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Summary: This talk is about the need for accurate and precise measurements in an engineering environment.
Welcome to the Norwich Engineering Society, an active forum dedicated to fostering the exchange of ideas and experiences among all those passionate about engineering — past, present, and future.
For over a century, we have focused on the people behind groundbreaking innovations and their visionary concepts. Our mission is to enlighten, support, and develop our members in Norfolk and beyond. We achieve this through unique engagements, dynamic events, informative seminars, and insightful publications.
By championing the diverse disciplines within engineering, we ensure its continued evolution and relevance in an ever-changing world.
Speaking to a combined live/zoom audience, Paul Harris a leading consultant with Abbey Solutions, opened his talk by setting the context of his presentation; the ground work for 6G communications networks which were expected to be released by about 2030. In particular, he said he would concentrate on how and where artificial intelligence(AI)/machine learning(ML) could be used to in the setting up of standards in this system.
To illustrate the problems that Paul and his group had been tackling he told us about the work they had done on improving the characterisation of the radio channel between transmitter and receiver using AI/ML in the context of 5G. The nature of this channel is shown in the above diagram; some elements are static such as reflections of buildings but others are dynamic. For example, refracted rays from rain clouds. He also pointed out that no two base stations are identical. Paul indicated that his group had employed neural networks, to improve transmission beam choice. He stressed the importance of employing an appropriate set of training/testing data.
In the second half of his talk, Paul outlined where AI could be used to advantage in redesigning some of the sub-elements in both the transmitter and receiver blocks in the context of 6G. After describing how in principle. if then appropriate training data is available, it might just be possible to use AI to design a complete transmitter/receiver pairing for a given channel. However the problem lies with having the correct data and computing power to deal with the ensuing complexity. Paul thought that this was perhaps a step too far. His approach is to concentrate on looking at sub-blocks where significant gains can be made. He told us about some work that had been done on units within the receiver block where it is thought that the Channel Estimation, Equalisation and Symbol Demapping sub-units can be replaced by a single implementable block.
The session concluded with a lively Q&A; topics ranging from the importance of reliable training/testing data to the very fundamental one of why is a lot of effort being put into 6G when 5G is still very limited in its coverage and uptake.
The topic of the second of the 2024-2025 season of talks was entitled Space sustainability and safety and protection of the environment. The above graphic shows the plethora of space junk that is in orbit around the Earth. The single white trajectory is that of the International Space Station (ISS) and, as can be seen, there is a distinct possibility of the
ISS intercepting some of it. As our speaker, Julie Black, indicated this diagram very much over exaggerates the possibility but it is still worryingly large.
Julie, currently Director of Space Sustainability and safety and protection for the environment for the UK government, opened her talk by saying that in the early days of space exploration and utilisation little thought was given to the idea of the threats posed by life expired objects in orbit. In particular the fact that all satellites in the general sense will eventually return to the Earth and either burn up on re-entry or impact the its surface. In either case, especially with some of the early devices, life harmful materials could be released. An example of this is that some of the early test vehicles had primary energy sources that were nuclear powered.
As Julie explained, ideally, all these non-functioning objects ought to be either repurposed or removed from orbit and all new orbiting objects must be designed to have a clean extinction once their functionality ceased. To be able to achieve this all the objects have to be identified and their orbital trajectories determined. In terms of tracking she indicated that the UK contributed significantly to the global systems in place to do this and that she was confident that all man made objects over 0.01m in size were known about. She then went on to tell us that, despite many clever ideas some of which described, not much progress had been made in the area of repurposing or object removal.
She concluded her talk by staging an interesting interactive audience debate around many of the topics raised. The discussion ranged from the ethical considerations involved in some of the possible methods to the economic constraints that made some of the suggested processes virtually impossible to initiate.
About 30 Members and guests visited the very interesting, privately run, Wind Energy Museum near Potter Heigham. We must thank Debra, the owner for an excellently organised and informative event. The museum houses of a range of working machines from the very early devices used to drain the Broads to devices that were constructed in the late fifties to act as bore hole pumps in the drier places in the world such as the Australian bush and the near desserts of the USA. The wind was sufficiently strong on our visit day for Debra to get all the devices working.
One of the effects of the recent pandemic is that Debra has had very little help in the way of volunteers to run the museum; particularly in terms of maintenance and general upkeep. The museum, therefore, is only open to pre-arranged group visits such as the NES but, sadly, not the general public. One very interesting part of the museum she was able to open up and get working for us was the workshop associated with the maintenance of the site. This housed all sorts of machines dating from the 1920s; all of which were driven from a common belt drive that, in its early days, was powered by a source. This workshop was set up by the then museum owner in the early 1950s. One interesting wind power source belonging to the museum collection is the working Wind pump at nearby Thurne Staithe that some Members visited after lunch at the nearby Thurne Lion pub.
During our visit, Debra explained her vision to expand the scope of the museum to include modern developments in wind power. This being particularly important as the coast of East Anglia is the location of several of the UKs offshore wind farms. She is currently involved in discussion with several
local companies working in this area.
Our current Vice-President, Dorian Hindmarsh, opened our 2024 - 2025 season with a well attended talk at the Hethersett Hub; 26 Members in person and 16 online via Zoom.
His topic was electricity producing floating wind farms.
Dorian started his talk by pointing out that there were limitations to the current offshore fixed position turbine wind farms in that the deeper the water the more sophisticated the positioning engineering had to be; with, of course, consequential increasing costs. As an aside he pointed out that the UK was extremely lucky to have a significant amount of relatively shallow water on its eastern seaboard; for many countries that have high rocky cliffs, e.g. Norway, this is not the case.
However, it is common knowledge that rocky cliffs tend to be associated with higher winds; hence higher energy flows if the winds can be harnessed. The rest of Dorians talk was taken up with the possibility that turbines mounted on floating platforms might be a cost effective solution. As soon as floating turbines are looked at it is clear that the position of a turbine is not well known in that whatever anchor mechanisms are used the machine moves around because of tide and wave influences. Also it reacts more significantly to the aerodynamic forces produced by the turbine blades. One potential downside of this is that the individual turbines have to be much dispersed. Clearly anchor mechanisms are important as is the problem of getting the produced electrical energy onshore. In the latter case the resulting cables have to be flexible enough to cope with the turbine platform movements; they just cant be buried as is the case with shallow water farms.
Clearly monitoring and controlling how the energy is produced from a multiple turbine farm is challenging even for fixed position turbines. It becomes an order of magnitude more difficult for floating devices. Dorian concluded his talk by demonstrating some software that goes a long way to coping with these challenges. A lively Q&A followed!