• Question: Tell me about the most challenging engineering project that you have been involved with during past year.

    Asked by DMCaidan11 to Hilly, Lee, Liz, Tadhg, Yasmin on 14 Jun 2015. This question was also asked by lauren, 116enec32, megannn, JoeHip, 763enec47, 999enec47, till.bob, Baby Blue, jezzi, Elvis Presley 2003, davina_xo.
    • Photo: Tadhg O'Donovan

      Tadhg O'Donovan answered on 14 Jun 2015:

      Hi DMCaidan11,

      I have been working on a device to improve the survival of organs for transplantation. Normally the organs are cooled when they are “harvested” and then warmed before transplantation – but the success rates are low . The challenge is to develop a device that keep warm and oxygenated blood flowing through the organ during transportation. The biggest challenges were not technical; they were to do with working in a multi-disciplinary group of experts (a transplant surgeon, a phisiologist, business development executive). I needed to learn a lot about different disciplines and what they needed/wanted. It was also a thoroughly enjoyable and rewarding experience and an indication of how engineers do not work in isolation.

    • Photo: Yasmin Ali

      Yasmin Ali answered on 15 Jun 2015:

      The project I am working on right now is a big challenge. We have discovered natural gas trapped about 5 km under the rock structures under the seabed of the North Sea, and some of the things we are working out are:

      1) how to drill down to get this out?
      2) what type of platform structure to build to receive the gas (see the picture of the gas platform on my profile as an example!)?
      3) what type of pipelines to build to take the gas 50 km back to land, to be cleaned up and sent to power stations to make electricity?
      4) how do we make sure all of this is safe?

      There are lots of different parts to the project, being worked out by different types of engineers. A big challenge is bringing everyone’s work together!

    • Photo: Lee Margetts

      Lee Margetts answered on 15 Jun 2015:

      Hi @DMCaidan11 – I’ve started a project this year that aims to improve the efficiency of wind farms (and reduce noise) using computer modelling on supercomputers. The wind turbine blades are 150 metres in diameter. That is 5 times longer than the largest dinosaur ever found. A double decker bus is only 8-9 metres long. The wind turbine blades bend if it is too windy and vibrate producing noise. The more noise, the less wind energy is being converted to electricity. There are hundreds of these in a wind farm and they all interact with each other. So, its quite challenging!

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