NRC Handelsblad
The advisory committee for the future of the Afsluitdijk presented its final report last week. The iconic dike between IJsselmeer and Waddenzee will not be made higher, but more solid, as the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad reports.
Professor Han Vrijling (Civil Engineering and Geosciences) was ‘a little amazed’ by the chosen option. Rijkswaterstaat had made a shortlist of four renovation proposals submitted by various consultancies and consortia in response to a tender four years ago. There were designs with concrete storm shields, with nature reserves on either sides of the dike, energy plants running on osmotic power, and a storage lake for hydropower. Vrijling and his team were asked to make feasibility studies for the shortlisted designs. When he saw them, Vrijling declared: “This is the end of an era. We’re so rich that we cannot simply renovate a dike without attaching a fancy ecological or sustainable solution to it.” Still, the group wasn’t asked for comments, just for an assessment of the feasibility of each of the plans. They all got green light from Vrijling. But come the day of the final report and yet another design emerged as the winner – a design that was in fact not on the shortlist. Continued…
Posted in Articles, Delta.
Tagged with Afsluitdijk, Han Vrijling, Marcel Stive.
By admin
– juni 9, 2011
Game design is all about balance. (Photo: Tomas van Dijk)
Casper Harteveld, one of the pioneers of serious gaming, has recently published a book on the holy trinity of game design: reality, meaning and play.
It’s one of those books that can easily be summarised yet endlessly elaborated upon. In short, Casper Harteveld (faculty of Technology, Policy and Management) argues that each serious game (that is, a game used for non-entertainment purposes) has aspects of reality, meaning and play. The trick – and perhaps also the art – is to balance these three aspects. A game can be very realistic and utterly educational, but if playing it is no fun, who will bother going through with it? The purpose of triadic game design then is to achieve balance, even harmony, between the constituents. Continued…
Posted in Articles, Delta.
Tagged with Casper Harteveld, game design, serious gaming.
By admin
– juni 9, 2011
Illustration: Piet van Rosmalen
Nine TU Delft students have won a Dutch aviation award for their idea of having airliners fly like geese: in formation. They calculated a 50 percent fuel reduction.
The inspiration came from geese, Hugo Dijkers and Joren de Wit, members of the winning student team, admit. These birds fly great distances, always in the typical V-shaped formation, which reduces their energy needs by as much as 60 to 70 percent. So why not learn from nature and have large airplanes fly in formation as well? Continued…
Posted in Articles, Delta.
Tagged with air travel, formation, fuel efficiency.
By admin
– juni 9, 2011
HTC-ship model during manoeuvring test. (Photo: Marin)
Increases in both ship sizes and traffic density in harbours necessitate better manoeuvrability of modern ocean giants. PhD researcher Serge Toxopeus improved manoeuvring simulations considerably, thus paving the way for less unwieldy designs.
Simulations of a ship performing special manoeuvres like steering alternatively full port and starboard for about a minute, or steering full rudder and making a 360-degree turn, can go painfully wrong. In examples quoted by PhD researcher, Serge Toxopeus, the simulation underestimated deviations from the zigzag course by almost 30 percent, while overestimating the diameter of the narrowest turn by 46 percent. Continued…
Posted in Articles, Delta.
Tagged with cfd, ship design, simulation.
By admin
– mei 26, 2011
‘The emergence of the electric car is leading to a suite of smartphone add-ons,’ writes New Scientist (14 May 2011). IDE researcher, Dr Sacha Silvester, agrees and adds: “Apps are crucial to compensate for the limited range.”
The New Scientist article describes how the app for the full-electric Nissan Leaf recalculates your route and gives feedback on your driving style depending on the life left in the batteries and the mileage left to travel. And that’s not all. Drawing on a host of original ideas, apps will also help you plan your trip and navigate you through the hazards of running out of power by a host of original ideas, most of which couldn’t exist without mobile information technology. Continued…
Posted in Articles, Delta.
Tagged with batteries, driving-range, e-car, electric cars.
By admin
– mei 26, 2011
Remote-controlled 75-tonnes clamshell for excavations down to 1,000 metres undersea. (Photo: Seatools)
As the economy picks up and metal prices continue to rise, plans and projects to extract precious ores from the deep sea are regaining strength. The Dutch offshore and shipping industries are in good starting position.
There are treasures waiting at the bottom of the deep sea. Gold, silver, copper, and manganese are all to be found in exceptionally high concentrations in the sulphide deposits created by hydrothermal vents at about 1,400 to 3,700 meters below the ocean’s surface.
Subsea mining was first proposed in J.L. Mero’s 1960 publication, ‘Mineral Resources of the Sea’, which noted the sheer limitless supply of cobalt, nickel and other materials in deposits of manganese nodules at depths of 5,000 metres. But after some initial expeditions on the seafloor, global metal prices began falling due to the weak economy of the 1980s, and hence the prospect of nodule mining was abandoned. But recent increases in demand and prices of metals have put deep-sea mining back on the agenda. This time however it’s targeted at the volcanic hydrothermal vents, or black smokers, where hot mineral-rich water springs from the ocean floor, creating towering deposits compiled from a zoo of metals and sulphur. Continued…
Posted in Articles, Delta.
Tagged with minerals, mining, offshore.
By admin
– mei 19, 2011
The red ball is about to be ejected towards Earth, pulling 30 kilometres of high-strength fibre behind it. (Photo: ESA)
Space ropes and ribbons may have many applications, ranging from futuristic space-lifts to the more realistic destroyers of space debris.
After ten years of relative quiet, interest in space tethers is picking up, Michiel Kruiff (MSc), of Estec in Noordwijk, observes. He graduated on the subject of space tethers from TU Delft’s faculty of Aerospace Engineering. Together with Delta-Utec’s Erik van der Heide, Kruijff proposed a space tether mission to the European Space Agency (ESA), and then got lucky when the first Ariane V rocket exploded (4 June 1996). ESA decided to fire another Ariane without a payload, as a means of restoring confidence in the launcher, which provided Kruijff and colleagues with an opportunity for a free ride into space. Continued…
Posted in Articles, Delta.
Tagged with space debris, spaceflight, tethers.
By admin
– mei 13, 2011
Students prepare the model presented at the opening of the design studio. (Photo: Florian Heinzelmann)
Students designing a floating, energy-producing home for the Solar Decathlon competition have opened their design studio in the Science Centre’s bare basement.
In the United States, basements and garages have proven to be fertile breeding grounds for creativity. Violins, fireworks, music and the first Apple computers have emerged from such humble beginnings. Fittingly, the Science Centre basement now houses the Solar Decathlon team’s design studio. Still very much a bare space, the studio was opened on 28 April by the dean of the Architecture faculty, Karin Laglas, and project director, Professor Patrick Teuffel. Continued…
Posted in Articles, Delta.
Tagged with architecture, competition, solar decathlon, sustainability.
By admin
– mei 13, 2011
Skate-bike overturns existing ideas on bicycle stability - Photo: Sam Rentmeester
Contrary to common belief the dynamic equilibrium of a bicycle does not critically depend on the gyro-effect of its wheels, nor on the trailing of its front wheel, so Delft researchers explain in Science.
Run next to your bike and let it go. Most bikes will continue straight ahead. Now give it a sideward smack. Such abuse is ruefully tolerated as the bike will steer itself back on the right track. Although the stability of bicycles has been studied for almost 150 years, a bit of a mystery still remains. Last week, TU Delft researchers, Dr Arend Schwab and Jordi Kooijman (Msc), together with American colleagues, added another sequel to the bicycle studies in Science. Continued…
Posted in Articles, Delta.
Tagged with Arend Schwab, bicycle, stability.
By admin
– april 21, 2011
Existing versions of intelligent cars could halve traffic congestion levels, the experts say, and prevent 25 percent of all accidents. So what’s holding them back?
“The car just stopped itself!” Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson cries out during a test drive of a luxury car fitted with radar-guided cruise control, which means it dynamically follows the car in front. “It speeds up, we speed up. It slows down, we slow down,” Clarkson explains, but adds that it’s eerily scary not to touch a brake pedal when coming to a roundabout at the end of the motorway. Still, the car performs flawlessly. “All right, I can go now. No need for me anymore,” Clarkson concluded. Continued…
Posted in Articles, Delta.
Tagged with cruise control, smart cars, traffic management.
By admin
– april 21, 2011
