recognizing a need to make simulation a more integral part of the design process. In response, vendors in the CAD world are building out CAE functionality as part of their CAD suites while simulation vendors are building tighter integrations to leading CAD tools. Keith Meintjes, Ph.D., Practice Manager, Simulation and Analysis at CIMdata, Inc., joins Design News CAD Editor Beth Stackpole in this radio program to explore the new face of integrated CAD and CAE, how companies are benefitting from this tighter partnership between platforms, and how integrating CAE earlier in the development cycle pays off in optimized product designs.
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