VOL. 6 NO. 02 MARCH 2020 LEADING LIGHTS€¦ · MGB0993-CEA For more information about PosiStruts visit: mitek.com.au OR download the FREE PosiStrut APP! VIC +61 3 8795 8888 NSW +61

T E N O F A U S T R A L I A ’ S E M E R G I N G W O M E N I N E N G I N E E R I N G 2 0 2 0

LEADINGLIGHTS

V O L . 6 N O . 0 2 M A R C H 2 0 2 0

1. ACCOUNTING FOR ENGINEERS

2. CEMENT & CONCRETE TECHNOLOGY AND PRACTICE

3. COLD FORMED STEEL D+C

4. COMPOSITE STEEL AND CONCRETE STRUCTURAL D+C

5. CONCRETE PIPE AND PIPELINE DESIGN D+C

6. CONCRETE POOLS AND TANKS D+C

7. CONTRACT LAW

8. CRACKING IN CONCRETE STRUCTURES

9. DETAILING DESIGN

10. EARTHQUAKE DESIGN

11. FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS

12. FORENSIC ANALYSIS

13. GLASS & ALUMINIUM CURTAIN WALL FAÇADE D+C

14. HYDRAULICS AND STORMWATER DRAINAGE DESIGN

15. INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS DESIGN

16. INDUSTRIAL CONCRETE FLOORS & PAVEMENTS DESIGN

17. MARKETING FOR ENGINEERS

18. MASONRY DESIGN

19. METALLURGY

20. ON-SITEDETENTIONSYSTEMS(HYDRAULICS)

21. PILES AND PILE GROUP DESIGN

22. PRECAST AND TILT UP D+C

23. PRESTRESSED CONCRETE D+C

24. PROCESSED PRESSURE PIPING D+C

25. REINFORCED AUTOCLAVED AERATED CONCRETE D+C

26. REINFORCEDCONCRETEDESIGN–MODULE1



29. REPAIR & PROTECTION OF CONCRETE, STEEL & MASONRY

30. RESIDENTIAL SLABS AND FOOTINGS D+C

31. RETAINING WALLS DESIGN

32. RISK MANAGEMENT

33. SHALLOW FOUNDATIONS DESIGN

34. SLOPE STABILITY DESIGN

35. STRUCTURAL STEEL DESIGN

36. TIMBER DESIGN

37. VALUE ENGINEERING

38. WIND DESIGN FOR LOW RISE STRUCTURES

39. WIND DESIGN FOR HIGH RISE STRUCTURES

40. NEW COURSE COMING IN 2020

DESIGN & CONSTRUCTION WORKSHOPSET

IA

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ENGINEERS AUSTRALIA IS COMMITTED TO SUSTAINABILITY

reate

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29 LEADING LIGHTSTo coincide with International Women’s Day and

create

ENGINEERS AUSTRALIA NATIONAL OFFICE

[email protected]

National President and Board Chair:

Board Director:

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ENVIRONMENTDrawing on thousands of years of knowledge on how

AEROSPACEHas this company made a 1950s experimental rocket into a reality?

PEOPLEOne engineering student, one 1930s biplane, one

PROJECTThe Aboriginal aquaculture system Budj Bim now has

SUSTAINABILITYOn 4 March, the world will celebrate the engineers who are solving the problems of

06 PRESIDENT’S AND CEO’S MESSAGE

07 YOUR SAY

13 NEXT GEN VOICES

14 WHAT’S ONLINE?

55 EVENTS

56 TECH WATCH

58 KEYSTONE

NEWS

08 ARTIFICIAL MUSCLESSimply adding a sheath can

10 ARMAN SIAHVASHI

13 ELECTRIC BOATSGenerating energy for the grid

EVERYISSUE

Check out the createwebsite — your best resource for the latest engineering news and information from Australia and the world.

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ON 4 MARCH, THE GLOBAL ENGINEERING COMMUNITY WILL MARK THE FIRST EVER WORLD DAY OF ENGINEERING FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT.

Welcoming the World Day of Engineering for Sustainable Development

To be held annually from now on, the World Day of Engineering for Sustainable Development is a valuable opportunity to celebrate our proud profession.

Engineers are vital in creating sustainable, secure, healthy, just and prosperous communities in Australia and around the world.

Top of mind right now is the role engineers, the broader engineering

including those working in Local and State Government, public works, the utilities and the defence forces.

Engineers Australia is participating

Peak Bodies Forum and is supporting

Leadership Round Table on climate change, and members can expect

coming months.The World Day of Engineering

for Sustainable Development has been adopted by the United Nations, which set 17 sustainable development goals to achieve by 2030. To mark the occasion, we are showcasing each of the 17 goals with one feature every day on our social and digital channels in the weeks leading up to the day. You can also see a feature on the day in these pages.

The sustainable development goals address global challenges

FROM THE NATIONAL PRESIDENT & THE CEO

Dr Bronwyn Evans Hon FIEAust CPEng EngExec FTSE

NER APEC Engineer IntPE(Aus),

[email protected]

Chris Champion FIEAust CPEng EngExec NER

FIPWEA (Emeritus) GAICD, National President

[email protected]

“Engineers have a crucial role to play in driving a lower carbon future, as well as mitigating and adapting to the effects of our changing climate.”

Partner Housing Australasia’s register, which allows engineers to volunteer their help — see engineersmakeithappen.org.au — and we stand ready to offer further assistance.

Engineers also have a crucial role to play in driving a lower carbon future, as well as mitigating and adapting to the effects of our changing climate with solutions for our communities. We recently held a

in health and wellbeing, water and sanitation, food, energy, transport, sustainability, climate, and gender equality.

March also sees the celebration of International Women’s Day. Engineers Australia will again mark the occasion with a series of events to celebrate and support women in engineering.

In Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth we will hold lunches featuring men and women leading the charge for a more diverse engineering profession, as well as

keynote speaker Nadine Champion, a World Cup-winning kickboxer, author and entrepreneur.

You can register to attend at engineersaustraliaiwd.com.au.

This edition of create features a spotlight on 10 women who are emerging as engineering leaders and

of diversity, what is needed to promote it — including changes to systems, structures, leadership and culture — and how they would like to see the World Day of Engineering for Sustainable Development celebrated.

We’re looking forward to March — a month to celebrate all engineers, male and female — and hope you share our pride in being part of this great profession. Happy International Women’s Day and Happy World Day of Engineering for Sustainable Development!

ENGINEERSAUSTRALIA.ORG.AU

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welcomes feedback from the community

The engineer’s road less travelledI read with great interest the article “Standing strong” (create, October 2019) regarding compulsory registration for all engineers, which chimed with my recent experiences.

On 2 October 2019, I began work on my third engineering start-up company in the past 11 years.

It has turned out fortunate for me that the profession as a whole is moving towards mandatory registration, as is the case for doctors and lawyers and other professions.

Mandatory registration will elevate engineering as a whole, ensure standards are consistently maintained or exceeded, and, if something does go wrong, it will ensure that we learn from this and put into effect corrective action plans to make sure the same or similar situations do not re-emerge.

This is already at the core of all quality processes and procedures, Engineers Australia’s Code of Standards and Ethics, and Stage 2 competencies for Chartered

registration. Bringing unregistered engineers into the Engineers Australia’s fold will put all practicing

With this foundation in mind, I sought to hire currently unregistered practicing engineers who recognised the potential future

engineering profession as a whole, as well as experienced registered

engineers to mentor and guide them on a one-to-one basis to Chartered registration.

Much like environmental considerations for the future wellbeing of the planet, this was not on any grounds of economic calculation; even if this arrangement were a matter of economic indifference or disadvantage in the short term, I thought it still ought to take place for the good of the profession and this new start-up that we were creating for the long term.

New start-ups embracing these concepts early on make themselves very attractive to multinationals wanting to invest.

Western Australia, in 2008 with six people and zero business, but we had innovative ideas and a great deal of corporate experience between us.

Within three years we grew the business to 16 people and $8 million per annum, at which point blue chip companies that wanted to invest in our business were approaching us. Then in 2011, one of these companies wanted to acquire the business and made an offer of 10 times our earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation.

This was a great reward for the

ourselves to scalable leading edge technology and a professional engineering approach to implementing solutions that could be maintained for up to 25 years.

The road less travelled by engineers is one I can highly recommend and, for unregistered engineers, could provide a path to mentoring and Chartered registration — as we are doing at our latest start-up from day one!

D MARCO CIANNI, FIEACTO, Raptohna Ltd.

“Bringing unregistered engineers into the fold will

put all practicing engineers on a level playing fi eld.”

DEBATE AND DISCUSSION BY CREATE’S READERS

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06-07_EA51_Mar20_CEO+LETTERS.indd 7 19/2/20 5:44 pm

ABOVE RIGHT: Dr Javad Foroughi of the University of Wollongong.

OVER THE past 15 years, engineers around the world have developed artifi cial muscles from a range of materials — some high-tech and expensive and some as simple as yarn or fi shing line.

Now, researchers from the University of Wollongong (UOW) have started encasing them in sheaths — a simple change that gives the technology 40 times more fl ex than a human muscle.

“Previously, we were applying energy to the entire muscle, but only the outer part of the fi bre was responsible for actuation,” says Senior Professor Geoff rey Spinks, who worked on the technology at UOW’s Intelligent Polymer Research Institute.

“By placing a sheath on the muscle, we can focus only that energy on the outer part of the fi bre and convert this input energy more quickly and effi ciently.”

This allows the technology to be used for a wide variety of applications, from responsive garments to artifi cial hearts.

“Or, for example, drug delivery applications,” suggests Senior Research Fellow Dr Javad Foroughi, who led the research in Australia.

“You have some encapsulated drugs inside the body, and we need some time to open it to release the drug ... we can implant it with this sort of muscle, [and it] has the ability to control or program this device.”

The same approach can be adopted to control an artifi cial heart that can be used during surgery, Foroughi tells create.

By placing a sheath around the muscles making up the artifi cial heart, the device is kept separate from the bloodstream.

“We can control the contraction — the same behaviour as the heart muscle,” he says.

“The sleeve goes around the heart, and the primary result [was] we met some of the characteristics of the heart.”

Beyond their medical uses, the artifi cial muscles could also be adapted for smart clothing.

“For example, we make a garment out of this material,” Foroughi says. “If you had to do some exercise, it has the ability to adjust — open the porosity of your garment. It means more air can

come inside the body, or the heat can go out of your body.”

This works because the muscles can respond to changes in temperature, moisture, or light.

“You go somewhere that’s cold; the porosity of your garment is changed again — it is very tight and closed-in and you protect your body from the cold weather,” Foroughi says. “Imagine smart clothes to just protect your body.”

Foroughi estimates that the technology could be commercially available in fi ve years’ time.

JONATHAN BRADLEY

ARTIFICIAL MUSCLES HAVE BEEN RECENTLY GETTING A LOT MORE EFFECTIVE THANKS TO A SMALL BUT SIGNIFICANT ADDITION.

“BY PLACING A SHEATH ON THE MUSCLEWE CAN FOCUS ONLY THAT ENERGY ON THE OUTER PART OF THE FIBRE.”

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08-09_EA51_Mar20_News_ArtificialMuscles.indd 8 18/2/20 3:23 pm

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WHETHER ADDRESSING PROBLEMS IN THE LIQUEFIED NATURAL GAS INDUSTRY OR HELPING NASA EXPLORE OTHER WORLDS, ARMAN SIAHVASHI IS PROVING HIS INNOVATIVE WORTH.

DR ARMAN Siahvashi, one of create’s most innovative engineers for 2019, has found a new application for his apparatus that measures the freezing temperature of liquefied natural gas (LNG) — and it is on Saturn’s largest moon.

NASA announced in June that it plans to launch a mission to the icy moon Titan in 2026. In August, a representative from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory visited Siahvashi at the University of Western Australia, interested in collaborating with him on research into the dissolution geology of Titan, which was relevant to the mission.

Siahvashi says the idea is to use his apparatus to model the weathering processes occurring on the surface of Titan.

“The temperature on Titan is very low; it’s basically around minus 180 degrees Celsius near the poles,” he says. “Researchers at NASA are trying to understand the dissolution geology or surface structure.”

Siahvashi says the moon has lakes and oceans of liquid hydrocarbons.

“Basically, they have LNG on the surface of Titan,” he says. “This apparatus … helps them to do the solubility measurements of organic materials that they’re looking for.”

NASA’s Dragonfly mission is expected to arrive on Titan in 2034. The space agency plans to fly a drone-like vehicle with eight rotors to dozens of locations on the moon.

Siahvashi says his apparatus can be used to simulate the temperature and pressure on Titan, and then run solubility tests.

“For example, you [might] want to know how fast the organic materials like benzene dissolve in the liquid methane or ethane lakes,” he says.

Since being named among the nation’s most innovative engineers, Siahvashi has been further testing his apparatus, which was designed to visually measure the freezing temperatures of hydrocarbons at cryogenic temperatures.

The apparatus displays exceptional accuracy, control and stability in temperatures down to minus 190 degrees Celsius and pressures up to 300 atmospheres.

Siahvashi, who was recently awarded a Fulbright scholarship, continues to work with Chevron and ExxonMobil to develop the apparatus for use in LNG plants.

There, it can be used to reduce the risk of solids forming in a processing plant’s high-pressure cryogenic heat exchangers.

The problem is known as freeze-out, and it can lead to blockages, expensive plant shutdowns and significant environmental damage.

“Wherever LNG is produced, they’re going to need these sorts of measurements and data,” Siahvashi says. “[Resources companies] have realised the massive impact of such unscheduled plant shutdowns.”

MICHELLE WHEELER

PICTURED: Saturn in the sky of this artist’s depiction of Titan. INSET: Arman Siahvashi (left) and his PhD supervisor Eric May.

temperatures

Are you an innovative engineer or know someone who is?Nominations have been extended for create’s Most Innovative Engineers listing. Submit your entry at: bit.ly/InnovativeEng

“WHEREVER LNG IS PRODUCED, THEY’RE GOING TO NEED THESE SORTS

OF MEASUREMENTS AND DATA.”

Measuring0 1 0


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engaus.org/Member-Rewards

Member Rewards

... and more

Unlock the full potential

of your membership

12-13_EA51_Mar20_Solar&NextGen.indd 12 18/2/20 3:25 pm

NEXT GEN VOICES

WHO: CLAUDIA VALLEWHAT: BACHELOR OF

OF BUSINESSWHERE: RMIT UNIVERSITY

What is your ideal job?

Who is one engineer you most admire?

How can engineering

Are you active in any social or community causes?

Read the full interview at bit.ly/ClaudiaValle

Energy from electric boats

FLOATING PHOTOVOLTAIC CELLS COULD BECOME A POWER SOURCE FOR REMOTE ISLANDS, THANKS TO TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPED BY AUSTRALIAN ENGINEERS.

Networks of homes have been used as virtual power plants, and vehicle-to-grid technology has turned electric cars into a source of power.

For small or remote islands, however, the best form of distributed energy generation might come floating offshore.

Engineers at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) have demonstrated — at least in principle — that island communities could reduce their use of fossil fuels by using electric boats as a power source.

The technology could also be used to provide remote communities with immediate power after natural disasters, rather than having to wait weeks while grid systems are repaired.

Electric boats have many advantages as a means of power generation; they use photovoltaic cells, so they only produce

electricity, rather than drawing it from the grid. And because they can move, they are not tethered to one place, meaning they can move away from overcast areas in pursuit of more sunny conditions.

The technology, which has only been tested in a laboratory so far, uses a real-time load support system that coordinates demand for electricity with the supply available from the connected boats, and permits owners to decide whether they want to sell energy at the determined price.

JONATHAN BRADLEY

THEY CAN MOVE AWAY FROM OVERCAST AREAS IN PURSUIT OF MORE SUNNY CONDITIONS.

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CONVERSATIONSTARTERS

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HERE’S WHAT YOU’VE BEEN LIKING, SHARING AND COMMENTING ON:

Get more of the latest engineering news: createdigital.org.au

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fully automated international

shipping container terminal

How one company is

recycling plastic waste into

railway sleepers

AI created an image of the “average”

engineer – but it’s not the

whole picture

FOLLOW US ONLINE AND JOIN THE CONVERSATION

EngineersAustralia @create_digital_ linkedin.com/company/engineers-australia/

engaustralia

TRENDING TOPICSSOME OF OUR MOST-READ STORIES

ONLINE ARE:

and expertise in the short, medium and long term.

HOW ENGINEERS CAN HELP WITH

BUSHFIRE RECOVERY

Engineers Australia is calling on members for any feedback on priority areas for recovery, and how we might prioritise the resources and capabilities

of our members. Please provide this feedback via

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READ ABOUT THE LATEST TRENDS, INNOVATIONS AND PEOPLE SHAPING THE ENGINEERING PROFESSION AT: createdigital.org.au

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F I R EWORDS BY MATILDA BOWRA

C O N T R O LTHE CATASTROPHIC BUSHFIRES OF THE PAST FEW MONTHS HAVE SPARKED INTEREST IN ABORIGINAL FIRE MANAGEMENT AND THE ROLE IT MIGHT PLAY IN MANAGING FIRES IN AUSTRALIA.

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“IT’S ABOUT WORKING TOGETHER TO HAVE DEEPER UNDERSTANDING OF INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE AND PRACTICE.”

OPPOSITE: The National Indigenous Fire Workshop on the NSW South Coast in 2018. BELOW: Firesticks Alliance CEO Oliver Costello (right) with Yuin man and

practitioner Noel Webster on Country at the workshop.

I N HIS award-winning book The Greatest Estate on Earth, Bill Gammage, a historian

and Adjunct Professor in the Humanities Research Centre at the Australian National University, documented how, before colonisation, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people managed the landscape in a sophisticated, scientifi c and systematic way using fi re to prevent damaging bushfi res, foster healthy Country and ensure year-round food supply.

Luritja man Chris Croker, a mining engineer and Managing Director at Impact Investment Partners, also sees parallels between science, engineering and cultural burning.

Croker’s family comes from the region around Watarrka (Kings Canyon) west of Alice Springs. He has fi rsthand experience of cultural burning.

“When I was a kid, I participated in traditional fi re management practices,” Croker tells create.

“Where I come from, it’s very dry, and we talk about a generation cycle where, each year or two in the cooler months, you burn a small fi re in a patchwork pattern — which might be tens of hectares — to help germinate various species of plants, promote vegetation favoured by certain animals, and get rid of the dry vegetation. The next year, you move not to the adjacent spot, but the next spot over, and that area will be burnt off . So, over roughly 20 years — one generation — all the country is managed through fi re.”

COOL BURNSCroker’s example illustrates the way that when and where Country is burnt is based on a deep knowledge of local ecosystems. It also highlights how cultural burning involves small, controlled, low-temperature or “cool” fires that

are staggered to create a mosaic pattern in the landscape.

Cultural burns are often referred to as cool burns because they are undertaken when the weather is cool and there is moisture in the ground and air that limits the spread of fi res.

Cool fi res are gentle on the landscape and burn low to the ground to clear away any build-up of dry vegetation and fallen trees. This prevents hot, uncontrolled fi res in the dry months, or lessens the impact if they do occur.

The “cultural” description is a broad term that references how each Aboriginal group across Australia has its own fi re-management practices that refl ect its cultural practices and values. These may include using fi re to promote the abundance of certain plants or animals that are important to a particular group.

“I understand traditional knowledge of fire practices may be viewed with scepticism,” says Croker. “But there are

underlying engineering and scientific approaches.”

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people view everything in the living world — plants, animals, people — as interconnected. Croker says this view is mirrored in systems engineering.

“Knowledge has been built up not over one or two iterations, but by the local community over thousands of years,” he says.

“It is a scientifi c method because you have a hypothesis of what is going to change, you see it in action, and then refi ne it. That’s exactly why the traditional approach should be viewed as a sound, empirical knowledge bank we can trust.”

TRADITIONAL APPROACHESWhile Croker’s family has been able to carry on traditional fire practices mostly uninterrupted,

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many Traditional Owners across Australia are prevented from undertaking cultural burns due to colonisation.

The Firesticks Alliance is a national organisation working to change that.

The Alliance empowers local Aboriginal communities to reinstate cultural burning and educates land managers and government agencies through training and mentoring programs, practical workshops, and collaborations with scientists investigating the ecological effects of cultural burning.

Oliver Costello, a Bundjalung man from northern NSW, is the

Regenerating lifeSenior Researcher and Program Manager with Firesticks Dr Peta-Marie Standley says that cultural burning practitioners strengthen ecosystems by being able to read and respond to the cues.

“A boxwood system I studied in Cape York, for example, was very degraded with only a couple of different species of grass,” Standley explains.

“The old people with their knowledge were targeting the different timing of curing of those grasses within that system. They would burn those grasses when they were ready, and this would cure off the grasses beside smaller,

create space for new tussocks, the spread of perennials and the setting of seed. Over time, we’ve seen the growth from two dominant understory species of grass to six, and the return of two different species of kangaroo grass that exist in the Cape.”

“OVER 20 YEARS — ONE GENERATION — ALL THE COUNTRY IS MANAGED THROUGH FIRE.”

CEO of Firesticks. He says people often struggle to understand the complexity and nuances associated with cultural burning, and much of the alliance’s work is focused on brokering appropriate engagement with Traditional Owners around cultural fire management.

“There are lots of opportunities to collaborate, but we want to have long-term, two-way reciprocal relationships that are aligned and respectful,” says Costello.

“It’s really important First Nations people have authority and hold knowledge about cultural burning. Even if it hasn’t been sustained in practice, it’s still their knowledge because it’s

based on their connection to the land. There are important cultural protocols for managing land and we really want local custodians, landholders and government agencies to work together to understand those roles and relationships.”

THE WAY FORWARDSenior Researcher and Program Manager with Firesticks Dr Peta-Marie Standley is a Cultural Fire Ecologist with a PhD in environment science.

Standley has studied cultural burning for more than 20 years and says more and more studies show cultural burning has a positive effect on biodiversity.

More than 200 years of colonisation means that a return to Bill Gammage’s portrait of Indigenous Australia is

impossible, but Standley believes collaboration can help address our current fire challenges.

“I think Western and Indigenous knowledge systems are very different and you can’t simply mash them together, but both are part of the puzzle we are dealing with now in a contemporary, highly modified landscape,” she says.

“The solution is not about cherry-picking bits of Indigenous knowledge we think we can understand readily. I think it’s about working together to have deeper understanding of Indigenous knowledge and practice and having a co-generative dialogue, where Indigenous people are empowered to lead in that space and we are working together on what seems an intractable problem around fire management.”

ABOVE: Costello at the Dorrobee Grasslands in Northern NSW. ABOVE LEFT: Dr Peta-Marie Standley (centre) with Kuku Thaypan people,

their country in Cape York Peninsula.IM

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“IT HITS CLOSE TO HOME WHEN IT’S SOMEBODY THAT YOU KNOW AND LOVE THAT CAN BE INJURED, AND YOU’VE FOUND A PROBLEM.”

engineers. It hits close to home when it’s somebody that you know and love that can be injured, and you’ve found a problem.”

AFRICAN ADVENTUREMeehan, who was then a mechanical engineering student at The University of Western Australia, was on the path to a unique vintage air rally called Crete2Cape.

With her father, she tackled the five-week journey from the Greek island of Crete to Cape Town, South Africa, in a Tiger Moth, a 1930s British biplane originally used by the Royal Air Force.

The trip followed in the footsteps of the pioneering flights of the 1920s: flying across Egypt to the Ethiopian highlands, the plains of Kenya and then the home of African aviation, Nairobi.

The journey took them across the Serengeti, to the spice islands of Zanzibar, and through Zambia to Victoria Falls. They then flew to Botswana before finishing the trip in South Africa.

On the path to Cape Town, Meehan and her father had to first dismantle the aircraft in Botswana, where Meehan is from, label everything and package it up.

PILOT AND MECHANICAL ENGINEER SARAH

MEEHAN SWAPPED UNIVERSITY TEXTBOOKS

FOR AN UNFORGETTABLE JOURNEY ACROSS AFRICA

IN A 1930S AEROPLANE.

Sarah Meehan (right, in front

Tiger Moth biplane from Greece to southern Africa.

WORDS BY MICHELLE WHEELER

WHILE TINKERINGon her de Havilland DH82-A Tiger Moth

in the UK, mechanical engineer Sarah Meehan noticed something was dangerously wrong with the steering.

“I’d just been fiddling around with something … I don’t even recall what it was,” she says.

Meehan moved the joystick and realised that the part of the wing known as the aileron was moving in the wrong direction.

On closer inspection, she realised that the left and right steering control cables had accidently been switched. No one else had noticed the mistake, despite a dual check of the aircraft.

Meehan’s eye for detail saved a pilot who had been due to take the plane for a test flight earlier that day. The departure had been delayed at the last minute because of problems with the radio.

The pilot? Meehan’s father Brett Warren. “If he’d gone out and taken

off, tried to turn left and turned right — it’s pretty serious,” she says.

“It shows you how important all of those checks are for the

INCREDIBLESTUDENT’S

JOURNEY

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Old planes need constant maintenance, and there were a lot of hiccups along the way.

Meehan says she was often tinkering on the front, top and sides of the aircraft.

At one point, a crucial bolt failed.

“The main bolt that holds the engine down to the aircraft cracked,” Meehan says. “And for older aircraft you don’t just pick up store-bought anything.”

Meehan and her father had to take a bolt from their collection of spares and use washers to make it work on the aircraft.

They then shipped the plane to the UK, where they reassembled it with the help of a trusted aircraft maintenance expert.

The father and daughter then spent two weeks leisurely flying the aircraft across Europe to the rally’s starting point in Crete, where they joined the other air rally teams.

They left for Africa on 12 November 2016.

For Meehan, one of the big-ticket items was a breathtaking landing near Mount Kilimanjaro. Another was flying over Egypt and seeing lesser-known pyramids dotting the landscape.

“Flying down the Nile was spectacular,” she says. “It’s quite amazing because it’s obviously desert and then there’s just this brilliant band of green on either side of the Nile. The contrast between desert and the river is just beautiful.”

The most surprising place for Meehan was South Sudan.

“There was nothing first world; it was so, so, so remote,” she says. “Normally when you fly you see a

road or a tin roof but there was nothing, there wasn’t even a bucket.”

Every now and then, Meehan and her father would see a rural Sudanese village.

“In this day and age… it seems really bizarre that there are still places that are so disconnected,” Meehan says.

With vintage aircraft, things never go exactly to plan.

ABOVE: Planes in the Crete2Cape rally over the Nubian desert (top) and the Bangweulu Wetlands, Zambia. ABOVE RIGHT: Old planes need constant maintenance.

“IT’S QUITE AMAZING BECAUSE IT’S OBVIOUSLY DESERT AND THEN THERE’S JUST THIS BRILLIANT BAND OF GREEN ON EITHER SIDE OF THE NILE.”

Their radios also plagued them throughout the trip.

“There are two buttons in the cockpit,” Meehan says. “The first is the intercom system, which allows the two pilots to communicate, and these broadcasts are only heard in the cockpit. Then there is the push-to-talk button, which broadcasts on your selected frequency.”

Instead, the aircraft was broadcasting both transmissions to everyone on the frequency.

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P E O P L E


“There was huge amounts of static,” Meehan says. “It’s stressful because you’re flying over places you don’t necessarily know, and you don’t know the airspace, you don’t know the area.”

Dealing with the radios was particularly hard in the UK, where there was little open space and people living everywhere.

“If something’s wrong and you need to make an emergency landing and you don’t know where you are, it’s very stressful when your radios aren’t working,” Meehan says.

Meehan and her father eventually solved the problem with a braided mesh loom, which sat over spark plug lead cables and stopped the static between the engine and the radio line.

There were also issues with the group’s clearance checks as they flew through Africa. Meehan says they didn’t get clearances for Zambia until the day before they left for the country and didn’t get clearances for Egypt until the day of their flight.

They didn’t get clearances at all for Ethiopia, leaving them stuck in an airport for two-and-a-half days.

Meehan — who did work experience in an aircraft hangar — says studying engineering has added a whole new dimension to her pilot’s understanding of the plane.

While working in the aircraft hangar, she did tasks such as checking the fuselage, ordering parts, calibrating specialist tools and selecting aircraft hardware.

“We did lots of strength and materials testing; we did corrosion tests,” Meehan says. “I used a cable tension meter to ensure that the aileron cables were within tolerance. It’s an interesting thing to go through underneath all the covers of the aircraft.”

With space in the cockpit at a premium during the air

BELOW: Meehan (right),

and co-pilot Brett Warren.

Hands-on experienceSarah Meehan graduated from the University of Western Australia last year and felt the call of adventure. Wanting to live somewhere new, she moved to Utah in the US.

Meehan is now studying electrical engineering at Salt Lake Community College and hopes to graduate in 2021.

“In this day and age, I think it’s a good choice,” she says. “Things are not just mechanical systems

towards the electrical side. I’m really excited and there’s lots of opportunities for me to have both under my belt.”

Meehan says she was drawn to the college because of the hands-on, industry-sponsored nature of the course.

The highly practical approach is perfect for someone who taught herself mechanical engineering,

second largest continent.

than sitting down and just punching numbers in a calculator,” Meehan says.

rally, Meehan and her father shared tools and spare parts with two other teams with the same aircraft.

Space was so limited that Meehan flew across Africa sitting on a raft instead of a cushion.

Every day, even after four hours in an open cockpit, they had to clean down the aircraft, getting rid of as much oil as possible so they could see any leaks.

Meehan and her father managed to repair and maintain the Tiger Moth all the way to Botswana.

But then, a week out from the end of the trip, in the Botswanan town of Maun, a storm came through. A small twister picked up the Tiger Moth and threw it into a helicopter.

The plane was too badly damaged to continue the rally, but Meehan and her father were able to fly the last legs of the journey in another aircraft.

They landed in Cape Town five-and-a-half weeks after leaving Crete.

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AN EXPERIMENTAL ROCKET THAT NEVER WORKED AS HOPED COULD FINALLY FULFIL ITS POTENTIAL THANKS TO THE EFFORTS OF A MELBOURNE START-UP.

WHEN THE aerospike rocket engine was developed in the 1950s,

it seemed so full of promise. Created by Rocketdyne, the

Californian company that built the engines for NASA’s space shuttle, the aerospike aimed to overcome the inherent design inefficiencies of conventional bell-shaped rocket nozzles by maintaining aerodynamic efficiency across a range of altitudes.

More than five decades later, however, the much-hyped aerospike is yet to make an orbital flight.

That may soon change, as advances in technology continue to fuel the US$838 billion global aerospace and defence industries.

One young entrepreneur with his eye on the sky is Graham Bell, a PhD student from Monash University’s school of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and co-founder of Melbourne-based aerospace engineering company NextAero.

Bell and the company’s three co-founders recently designed,

and Power to produce the world’s first 3D-printed jet engine.

Today, it manufactures components for clients across the globe through its partnership with Monash University.

Amaero CEO Barrie Finnin says the timeline for Project X was so short because he wanted to film the test firing to show at the Paris Airshow in June 2017.

“We have been working on a number of aerospace and defence projects, but our customers don’t let us publish things,” he says.

“The aerospike rocket project was basically a way for us to show the capability, but without disclosing any client-confidential information in the process.”

Finnin’s first impression of the Project X volunteer team was that they were “young, enthusiastic and a bit green”.

“They were dreaming big, and it was quite exciting watching them realise that they could get it to work,” he says. “Graham took a leadership role within the team; he helped with project management and identified potential sites for the test firing.”

Conventional rocket engines have a fixed size and bell-shaped form and so maximum efficiency and

BELOW: NextAero co-founder Graham Bell.

WORDS BY SUSAN MULDOWNEY

built and tested an aerospike engine, known as Project X.

And, thanks to the resources of additive manufacturing company Amaero, it took them fewer than four months to do it.

The seed of Bell’s future start-up business was planted during his aerospace engineering undergraduate studies at RMIT University when he joined a club to build a rocket engine on behalf of the Space Research Institute of Australia.

After graduation, Bell worked for a short time at CSIRO before beginning his PhD at Monash. At the beginning of 2017, he was among a small group of students to be approached by Amaero to work on the aerospike development.

“As graduate students, we took it on as a hobby project, and I knew that there was an opportunity to do something really fantastic,” says Bell.

“Amaero basically said, ‘We’ll give you a bit of cash and you can use any of our metal 3D printers’.”

Amaero brought strong credentials to the project. Two years earlier, it had collaborated with Monash University’s Centre for Additive Manufacturing and the French aerospace manufacturer Safran Electrical

A E R O S P I K EM A K I N G T H E

W O R K

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“THEY WERE DREAMING BIG, AND IT WAS QUITE EXCITING WATCHING THEM REALISING

THAT THEY COULD GET IT TO WORK.”

thrust can only be achieved at one level. As they increase in altitude, the flame spreads, the expanding gases are constricted and thrust is reduced.

If you turn this bell shape inside out and upside down, you get a form that closely resembles an aerospike. This design off ers effi cient thrust over a wide range of altitudes, as the engine’s exhaust is capable of expanding from sea level all the way up to space.

The aerospike’s complex design makes it almost impossible to manufacture using traditional means. For example, a conventional bell-shaped rocket is cooled via an intricate series of

channels milled into the surface area, which allow for the flow of fuel. In an aerospike design, the shape is flipped inside out, so the geometry is internal.

“What we were able to do with additive printing was print all of that really complex geometry straight into the design in one go, so we didn’t have to do multiple manufacturing steps,” Bell explains.

NEXT UPAfter Project X, Bell and his co-founders formed NextAero to tap into the burgeoning global satellite industry.

Bell and his team were interested in the market for small-scale satellites, most of which have the mass of a standard washing machine.

“The market was opening up, but companies basically didn’t have any way to get into orbit,” says Bell. “There were

dozens of companies around the world rapidly building entire rockets and we wanted to make high-performance engines that perhaps they didn’t have time to research and develop.”

Bell and one of his co-founders spent eight weeks meeting with aerospace companies overseas to determine if there was a market for their business idea. They came home with a new sense of confidence and a new business plan, which they successfully pitched to a number of investors.

“We’ve managed to raise enough to build a commercial prototype of an aerospike for the small-scale satellite-launching market,” says Bell. “We finished the design and now we’re building and testing.

“With a one-off like Project X, it was all or nothing. With a commercial prototype like this one, you need to get every step right.”

OPPOSITE: The plume from the 3D-printed aerospike engine (pictured below).

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WORDS BY SUSAN MULDOWNEY, RACHAEL BROWN AND JONATHAN BRADLEY

IMA

GES

: DA

MIE

N P

LEM

ING THE WORLD CELEBRATES INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY ON 8 MARCH.

THIS YEAR, CREATE IS MARKING THE OCCASION BY RECOGNISING 10 YOUNG WOMEN LEADERS IN AUSTRALIAN ENGINEERING.

LIGHTS

FELICITY FUREY

TRANG PHAM

ZHENYA PAVLINOVA

AMANDA QUAN

TAYLAH GRIFFIN

DR FRANCESCA MACLEAN

RENEE NOBLE

DR JILLIAN KENNY

CANDICE LAM

ERIN HUGHES

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I N F L U E N T I A L W O M E N E N G I N E E R S


IF YOU’VE driven on a new road in Sydney, Brisbane or Melbourne, chances are Felicity

Furey has had some role in making that journey possible.

As a civil engineer, Furey has been involved in delivering multi-million-dollar transport infrastructure projects for organisations including Arup, AECOM and Brisbane City Council. And while she’s built many things, it’s a tiny dirt road in Brisbane that she names on her list of career highlights.

Gap Creek Road was Brisbane’s last dirt road thanks to Furey, who helped transform it into something fit for the modern era. And taking her mum for a drive down the newly developed road, pointing out every bend and culvert along the way, was the perfect reminder for why she loves her job.

“You create these tangible things, things you can point to and say, ‘I helped build that’,” she tells create.

But Furey is also laying the groundwork for future generations of engineering leaders to make their mark.

While working full time as an engineer, she co-founded the social enterprises Power of Engineering and Machinam, which strive to connect school-aged kids — especially girls — with the joys and relevance of engineering and maths.

The goal is to get young minds thinking differently about what they can do with engineering skills, which Furey hopes will lead to a more diverse profession and better outcomes for communities.

As she puts it: “Engineers design so much of the world around us, but if the engineering profession is 90 per cent men, it means women’s input is missing from 90 per cent of the built world.”

One of Furey’s goals is to contribute to a new style of leadership that views inclusion as fundamental to engineering.

To this end, she plans to start a leadership academy, with a goal of having 10,000 leaders come through within the first 10 years.

Furey lists Else Shepherd and Federal Minister for Industry, Science and Technology Karen Andrews as two women engineers who have inspired her.

Shepherd, one of the first women to work as an engineer in Queensland, is “just so herself”, Furey says, and proof that you don’t have to fit the mould to be successful.

Andrews personifies the varied and interesting career an engineer can have, Furey says.

“She started as a mechanical engineer, but she’s run an HR company and now she’s a Minister,” she says. “I just love that engineering can take you into all of these different roles.”

“YOU CREATE THESE TANGIBLE THINGS, THINGS YOU CAN POINT TO AND SAY, ‘I HELPED BUILD THAT’.”

Felicity FureyFounder, Power of Engineering; Director, Industry Partnerships, Swinburne University

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WHEN TRANG Pham graduated from University of

Queensland 2014, she walked straight into a full-time job — but not as an engineer. With a Bachelor of Engineering (Civil) and a Bachelor of Business Management (Marketing), she took up a role as Assistant Store Manager at design and stationery retailer kikki.K, where she had worked part-time while studying.

Pham says it was one of the best moves she could have made.

“When I graduated, the options were mostly fly-in fly-out jobs or very design-heavy roles, and that wasn’t why I wanted to be an engineer,” says Pham, who is now a civil engineer in Aurecon’s built environment unit in Brisbane.

“Jumping into management straight out of university, I learnt time management, delegation, HR, communication. It set me up to really focus on the human experience.”

The human experience remains a strong focus for Pham in her work at Aurecon and in her role as Chair of Women in Engineering Queensland. She believes a broader representation of society within engineering can only strengthen the industry and improve design outcomes.

“It was really tough going through university and through industry and not seeing a lot of people like me,” says Pham. “You

can’t be what you can’t see, so if I can represent not only women, but also people of colour in engineering, and speak up for change, why wouldn’t I?”

Pham says a desire to create positive change inspired her engineering career path.

“I am the daughter of immigrants — refugees of the Vietnam War — and they wanted me to be a doctor, lawyer or engineer,” says Trang. “Engineering seemed the most tangible. You can create change for a lot more people.”

Pham welcomes being able to focus her engineering talents on sustainable development.

“For me, sustainable development is essentially about inclusive design,” she says.

“If we really want to cut carbon emission and promote the use of public transport, why aren’t our facilities designed for an inclusive community? Why are sidewalks only a 1.5 m standard width, which barely fits a pram or someone with a wheelchair?”

Pham combined her degree with marketing because of her interest in psychology.

“In engineering, we design for communities but, at university, there wasn’t much of a focus on the human aspect,” she says. “Marketing helped me to bring more of that understanding into my engineering degree.”

“IF I CAN REPRESENT NOT ONLY WOMEN, BUT ALSO PEOPLE OF COLOUR

IN ENGINEERING, AND SPEAK UP FOR CHANGE, WHY WOULDN’T I?”

Trang PhamCivil Engineer, Aurecon

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engineersaustralia.IWD.com.au#EachforEqual

School of

Engineering

Premium Partner

Silver Partner - BrisbaneSilver Partner - Melbourne Silver Partner - Perth

Gold Partner - Melbourne & Sydney

Investing indiversity

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ENGINEERING IS a problem-solving profession that is shaping the future of

the world — and Zhenya Pavlinova says it’s time more people knew about it.

“Engineers are generally not good at promoting some of the remarkable work that they do,” she says. “You don’t hear a surgeon say, ‘Oh, I just save people’s lives’, but engineers seem to play down their achievements. You’d think building a bridge or making an aeroplane take off is a mundane task that anyone could do.”

A Senior Structural Engineer with GHD in Brisbane and Chair of Women in Engineering’s national committee, Pavlinova aims to promote a better understanding of the industry in order to encourage more students — and women in particular — to pursue engineering as a career.

Pavlinova joined the Mackay regional divisional committee of Engineers Australia’s Women in Engineering in 2013 to help promote the profession. She became Chair of its Queensland division in 2016 before taking on the role of Deputy Chair of the national committee last year.

“Our overall aim is to attract, retain, support and celebrate women in engineering,” she says. “We know there are not enough female engineers coming out of

university or taking up engineering studies in the fi rst place. That’s why promoting engineering to students is so important.”

At GHD, Pavlinova recently completed a project for a new press footing for an aluminium facility based in Queensland.

“It was a small team of only three and did the design from start to fi nish,” she explains.

“I really enjoy opportunities to work on engineering, procurement, construction and management projects.

“I became a structural engineer because of the satisfaction of designing something that can help people and then watching it being built from the ground up.”

To mark the World Engineering Day for Sustainable Development, Pavlinova wants to see engineers highlighting the steps they have taken towards achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

“As a structural engineer, I think it would be nice to tick off the Sustainable Cities and Communities goal,” she says.

“I’d like to see some engineers, or even some companies, highlighting some of their achievements and the steps they have taken towards achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. There is a lot of innovative work being done in sustainable development and it should be recognised and celebrated.”

Pavlinova is committed to developing new ways of communicating the role engineers play in building the future.

“There is such depth and breadth to engineering,” says Pavlinova. “It’s not just about wearing hard hats or sitting at a desk and crunching numbers. It’s about creativity. If you can imagine it, you can do it.”

Zhenya PavlinovaSenior Structural Engineer, GHD; Deputy Chair, Women in Engineering

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AMANDA QUAN spent much of her undergraduate years

aiming to make engineering a more inclusive industry — for those who work in it and for the community it serves.

Now that she has graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Western Australia (UWA), she’s ready to bring her advocacy efforts to the workplace.

Quan is a former member of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Volunteer Committee of Engineers Without Borders (EWB) and is an adviser to Women in Oil and Gas (WIOG), a group committed to diversity and inclusion in the oil and gas industry.

“We advocate for gender diversity in the oil and gas industry, but this aim extends to all industries,” says Quan. “It involves talking about how you can be a platform to enable women into STEM courses, and how we can professionally develop in our industry: how we can become prepared by listening to other women who have gone through situations in the workplace.”

Before joining WIOG, Quan had been a committee member of UWA Young Engineers since 2016. She joined EWB in 2015.

“I understood that Engineers Without Borders was looking at sustainability and how to bridge

the gap between rural and metro Australians,” she says.

“My role was to help advocate for the projects it was developing in rural Australia.”

Quan recently accepted a role as a fire protection engineer at Aurecon in Melbourne.

“I’m really excited about the move, and I hope to eventually specialise in fire protection engineering,” she says. “This job at Aurecon has opened my mind to what is out there for someone with an engineering degree.”

Quan also aspires to one day start her own not-for-profit organisation.

“I feel that if I have all this education and benefit in my life, I should give back to the community,” she says.

Quan believes engineers can mark the first World Engineering Day for Sustainable Development by changing one thing in their everyday lives to reduce waste.

“I would love to use this day to recognise milestones in the past where we worked together to solve sustainable development problems,” she says. “I strongly believe that we always learn from the past, and by retelling these stories, we can be proud and learn how to integrate it into our future solutions.”

“I FEEL THAT IF I HAVE ALL THIS EDUCATION AND BENEFIT IN MY LIFE, I SHOULD GIVE BACK TO THE COMMUNITY.”

Amanda QuanAdviser, Women in Oil and Gas; Committee Member, Engineers Without Borders

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“IT’S NOT ONLY DIVERSE THINKING AND DIVERSE CULTURES, BUT ANY

SORT OF DIVERSITY JUST LEADS TO POSITIVE IMPACT.”

“I STRONGLY believe that the best way to achieve reconciliation in Australia

is through education,” says Taylah Griffin, Graduate Systems Engineer at Boeing Defence Australia (BDA).

Griffin is a Gangalu woman from Gordonvale in northern Queensland, and as a member of the team implementing BDA’s Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP), is a passionate advocate of expanding opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in STEM.

She points out that fewer than one per cent of tertiary STEM students are Indigenous — which is a big problem considering the importance STEM will play in the workforce of the future.

“If we’re not engaging young Indigenous Australians to take up STEM learning now, then the gap that exists between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians is going to continue to grow,” she says.

Her current role involves work on the Boeing 737 E-7A Airborne Early Warning and Control Wedgetail, a surveillance, communications and battlefield management platform.

But Griffin says that, growing up in a rural part of Queensland, she was not often exposed to the

aerospace technology with which she works each day. Part of her approach to encouraging others to pursue STEM careers is to share her own experience.

She recently undertook a trip for just this reason, which included a visit to her own hometown.

“I went up there to four rural high schools, including my own,” she says.

“I shared a little bit about my story and how achievable it is to live rurally but to still be able to go to university and to study engineering.”

She describes the trip as a highlight of her career so far.

“We engaged with over 600 students and over a third of those identified as Indigenous,” she says. “We were able to visit the school and get the kids participating in STEM workshops.”

Griffin says she definitely sees a connection between diversity in an organisation and business success.

“It’s not only diverse thinking and diverse cultures, but any sort of diversity just leads to positive impact,” she says.

“I think that’s something that we’re really pushing for on our RAP this year — to come up with a community of Indigenous employees. We see that, when there’s a community and people feel like they fit in and that they’re welcomed into the business, that’s when people really want to come to work and to do well.”

Graduate Systems Engineer, Boeing

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IF YOU want to increase diversity in the engineering industry, stop serving cupcakes

at International Women’s Day events and start addressing the structural barriers that limit female participation in STEM.

That’s the advice of Dr Francesca Maclean, Senior Consultant at Arup and co-founder of Fifty50, a student-led organisation promoting gender equity in STEM at her alma mater, the Australian National University (ANU).

“People tend to say it’s a pipeline issue, but it’s a societal issue,” says Maclean. “We have systematically designed these barriers into our systems and now they are unconsciously maintained as the status quo.”

As a leading diversity and inclusion advocate, Maclean is creating a world where access and opportunity are equal for all.

She was awarded ACT Young Woman of the Year in 2017 and ANU Postgraduate Student of the Year in 2018. In 2019, she completed the Victorian Government’s Joan Kirner Young Women Leaders Program and founded The Fortem Project to deliver resources to help organisations better understand gender equity in STEM.

Fifty50, which Maclean co-founded in 2015, aims to develop an equitable STEM pipeline from university to industry and academia.

Maclean explains Fifty50 is not just for women.

“If we can get men exposed to inclusive, supportive environments at university through our programs, that’s a bonus for everyone,” she says. “It means that they don’t then adapt to that toxic, masculine, competition culture.”

Maclean was first exposed to this culture when she moved to Canberra in 2009 to study engineering and science at ANU.

While completing her PhD, she reflected on the systemic inequality she had experienced as an undergraduate.

Male peers would rarely make eye contact with her in tutorials or dismissed her achievements as favouritism because she was one of so few women in the department. She recalls a time when a male lecturer told her to “go and make me a sandwich”.

As a senior consultant at Arup, Maclean has worked with clients in the Federal Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development and the water sector.

She believes that engineers can mark World Engineering Day for Sustainable Development with a focus on social sustainability as well as environmental sustainability.

“After all, they are intimately linked,” she says. “As engineers, diversity and inclusion need to be at the centre of the world that we’re shaping and the cities that we’re creating.”

“IF WE CAN GET MEN EXPOSED TO INCLUSIVE,

SUPPORTIVE ENVIRONMENTS AT UNIVERSITY THROUGH OUR

PROGRAMS, THAT’S A BONUS FOR EVERYONE.”


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The search is under way forAustralia’s Most Innovative Engineers

A U S T R A L I A’ S M O S TI N N O V A T I V E E N G I N E E R S

BE RECOGNISED FOR YOUR OUT S TANDING ENGINEERING ACHIE VEMENT S

DEADLINE EXTENDED!ENTRIES CLOSE 19 MARCH

Following an overwhelmingly positive response,

recognise the country’s most innovative engineers.

Nominations close 19 March 2020, so hurry and send in your entry. Do you work with or know any innovative engineers? Feel free to nominate them too.

Entry is free and the online nomination form is simple. Go to: bit.ly/innovativeeng2020

HOW TO ENTER

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“THEY DIDN’T teach girls to code in Coffs Harbour,” says Renee

Noble of her north-coast New South Wales hometown.

“Actually, they didn’t really teach anyone to code in Coffs Harbour when I was at school.”

It was during her undergraduate studies — a Bachelor of Engineering (Chemical and Biomolecular) and a Bachelor of Science at the University of Sydney — that the 28-year-old discovered computer programming.

Now, she is ensuring that other girls can learn to code, too.

An interest in chemistry, physics, maths and biomedicine led Noble to choose a career in STEM. She had a childhood fascination with bionic eyes, but computer science steered her interest toward coding.

“I picked it up really quickly, even compared to the guys in the room who had been doing it since they were eight,” she says.

Today, Noble is a software engineer at Grok Learning, an online platform for learning and teaching computer programming in the classroom.

She is also Executive Director of Girls’ Programming Network (GPN), an extra-curricular program that advances knowledge and promotes gender equality for girls interested in information technology, programming and software development.

“When I first joined GPN, I was still nervous about being the only girl in my classes and I didn’t really feel confident, compared to the boys in my classes who were very loud and arrogant at times,” says Noble, who joined GPN as a tutor in 2013.

“The culture was like, ‘Oh you have to be into Star Wars or all the nerdy things and, if you’re not, you don’t fi t in’. It was quite isolating.”

Noble’s career highlights include developing new coding experiences for the Grok Learning platform. She also helped expand GPN from 160 to 2000 enrollees a year and led its national expansion four years ago.

Noble says engineers should mark the World Engineering Day for Sustainable Development by getting people excited about becoming engineers.

“Of the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals, the ones that stand out to me are those that focus on gender equality, quality education, reducing inequality, and justice,” she says.

She also believes diversity leads to better solutions that suit more people.

“Don’t blame the pipeline,” Noble says. “Train women rather than just waiting for them to filter through. Look harder for women and, if no women apply, maybe consider if your ad is what’s sending them away.”

Women want to solve problems, she says.

“And we are really good at it.”

“DON’T BLAME THE PIPELINE. TRAIN WOMEN RATHER THAN JUST WAITING FOR THEM TO FILTER THROUGH.”

Renee NobleExecutive Director,

Girls Programming Network

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Dr Jillian KennyIndustry engagement,

University of Melbourne; Co-founder, Power of Engineering

“EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE EDUCATION NEEDS TO BECOME MUCH MORE PROMINENT IN ENGINEERING.”

CIVIL ENGINEER, founder of two organisations, a Superstar of STEM and

one of the Australian Financial Review’s Top 100 Most Influential Women… you would think there were few goals left to conquer, but for Dr Jillian Kenny, even the sky is no limit – literally.

“[A career highlight] has got to be returning to my hometown in a pair of Marchetti S211 fighter jets,” she tells create.

She describes that experience as a “how did I get here moment”, but after discussing her achievements so far and plans for the future, it’s easy to see what drives this engineer to accomplish great things.

Not only that, she’s using her experience to help spark a love of STEM in others and change the way engineers are taught in the process.

Years from now, when future engineers, scientists, mathematicians and innovators are asked what first sparked their interest in a STEM career, chances are that quite a few will say time spent in programs like Power of Engineering and Machinam.

Both of these were co-founded by Kenny to inspire the next generation of engineers and maths enthusiasts. Part of her motivation for starting these organisations stemmed from her own experiences as a young girl growing up in a rural town.

“I had no idea what engineering was, so it never crossed my mind as an option,” she says.

Her aim with these programs is to bust some myths about STEM careers and broaden the pool of talent feeding into the profession.

“Young people self-select out of professions like engineering for a

lot of reasons,” she says. “Whether they think ‘I’m creative, I must not be a maths person’, or ‘I want to help people through my work but I don’t see that engineering is a pathway to do that’.”

Hence the fi ghter jet — it’s part of a documentary she is fi lming with engineer Steven Gale, pilot Victoria Lowen and comedian Michael Veitch called Any Fool Can Fly.

“It’s very much along that thread of shifting perceptions about what’s possible for ourselves,” she says.

Both Power of Engineering and Machinam also work to make science, engineering and maths engaging for young audiences. As Kenny’s website explains, the aim is to answer that age-old question: why do I have to learn this?

Kenny is part of the team that delivers the University of Melbourne’s Innovation Practice Program, which is designed to develop a different kind of engineer.

“That’s very much around thinking about how we educate future engineers and the sorts of skills they need to be successful beyond just the technical skills,” she says. “I think social and emotional intelligence education needs to become much more prominent in engineering.”

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Kelly Lance CPEngNaval Engineer

that engineers are

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“GIVEN THE TV we were exposed to in the ’80s, I don’t know

how more people my age didn’t choose a career in engineering,” says Candice Lam, Technology Resource Management Partner at BHP and die-hard fan of classic TV characters Inspector Gadget, MacGyver and Maxwell Smart.

“Those shows made us feel like anything was possible and any problem could be solved with a bit of clever thinking.”

It is that optimistic approach to problem-solving that Lam aims to impart to the female high school students she mentors.

She is an industry mentor with the Queensland Resources Council and the Chairperson for the University of Queensland Women in Engineering Alumni Ambassador Council. Lam is also a mentor for the Industry Mentoring Network in STEM, which includes both male and female students.

Inspector Gadget, MacGyver and Maxwell Smart each took a novel approach to solving problems. Another commonality is that they were all male.

However, Lam says she didn’t encounter gender-based obstacles until she entered the workforce.

“Perhaps its due to the relative scarcity of women [in engineering], but many guys seem to have this perception that ‘you’re threatening my job, therefore I won’t treat you as an equal’,” says Lam.

She says her role at BHP broadly entails “ensuring that we’ve got the right people on the right projects”.

As a mentor to school students, she draws on stories from her own career to inspire them to discover ways to “change the world”.

“I tend to talk about engineering as finding solutions to problems, because it’s a very simple concept for kids to grasp,” says Lam. “You can see their eyes light up when they say, ‘I hate seeing plastics being washed up on our beaches, I could engineer something to solve that’. I can’t wait to see what they come up with.”

Lam sees her role as a mentor as a way of giving back to the profession.

“If an inclusive industry is the change that we want to see, we need to help make it happen,” she says.

Lam says she was “really happy” when 4 March was announced as World Engineering Day for Sustainable Development.

“I also believe there needs to be some big corporate and government support behind it to drive the sustainable development goals,” she says. “It needs to be heavily R&D driven. It’s great to have the sustainable development goals from the UN, but we need to somehow sift through them and perhaps focus on one at a time.”

“IF AN INCLUSIVE INDUSTRY IS THE

CHANGE THAT WE WANT TO

SEE, WE NEED TO HELP MAKE IT

HAPPEN.”

Candice LamTechnology Resource

Management Partner, BHP

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THERE WAS never a question that Erin Hughes would pursue a career in

water. Growing up in the Torres Strait, it was integral to her way of life.

“I grew up on fishing boats and my family’s whole income was sourced from water,” says Hughes, who works as a Senior Surface Water Engineer at Hydrology and Risk Consulting in Melbourne. “I’ve always had a huge appreciation of it.”

Hughes also grew up with an appreciation for the impact of engineering on her remote community — both positive and, at times, negative.

“There were instances when it wasn’t fit for purpose or designed for the environment or for the community,” she says. “I didn’t really know what an engineer was, but I knew the type of work I wanted to do, and I felt really lucky to discover that there was an actual job that fit.”

Hughes studied a Bachelor of Engineering (Environmental) at University of Queensland. Her first year of study included a project with Engineers Without Borders and she has volunteered with the not-for-profit organisation ever since.

She has managed many of their Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander programs and currently project-manages its Torres Strait School Outreach Program.

“I’m redeveloping the education program and looking at a different implementation method to try to increase engagement, particularly in remote Indigenous communities,” says Hughes.

She believes that since sustainability means different

things to different people, everyone should mark the World Engineering Day for Sustainable Development in a way that feels right for them.

“When I think about the [United Nation’s] 17 [Sustainable Development] Goals, water obviously stands out for me, because I’ve always had a connection to it,” she says.

“But I also think that all of the goals are interconnected. To achieve one of them, you have to consider them all.”

Hughes is an advocate for greater diversity in engineering and she says that diversity can help build creative tension, which she says is needed for innovation.

“As engineers, it’s also critical to have this variety of views to ensure we are designing appropriate solutions for everyone in a community, not just a narrow group,” she says. “This in turn leads to businesses being more profitable and sustainable.”

Hughes says she feels fortunate to be part of the engineering profession and that career highlights occur on a daily basis.

“I went into engineering with a passion for creating solutions to problems at a community and environmental level,” she says.

“I think that there’s an obligation as an engineer to give back.”

Erin HughesSenior Engineer,

Hydrology and Risk Consulting


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THE CHALLENGES OF THE FUTURE WILL REQUIRE THE EFFORTS OF ENGINEERS. THIS MONTH, THE WORLD IS ACKNOWLEDGING THE NECESSITY OF THAT CONTRIBUTION.

E N G I N E E R I N GWORDS BY SUSAN MULDOWNEY

IN 2015, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly developed 17 sustainable

development goals to tick off by 2030.

Described as a blueprint for a better future for all, they address our most pressing global challenges — from poverty and

BELOW: Engineers Australia National President and Board Chair Chris Champion.

inequality to climate change and environmental degradation.

With the deadline a mere decade away, engineering has become even more critical in achieving these urgent objectives.

This vital role of engineers is now recognised with the annual World Engineering Day for Sustainable Development, which will be held for the first time this year on 4 March.

The date was chosen in acknowledgment of the formation of the World Federation of Engineering Organizations on 4 March 1968.

Chris Champion, National President and Board Chair of Engineers Australia, says that while the UN’s 17 goals are broad, they set specific targets for engineers. He cites Goal 13 — Climate Action — as an example.

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S U S T A I N A B I L I T Y

44-47_EA51_Mar20_Sustain2.indd 44 18/2/20 3:35 pm

SUSTAINABILITY

BELOW: Lara Harland (top) and Steve Posselt.OPPOSITE: Kelp farms can help extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

“Engineers have a crucial role to play in mitigating and adapting to the eff ects of our changing climate by providing solutions for our communities and society,” he says.

“We owe it to our children and grandchildren not to leave them with a future liability. Rightly, our young professionals expect our profession to play its full role.”

A CHANGING WORLDClimate change has long been a focus for retired civil and water engineer Steve Posselt, who chairs Engineers Australia’s Sustainable Engineering Society. Posselt, who is based in New South Wales (NSW), was part of the leadership for the World Engineering Conference meeting on climate change in November last year.

“I’ve been saying for a very long time that the answer to all our woes is going to be found in engineering,” he says. “But we need policymakers to say to engineers, ‘fix it’.”

Posselt adds that it’s “fantastic” that there is now an international day for engineering.

“Because I don’t think the profession gets the attention it deserves,” he says. “Just about everything you see has the fingerprint of an engineer on it. The buildings in a city, even the trees in the street, have been through a process of deciding where you’re going to plant them and how you’re going to get water to them. Engineers have had something to do with it all.”

Todd Battley, CEO of AECOM, agrees. Battley, who was a participant at Engineers Australia Climate Change Summit

Roundtable in February this year, says engineers have always been defi ned by the problems they solve, and that modern environmental challenges are no diff erent.

“This is our time,” he says. “The sooner we can move from the scientists talking about climate to the engineers practically helping the transition to a low-carbon economy, the better. I don’t think it’s a political problem. It’s a technology problem and it’s an opportunity for us to solve this generation’s really big issue.”

For Lara Harland, Senior Consultant at EnviroEngineering Solutions in Brisbane and Chair of Engineers Australia’s Environmental College, climate drawdown technologies will be instrumental in addressing these challenges.

She cites examples such as kelp and phytoplankton farms that pull carbon dioxide from the sky to the bottom of the ocean, and a liquid fuel developed by Canadian company Carbon Engineering, which sucks CO2 from the atmosphere and combines it with hydrogen from water.

“These sorts of things require a large amount of energy, but there’s lots of renewable sources if we all had a will to use them,” says Harland. “However, they are not get-out-of-jail-free cards. We absolutely need to be bringing in drawdown technologies, but we can’t continue to pollute with fossil fuels at the same time. We need to stop polluting and draw down.”

“THE SOONER WE CAN MOVE FROM THE SCIENTISTS TALKING ABOUT CLIMATE TO THE ENGINEERS PRACTICALLY HELPING THE TRANSITION TO A LOW-CARBON ECONOMY, THE BETTER.”

RESILIENT INFRASTRUCTUREClimate change is just one problem engineers can solve in building a sustainable future. Goal 9 on the UN list, for example, addresses the need for sustainable and resilient infrastructure.

“We’re starting to see things like smart offsite manufacturing come into the sector, and I think it’s wonderful, because it’s going to create less waste, less impact and higher quality,” says Battley.

“I also can’t think of a single client we work with that isn’t interested in transitioning their business. Engineers can bring in new technologies and new ways of working across supply chains.”

Harland stresses that new technologies must be inclusive and lead to a better life for all.

“We need to stop talking about dollars and start talking about people,” she says. “Engineers can influence decisions, as long as we keep asking questions.”

Battley agrees that inclusive technologies are vital.

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[email protected] (07) 3210 3100

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“ENGINEERS CAN BRING IN NEW TECHNOLOGIES AND NEW WAYS OF WORKING ACROSS SUPPLY CHAINS.”

SETTING GOALS

“There are still parts of rural communities that are somewhat left behind, and you’re seeing that at the moment with the bushfires, where a lot of people don’t have access to reliable water,” he says.

“So there’s still plenty of work to do, but engineers have always been able to provide solutions for people. We certainly can build and provide infrastructure to make it equitable.”

DISASTER RESPONSESAustralia’s devastating bushfires captured global attention and Posselt sees them as an urgent warning.

“We knew that it was coming, but I didn’t understand the scale

STEVE POSSELTGOAL 7 AFFORDABLE AND CLEAN ENERGYI’ve been saying for 10 years that if you want to contribute to climate change action, buy green energy. And, once you’ve bought your green energy, the next best thing you can do is get your family to buy green energy. Once they have bought it, get your boss to buy green energy.

TODD BATTLEY GOAL 6CLEAN WATER AND SANITATION AND GOAL 9INDUSTRY, INNOVATION AND INFRASTRUCTUREChoosing just one goal is like choosing a favourite child! Goal 6 is really an extension of the work that engineers have done for the past 100 years. It probably also entails the sustainable use of water in areas where water is scarce and precious. Goal 9 — and Goal 7 — are opportunities

advances in how we currently design and operate and innovate within existing industries to meet the requirements of the communities we serve.

LARA HARLANDGOAL 13 CLIMATE ACTIONIf we don’t meet that goal, it’s basically impossible to meet all the other goals. For example, more drought will create more hunger, and it’s the poorest countries that are going to be most

stable climate is fundamental to health and wellbeing — just think of the heatwaves in India not long ago. Much of the infrastructure, like air conditioners, is not available to all, and a massive number of people died. There is an interconnection with all these goals and climate change.

communities and economies that’ll take years to recover, it’s just devastating,” he says.

“But, if we go back to 2010, we faced a very similar set of circumstances through Queensland and NSW with flooding, and engineers were

absolutely key to putting communities back together. I think the same will be true with the bushfires, whether it’s restoring internet and phone lines or protecting water supplies.

“Of course, there’s the bigger picture issues around transitioning to a lower carbon economy, and that will not be overcome by scientists telling us about the temperature.

“That will be overcome by companies and governments actually changing how they do things, and, in a lot of cases, that will require engineers to do things differently.”

The World Engineering Day for Sustainable Development serves to highlight the achievements of engineers in modern life and how engineering may be used to achieve the United Nations 17 goals for a better future.

We asked Steve Posselt, Todd Battley and Lara Harland to

of what could unfold,” he says. “That’s what scares me into the future. This could just be a taste of what’s to come.

“I think these fires have polarised people a little more,” he adds. “The [climate change] deniers are still as shrill as ever, but the people who understand are becoming more and more concerned.”

Battley says there is no time to waste.

“The horrific impact on people, on livestock, on those little

CEO Todd Battley.

accentuated the urgency of acting on climate change.

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S U S T A I N A B I L I T Y


“OUR ANCESTORS SPENT A LOT OF TIME AND

EFFORT IN OBSERVING AND UNDERSTANDING THE

COUNTRY AND DOING THOSE MODIFICATIONS OVER TIME.

THERE’S A LESSON THERE FOR ALL ENGINEERS.”

A LONG-ENDURING INDIGENOUS ENGINEERING PROJECT ILLUMINATES A PATH TO A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE.

INCREASING POPULATION, habitat loss, mass extinctions and unprecedented fires and

floods due to climate change are challenging engineers like never before to find sustainable ways of living.

Damein Bell, CEO of the Gunditj Mirring Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation, believes Budj Bim, created by the Gunditjmara people in south-west Victoria and one of the world’s largest and oldest aquaculture systems, has lessons for today as it illustrates how engineering can work with communities and harmonise with the landscape.

“We have absolute pride in the ingenuity of our ancestors and want to share Buji Bim with people and educate them about sustainability, culture and also the spiritual side,” says Bell.

“People need to be a bit more connected with Country. We say ‘namkeen gunditj’ — seeing Country — which means to have a proper look and a good listen. We also need to think about our common goals of future survival.”

SOPHISTICATED SYSTEMSBudji Bim is a sophisticated and complex aquaculture system comprising weirs, dams and stone canals designed to manipulate water levels in various parts of Lake Condah and

WORDS BY MATILDA BOWRA

A N C I E N TW I S D O M

trap and farm fish and migrating kooyang — eels.

It was constructed using basalt rocks from a lava flow and has been carbon dated to 6600 years old.

In June 2019, Budj Bim became the first Australian site to be included on the UNESCO World Heritage List solely for its Aboriginal cultural values. The recognition was the result of a long campaign by the Gunditj Mirring Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation and the Winda-Mara Aboriginal Corporation, supported by Engineers Australia and the Victorian Government.

Bill Jordan, past Chair of Engineering Heritage Australia (EHA), prepared the original nomination that led to Budj Bim being recognised by EHA as being of national significance in 2011. He has long championed it as an example of ancient engineering and believes the World Heritage Recognition reflects a growing appreciation of Budj Bim.

His colleague, Merv Lindsay, National Chair of Engineering Heritage Australia, is delighted to see Budj Bim recognised on the world stage.

“This facility takes sustainability to a new level,” says Lindsay.

“They could have changed the environment to the extent they lost the resource, but they sustained it over thousands of years. Is there anywhere else in the world where people have operated the same infrastructure for 6600 years?”

BELOW: Gunditj Mirring Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation CEO Damein Bell.

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P R O J E C T

48-53_EA51_Mar20_Project_Budj.indd 48 18/2/20 3:35 pm

ABOVE (from top): The engineered channels at Budj Bim; aerial view of Tae Rak channel and holding pond.

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RAMIFICATIONS OF RECOGNITIONDenis Rose, Knowledge and Estate Program Manager, Gunditj Mirring Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation, says Budj Bim is a really good example of how Aboriginal Australia cares for Country.

“There’s knowledge built up over thousands of years, a whole Aboriginal lifestyle around the country where people survived and thrived in sometimes very dry climates because they had a great understanding of country,” Rose says. “We hope the World Heritage Recognition will act as an economic driver and help us share our story with the rest of the world.”

Since Budj Bim received World Heritage Recognition, Rose says the phone has not stopped ringing with people wanting to do tours.

The increase in tourist numbers and the expected economic benefits for Aboriginal businesses and the wider region are welcomed by the Gunditjmara people.

Preparations for the influx are well underway. An $8 million grant in 2016 and a further $5 million grant in 2019 to the Gunditj Mirring Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation from the Victorian Government are being used to create environmentally friendly walking tracks and signage and to investigate the development of an eel smoking facility and visitor centre.

While the boost in tourism is welcome, Rose says what really excites him is the opportunity to increase understanding between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians and open people’s eyes to a more sustainable way of interacting with the natural world.

“I think it’s really important people get a better understanding of an Aboriginal Traditional Owner point of view, whether it’s Gunditjmara or others,” he says.

“We usually start tours off at Tyrendarra, where the Engineers Australia heritage notice is, because we want people to understand this is an engineered system. We talk about engineering and manipulating the water flows, but it’s really about how you

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can farm without turning the country upside down.

“That lesson of sustainability needs to be incorporated into current practices. The fact that our ancestors spent a lot of time and effort in observing and understanding the country and doing those modifications over time — there’s a lesson there for all engineers to think about alternatives that don’t have long-term impacts.

“Some of Budj Bim has been drained over the last 150 years and we want to restore water flows into these systems to show it’s not just about protecting and managing country, but improving the health of country as well, as this is a really important obligation of ours.”

The Gunditj Mirring Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation is also looking into how it can share its story through partnerships with local schools and universities.

EDUCATING FUTURE ENGINEERSOne educational initiative under way is an undergraduate subject based on Budj Bim at the University of Melbourne titled Indigenous Engineering and Design.

The course was co-created by Bell and Dr Juliana Prpic from the Melbourne School of Engineering.

A hallmark of the subject is two-way learning, where the students learn about Indigenous cultures and perspectives and the Gunditjmara people learn about the science behind traditional approaches.

Another distinctive feature is its hands-on approach to learning, where students gain an understanding of traditional engineering, local history and culture by visiting Budj Bim and interacting with the Gunditjmara community.

“Students have an opportunity to explore traditional engineering

through the eel traps, stone houses and hydrology; listen to the Elders; and learn about the impact of colonisation firsthand,” says Prpic.

“It has moved students very deeply to hear from people who were forbidden to speak their language or share anything about their culture with children. Then there’s also the contemporary aspect — being able to see how the current rangers and community are managing the land.”

The subject includes a practical component where students from different disciplines take one aspect of Indigenous culture, research it in relation to Budj Bim, and then work together to create a design proposal for the community.

Examples of projects nominated by the community

“IS THERE ANYWHERE ELSE IN THE WORLD WHERE PEOPLE HAVE OPERATED THE SAME INFRASTRUCTURE FOR 6600 YEARS?”

ABOVE: One of Budj Bim’s weirs, as shot from a drone. INSET: Showing tourists the National Engineering Heritage marker.


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P R O J E C T



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The Indigenous Engineers GroupThe 2016 Australian Census found Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people represented 2.8 per cent of the population, but according to the latest

Australia, Indigenous engineers

engineering labour force.

Torres Strait Islander people to enter the profession by

Indigenous students. It also connects and supports

Indigenous engineers.Grant Maher is a

“Indigenous culture is all

the resources on hand and not

“That philosophy has great

thinking to address that.“I think the recognition of

Heritage List] is fantastic. It really

life and that Indigenous people understood and utilised the landscape to their advantage in a

Indigenous kids excited about

bettering yourself and your

utilised to get young Indigenous kids interested in engineering.

thing; our people have been

BELOW (from top): Dr Juliana Prpic; Bell working with University of Melbourne Indigenous Engineering and Design students.

“BEING ON COUNTRY IS A WHOLE DIFFERENT STORY TO SITTING IN LECTURES AND LOOKING AT IMAGES.”

include a viewing platform, an accessible river approach and the reconstruction of a stone house.

One architecture student, who completed Indigenous Engineering and Design in 2018, says, “being on country is a whole diff erent story to sitting in lectures and looking at images. Normally the scenarios we design for are imaginary, whereas, for this subject, you got to design a real-life scenario.”

Prpic says the multi-disciplinary approach and consideration of how Indigenous knowledge will inform their designs produces socially, environmentally and sustainable design outcomes.

“There are a number of serious global challenges looming that young engineers will have to deal with. Social and emotional skills and the ability to look at things from a holistic perspective will be critical. They will also need to have a greater awareness of sustainability, local resources and the life cycle of what they are creating,” Prpic says.

“It’s all about being really aware of the context and engaging local people, and I think that applies not just to Indigenous people, but to the capacity to engage all stakeholders.”

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Location: Sydney, NSW icce2020.comICCE is the premier coastal engineering conference, held biennially. The goal of the ICCE is to promote academic and technical exchange on coastal-related studies. It covers a wide range of topics, including coastal waves, near-shore currents, coastal structures, sediment transport, coastal morphology, beach nourishment, natural hazards and coastal management.

Location: Melbourne, VIC aseconference.org.au

ASEC 2020 will bring together practicing structural engineers, students, academics, researchers and industry specialist providers to explore the conference theme Engineering Evolution. Prospective authors are invited to share their latest research and ideas by submitting an abstract based on one of the following sub-themes: Energy, Transportation Infrastructure, Buildings, Engineering 4.0, Forensic and Research.

11-13M AY 2 0 2 0

SYSTEMS ENGINEERING TEST AND EVALUATION

CONFERENCE

27–30S E P 2 0 2 0

CHEMECA2020

13–18S E P 2 0 2 0

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON COASTAL

ENGINEERING

11–13N O V 2 0 2 0

AUSTRALASIAN STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING CONFERENCE

(ASEC)

Location:: Perth, WA core2020.org.auCORE is the premier technical event in the

Australasian rail conference market, with a reputation for high-quality papers that cover a wide range of rail engineering, operations,

planning and management topics. CORE aims to advance the body of knowledge

on rail technologies and the sharing of the best practise in the planning,

implementation, operations and management of rail systems.

11-13M AY 2 0 2 0

CONFERENCE ON RAILWAY EXCELLENCE

(CORE)

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T E C H W A T C H

THE LATEST DEVELOPMENTS FROM AROUND THE WORLD.

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Syngas, a substance used in the manufacture of fuels, pharmaceuticals, plastics, fertilisers and more, is produced from hydrogen and carbon monoxide. However,

gas using only sunlight, water and carbon dioxide. The device uses two light absorbers immersed in water: one acting as a catalyst to produce oxygen, with the other converting carbon dioxide and water into hydrogen and carbon monoxide. The researchers, from Cambridge University in the UK, now hope to produce fuel using the gas. “What

making syngas and then converting it into liquid fuel, is to make the liquid fuel in one step,” says Professor Erwin Reisner. Petrochemical company OMV supported the research and hopes it can make its business more sustainable. “The team’s fundamental research to produce syngas as the basis for liquid fuel in a carbon neutral way is groundbreaking,” says Michael-Dieter Ulbrich, an engineer and OMV Senior Adviser.

printing

Because most 3D printers can only use one substance at a time, making complex creations using multiple materials takes an impractically long time. A new printhead designed by

A new alloy developed by engineers at RMIT University, CSIRO, the University of Queensland and Ohio State University could make possible higher performance titanium materials suitable for additive manufacturing. Although titanium alloys are often at risk of cracking or distortion due to the column-shaped crystals formed when used in 3D printing, the engineers’ titanium-copper alloy addresses this problem without applying further treatment to the metal. “Of particular note was its fully equiaxed grain structure: this means the crystal grains had grown equally in all directions to form a strong bond, instead of in columns, which can lead to weak points liable to cracking,” says RMIT’s Professor Mark Easton. “Alloys with this microstructure can withstand much higher forces and will be much less likely to have defects.” The alloy could have biomedical and aerospace applications and allow manufacturers to produce more complex parts.

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Engineers from the University of Houston have created a soft robot with neurologic capabilities via a stretchable transistor. The technology could lead to prosthetics that connects with a user’s nerves, allowing

limbs. “When human skin is touched, you feel it,” says Associate Professor Cunjiang Yu, a mechanical engineer on the research team. “The feeling originates in your brain, through neural pathways from your skin to the brain.” The device is able to mimic these sensations with transistors that continue to work even after they have been stretched by up to 50 per cent. Incorporated into the soft robot, these transistors are able to sense physical tapping and move adaptively in response. “The mechanoreceptors respond to physical touches by generating presynaptic pulses, which excite the synaptic transistors to render postsynaptic potentials, which can be potentially interfaced with biological nerves or engineering counterparts,” the researchers explain in an article about the technology.

Harvard University’s Wyss Institute addresses this problem by using high-pressure valves to switch between eight substances up to 50 times per second. “When printing an object using a conventional extrusion-based 3D printer, the time required to print it scales cubically with the length of the object, because the printing nozzle has to move in three dimensions rather than just one,” says the Wyss Institute’s

Mark Skylar-Scott. “[Multi-material multi-nozzle 3D printing] effectively eliminates the time lost to switching printheads and helps get the scaling law down from cubic to linear, so you can print multi-material, periodic 3D objects much more quickly.” The printhead has been used to produce origami structures and a soft actuating robot that can carry eight times its own weight.

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FOR ALEXANDRA RADULOVICH, GETTING CHARTERED HELPED MAKE CLEAR HOW IMPORTANT ENGINEERING CAN BE.

Alexandra RadulovichCPEng, Associate, Douglas Partners

ENGINEERS AT THE PINNACLE OF THE PROFESSION

1 Be aware of the responsibility

that engineers have to the communities in which they work — people’s lives and livelihoods can depend on it.

2 Consider getting

Chartered from early in your career.

3 When you start looking

into the Chartered qualifi cation, it can seem quite overwhelming. Keep it simple and start with one competency at a time.

03TIPS FOR SUCCESS

ALEXANDRA RADULOVICH was not a geotechnical engineer when, nine years ago, she took a job with

Douglas Partners. She wasn’t even a civil engineer.

“I had an engineering degree with

says. “It’s quite varied and nothing to

But Douglas Partners was willing to give her a shot anyway.

“My boss decided I’ve got the engineering background, so I’ve got

That involved on-the-job training,

by Douglas Partners … that was always

Today, Radulovich is an Associate at Douglas Partners, as well as Geotechnical Section Manager at the

that has allowed her to work all over New South Wales and Victoria.

towns don’t have local geotechnical

“Roads, buildings, bridges, you need

the soil and undertake testing. Or we

Radulovich is a Chartered engineer;

She thinks Chartered engineers will

“More engineers are going to be

says. “And clients are going to be


0 5 8

K E Y S T O N E

58-60_EA51_Mar20_Keystone2.indd 58 19/2/20 5:42 pm

FOR ALEXANDRA RADULOVICH, GETTING CHARTERED HELPED MAKE CLEAR HOW IMPORTANT ENGINEERING CAN BE.

Alexandra RadulovichCPEng, Associate, Douglas Partners

ENGINEERS AT THE PINNACLE OF THE PROFESSION

1 Be aware of the responsibility

that engineers have to the communities in which they work — people’s lives and livelihoods can depend on it.

2 Consider getting

Chartered from early in your career.

3 When you start looking

into the Chartered qualifi cation, it can seem quite overwhelming. Keep it simple and start with one competency at a time.

03TIPS FOR SUCCESS

IMA

GE: G

LENN

CA

MPB

ELL

ALEXANDRA RADULOVICH was not a geotechnical engineer when, nine years ago, she took a job with

Douglas Partners. She wasn’t even a civil engineer.

“I had an engineering degree with

says. “It’s quite varied and nothing to

But Douglas Partners was willing to give her a shot anyway.

“My boss decided I’ve got the engineering background, so I’ve got

That involved on-the-job training,

by Douglas Partners … that was always

Today, Radulovich is an Associate at Douglas Partners, as well as Geotechnical Section Manager at the

that has allowed her to work all over New South Wales and Victoria.

towns don’t have local geotechnical

“Roads, buildings, bridges, you need

the soil and undertake testing. Or we

Radulovich is a Chartered engineer;

She thinks Chartered engineers will

“More engineers are going to be

says. “And clients are going to be


0 5 8

K E Y S T O N E


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