• Question: In the past year,what has been the most important engineering problem to you?

    Asked by Sweeney:):) to Ashley, Catherine, John G, Laura, Ray on 11 Nov 2014. This question was also asked by 477enea42.
    • Photo: Laura Tobin

      Laura Tobin answered on 11 Nov 2014:

      Figuring out how to connect lots and lots of LED lights together and to control them with on my computer. It doesn’t sound hard but the LED lights that I use are high-powered LEDs and they use a lot of power and they get really hot, so they break easily. I have to put them on special cooling boards but then I can get the LED lights close together. If I can figure out how to do this safely, I’ll be able to make a proper prototype for a company that I might start.

    • Photo: John Ging

      John Ging answered on 11 Nov 2014:

      Trying to put overhead power lines underground.
      Lots of people want it to happen. Unfortunately, it isn’t technically possible.

    • Photo: Catherine Conaghan

      Catherine Conaghan answered on 11 Nov 2014:

      We model building’s using software on a computer to see what happens in building and how it affects the amount of electricity or energy that is used. One of the most important parts I am trying to improve (and one that is very difficult) is modelling how people act in a building. It’s easy to model the walls and ceiling and the weather outside because we have all that information – but it’s very hard to model in software if it get’s too warm in a classroom and the teacher asks you open the windows. We call it user behaviour, and it makes a big difference to how much electricity a building uses!

    • Photo: Ashley Culbert

      Ashley Culbert answered on 16 Nov 2014:

      I have been looking at a low cost way of understanding wind conditions on sites. We can easily predict the indicative wind speed at 50m high or higher but the issue of to understand the turbulence intensity which will affect turbine performance. This turbulence is caused by the topography of the landscape combined with the trees that grow on the sites

    • Photo: Ray Alcorn

      Ray Alcorn answered on 18 Nov 2014:

      hi sweeney

      good question.. and one that could be read and answered a number of ways.

      The last year has been about trying to catalyse the ocean energy industry.. and what I am finding out that it isnt just an engineering probelm. It needs finamce, planning, enviromental consent etc.. What I am trying to engineer is the best, most cost effective and fastest way to do this.

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