This year’s Engineering Week is Feb. 19-25. The week celebrates the accomplishments of the nation’s engineers. Credit: National Engineers Week Foundation.

Eweek is a favorite activity of college engineering programs, providing a chance for departments to show off their gee-whiz stuff and for undergrads to glory in their declared professions. Many universities hold competitions and open houses during the week, and corporations and government labs get in on the fun, too.

The theme for this year’s Eweek is “7 billion people. 7 billion dreams. 7 billion chances for engineers to turn dreams into reality.” It is a call for engineers to rise to the challenges that a projected world population of 7 billion will present.

This Thursday is set aside to “Celebrate the G in Engineer,” a day when engineers are encouraged to introduce girls and young women to engineering careers. According to the eweek.org website, more than one million girls in grades K-12 have been introduced to engineering since the “Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day” program began in 2001.

Started in 1951 by the National Society of Professional Engineers, the weeklong event is now sponsored by the National Engineers Week Foundation, which shares a common roof with the NSPE in Alexandria, Va. The Wikipedia page for National Engineers Week says that Eweek is linked the annual celebration Presidents Day which coincides with George Washnigton’s birthday and recognition of GW’s surveying work, qualifying him as the nation’s first engineer.

The Foundation has several year-round outreach programs, too.

The New Faces of Engineering program is a way for engineers (up to 30 years old)  on the rise in their careers to be recognized by their engineering colleagues. The Future City is a competition program that targets middle school students and culminates with a final competition in Washington, D.C. during Eweek. Another program is the DiscoverE Classroom Visits, for which the Foundation has provided educational materials to an army of 45,000 engineers who have spread the good news about engineering to more than five million students.

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Trends in federal research and development budgets. Credit: OSTP.

Last Monday, President Obama delivered his FY’13 budget proposal to Congress, and today, OSTP chief John Holdren is appearing before the House’s Committee on Science, Space and Technology to offer comments about the civilian science and technology pieces of the proposed budget.

The OSTP has posted a summary (pdf) of the R&D requests in the budget. In a concurrent press release (pdf), the OSTP outlines seven administration goals for “building and fueling America’s engines of discovery”: to expand the frontiers of human knowledge, promote economic growth with a focus on manufacturing, cultivate domestic clean energy, improve healthcare outcomes, address global climate change, manage environmental resources and strengthen national security.

The FY’13 budget requests $140.8 billion for federally supported R&D, which represents an increase of 1.4 percent ($2.0 billion) over the FY’12 enacted level. In today’s testimony (pdf), Holdren says the proposed budget is “designed to ensure that America will continue, in the President’s words, to ‘out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the rest of the world’.”

Three agencies have been identified as critical to fulfilling the nation’s mission to maintain and advance its economic position: the NSF, DOE and NIST. (Holdren describes them as “jewel-in-the-crown” agencies — an ironic description for agencies that are tasked with driving the economy of a country founded on militant rejection of all things regal, but I digress.) Holdren’s testimony notes that the administration has been working to continue efforts begun under the Bush administration (as part of the America COMPETES Act) to gradually double the budgets (pdf) of these three agencies. The Budget Control Act of 2011 will slow, but not halt, that priority.

Culling through the R&D summary posted on OSTP’s website, provides a glimpse of how things may shake out for the materials science community based on the proposed R&D budgets for agencies that fund the largest chunks of materials science research:

National Science Foundation — $7.4 billion, an increase of 4.8 percent over 2012 enacted levels.

Department of Defense — $71.2 billion for R&D, a $1.5 billion decrease from 2012. The funding request includes $11.9 billion for early-stage science and technology progreams, $2.8 billion for DARPA and maintains basic research (6.1) at $2.1 billiion.

NASA — $9.6 billiion for R&D on an overall budget on $17.7 billiion, a 2.2 percent ($203 million) bump for R&D, but probably not enough to bring NASA technology up to levels recently recommended by the National Research Council.

DOE — $11.9 billion, an 8.0 percent ($884 milliion) increase in R&D over 2012 enacted levels. ARPA-E is written in for $350 million, and the DOE budget targets $290 million specifically “to expand activities on innovative manufacturing processes and advanced materials.”

NIST — $708 milion for NIST’s intramural labs, a tidy 13.8 percent over 2012 enacted levels, reflecting the administration’s efforts to double its budget. The agency is home to the Hollings Manuacturing Extension Partnership ($128 milliion request) and the new Advanced Manufacturing Technology Consortia program ($21 million request).

Department of Homeland Security — $729 million, up 26.3 percent from enacted 2012. The huge increase is to restore cuts imposed in 2012. DHS efforts touch the materials community through R&D on nuclear materials, explosives detection and chemical/biological response systems.

Department of Education — $398 million. This R&D funding addresses the president’s goal of training 100,000 STEM teachers in the next decade and developing educational strategies.

The R&D budget includes budgets for three multi-agency initiatives, including the National Nanotechnology Initiative. The NNI member agencies “focus on R&D of materials, devices and systems that exploit the unique … properties that emerge in materials at the nanoscale.” The requested budget is for $1.8 billion, an increase of $70 million over the 2012 enacted budget.

Finally, the contentious issue of hydraulic fracturing (”fracking”) is getting some attention in the budget with collaborative funding streams through DOE, EPA and the Department of the Interior to “understand and minimize the potential environmental, health, and safety impacts of natural gas and oil production.” That’s a broad-ranging mission statement, but materials science has a role to play, for example, with engineered proppants.

For play-by-play commentary, stay tuned to the AAAS website, “R&D Budget and Policy Program.” They do a good job tracking developments and slicing out the parts that are relevant to the science and technology communities. Since 1976, AAAS has issued a comprehensive analysis of the federal R&D budget. Last year it was available in May, so look for a similar report about FY’13 in a few months. The OSTP website, of course, stays abreast of budget developments.

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The future of Fisker Automotive’s luxury hybrid vehicle is unclear after DOE suspended its loan guarantee. That affects the fortunes of its vendors, including A123, supplier of the battery packs. Credit: Fisker Automotive.

The short version of the story is that A123 is in something of a scramble mode thanks to the problems with Fisker Automotive’s DOE loan guarantee.

The story first came to light on Feb. 9 when, according to a Forbes report, Wunderlich Securities analyst Theodore O’Neill reduced his rating of A123 stock in reaction to a DOE loan guarantee to Fisker being put in hiatus.

So, what’s up with Fisker Automotive?

Fisker is a California-based start-up company that makes luxury hybrid cars and was started in 2007 by Henrik Fisker and Bernhard Koehler. In 2009 it received a $528 loan guarantee from the DOE, of which it has received $193 million so far, according to an online Reuters article, to support development of its first model, a luxury vehicle dubbed Karma. Also in the works is a sedan called Nina. In an email, FA spokesman Russell Datz says the company actually received two loans totaling $528.7 million: one for $169 million to support the Karma program, and the remainder to support Project Nina. He says the company has drawn all $169 million for the Karma and about $24 million for Project Nina.

The company built about 1,500 Karmas and delivered 400-500, including its first car, which went to investor and ecocelebrity, Leonardo DiCaprio, in July. Prospective customers must indeed have lots of (monetary) karma to purchase a Karma—they sell for upwards of $100,000.

Although some press reports claim DOE suspended the loan guarantee, according to Fisker, the delay in DOE funding was initiated by the company, itself. A company spokesperson says, “In May 2011, Fisker Automotive opted to stop taking reimbursements from the DOE while the company entered negotiations to implement more realistic and achievable milestones.”

Last week Fisker laid off 25 workers in its Delaware plant. The company says the 25 had been refurbishing the plant in preparation for Project Nina. The Karma is assembled in Finland and Fisker says the layoff is not directly related to its production or the company’s need for batteries.

Nevertheless, O’Neill suspects that the interruption of DOE funding is likely to result in reduced Karma production. In his research note, quoted in the Forbes article, he says lower Karma production “throws 2013 estimates [for A123] into disarray because Fisker has started laying off employees at its plant in Delaware and this would have been a much larger opportunity for A123 Systems.” O’Neill estimated that Fisker has about 2,000 battery packs in its inventory and implied that might be enough, “We can’t be sure when it [Fisker] will need more or if it will have the money to pay for it. In either case, we have to lower our revenue forecast [for A123].”

This is the third straight month of unfortunate developments for Fisker: In December 2011, they recalled 239 vehicles because of a possible defect in the batteries, and in January sales reportedly were stopped for four days to fix a software glitch.

Fisker was reported to be A123’s largest customer, and the battery pack is the most expensive component in the car. Forbes reported that O’Neill had downgraded his rating of A123 stock from Hold to Sell. In his research note explaining his analysis and recommendation, O’Neill said that the DOE loan guarantee has “become part of an intense political debate, [and] it may never be restored.” He sees this as part of the political fallout from the Solyndra hot potato, and that it sets up the possibility of “two Solyndras for the price of one.”

A Boston Globe article reports that about 60 percent of A123’s 2011 revenue came from the transportation industry. A123 seems to be working hard to make the best of a tough situation. The Globe says the company laid off about 20 percent of its Michigan workforce, affecting about 325 employees. However, since the problems arose with its Fisker business, it has raised $23.5 million from investors to fund its growth.

It’s a scary moment in A123’s history. Crain’s Detroit Business reported that the company’s stock fell almost 24 percent on Thursday following Fisker’s announcement that it was delaying the Nina project. That brings A123’s stock down by a sobering 80 percent in the last 12 months.

Jason Forcier, A123 vice president and general manager in Michigan prefers to see opportunity, saying in the Crain’s article, “This delay on the Nina project actually helps us by allowing us to pull our engineers to other programs.” A123 has recently reported several significant sales to power grid companies.

Forcier is not a lone optimist. The Globe reports that Deutsche Bank analyst, Dan Galves, sees the setback as significant, but temporary, saying, “We still see this company as having done very well in terms of carving out a position in the advanced lithium-ion battery market.”

Fisker, too, prefers to see the sunshine between the clouds. Founder Henrik Fisker is quoted in the Reuters story, “Our survival is not dependent on the DOE. We have already looked into alternative financing and we have really good possibilities.”

And, O’Neil may have it wrong with regard to Fisker’s future with the DOE. In the Globe article, a DOE spokeswoman says it “is working with Fisker to review a revised business plan and determine the best path forward so the company can meet its benchmarks, produce cars and employ workers here in America.”

If so, that would be encouraging karma for Fisker and A123.

[Editor's note: Since first publishing this story, we received a note via email from Fisker spokesman and director of corporate communications, Russell Datz, providing some company background for the information contained in the news reports we quoted and linked to in the original version. This story has been updated to include Fisker's point of view.]

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Sintering is among the most fundamental and important processes applied to ceramic materials.

In its essentials, it is simple: It’s densification by heating. The details, however, are complicated, and modeling has proven to be a very useful tool for understanding the driving forces and mechanisms that govern sintering processes.

One challenge with modeling is the issue of scale. Different mathematical models are needed to describe physical processes depending on the scale of the object of interest. It is difficult and not necessarily accurate to derive meaning from the output of a model in one size regime that is applied to a different size regime. For example, the mathematics that describes the atom-level process of solidification of a metal is very different from the mathematics that describes the casting shrinkage of an engine block, even though the former determines the latter.

A new paper in the Journal of the American Ceramic Society describes a new approach to modeling the sintering process that gets around the scale problem. The paper has a deceptively simple title, “Direct Multi-Scale Modeling of Sintering,” and is available via Early View. (One of the authors is ACerS Fellow Eugene Olevsky, from San Diego State University. The other three authors are from institutes in the Ukraine and Russia.)

The paper addresses “continuum sintering theory,” which models “sintering of macroscopically inhomogeneous porous specimens.” The macroscopic inhomogeneity arises from presintering processes such as powder pressing or forming. It can also arise from boundary constraints or from structural constraints within the specimen itself, such as with multilayer composites.

Advances in continuum theory, the paper says, are owing largely to “the use of comparatively simple special constitutive equations of sintered porous materials.”

Constitutive equations are mathematical descriptions of the relationship between stress, strain, strain rate and microstructural features like grain size. The coefficients in the equations are functions of internal material parameters. Sintering kinetics are known to depend on grain size, pore size distribution, pore coarsening, pore and grain morphology and other parameters. A limitation of previous models has been an inability to expand the models to include more than one parameter.

The question is how to solve this limitation and expand the models to accommodate multiple parameters. The paper list three current barriers: experimentally determining the interrelationships between multiple parameters is difficult and time consuming; a multi-parameter approximation of the experimental data in the constitutive equations is necessary; and the number and identification parameters to include in the model is not known.

However, the new approach does not rely on constitutive equations. Instead, “the results of modeling at the mesoscopic level are directly used for the prediction of the macroscopic behavior, ” hence the “direct” part of the paper’s title.

Mesoscopic modeling defines and analyzes the “evolution of a set of unit cells of a powder material during sintering.” In this paper, a unit cell is a “representative mesoscopic volume of the material,” and the mesoscopic scale correlates to the structure level of the powder particles. The macroscopic level is the specimen being sintered. The “multi-scale” aspect refers to a simultaneous numerical analysis of the sintering processes at the powder particle (mesoscopic level) and specimen (macroscopic level).

The model starts by setting a control point, and then several finite elements around the point comprise the mesostructure/unit cell. Using numerical analysis, macroscopic material parameters like viscosity and sintering stress are found in what amounts to a virtual testing of the unit cell independent of constitutive equations. Values of properties are fed into a macroscopic finite element model, which allows macroscopic effects like distortion and shrinkage to be determined.

The paper demonstrates the modeling method for two cases: diffusion sintering of ceramic composites and viscous sintering. They are able to show that the “evolution of the unit cells is connected with the macroscopic level shape distortion,” based on assumptions about the similarity of the macroscopic and mesoscopic strain rates.

Besides Olevsky, the paper (doi:10.1111/j.1551-2916.2012.05083.x) is authored by Andrey Maximenko, Andrey Kuzmov, and Evgeny Grigoryev. Maximenko and Kuzmov are affiliated with the Frantsevich Institute for Problems of Materials Science, Kiev, Ukraine. Maximenko is also affiliated with the Key Laboratory for Electromagnetic Field Assisted Processing of Novel Materials of the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute, as is Grigoryev and Olevsky.

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An online story in The Engineer last week reiterated for me the practical benefits of basic science research.

Researchers at University of Glasgow, Scotland, have been working on building equipment and instruments for studying gravity, both on the ground and in space. The team is led by UG professor in the School of Physics and Astronomy, Sheila Rowan. According to the Institute for Gravitational Research website, the group’s work “is targeted at the development of detectors and signal analysis methods to search for gravitational waves from astrophysical sources. Gravitational waves — waves in the curvature of space-time — are a prediction of General Relativity.” The website goes on to describe work the group is doing on detection techniques based on kilometer-scale laser interferometry and other highly sensitive instruments. The instruments require components that are made by precision manufacturing of highly stable materials. Silicon carbide, for example.

Silicon carbide is an attractive material for space and other applications that require strong, lightweight structures. A researcher on the team, Christian Killow, says in the story, “Silicon carbide is very hard and very tough. It’s quite brittle but it’s very good at absorbing impact.”

But, it is not easy to build with. Killow continues, “It just kind of sits there and does nothing, so when you want to stick something to it, it’s not very easy to do.”

The Glasgow work builds on hydroxide catalysis work first pioneered and patented by Jason Gwo while he was working at at Lawrence Livermore National Lab when he was looking for a way to join very flat fused silica pieces for a telescope assembly. According to the researchers, Gwo realized that “bonding may occur between flat surfaces of a number of materials if a silicate-like network can be created between the surfaces.”

That is, the molecular structure of the surfaces can be altered in such a way as to encourage a chemical bond between them.

The resulting bonding interfaces are very thin, less than 100 nm. According to Killow, “There are a lot of things that can go wrong, but when the bonds go well they very nearly inherit the bulk strength of the materials that they’re bonding.”

The chemical bonding mechanism of hydroxide bonding is a three-step process: hydration and etching, polymerization and dehydration. Gwo used alkaline bonding solution, such as sodium or potassium hydroxide, or sodium silicate. The solution etches into the silica and causes polymerization of the surface, causing chains of molecules to form between the joining surfaces.

Chains of hydroxide molecules form naturally on the surfaces of many materials, but not on SiC. The Glasgow group formed a silica layer on the SiC surface, which provided a surface for attaching hydroxide ions by applying a hydroxide-containing bonding solution. The interaction between the hydroxide ions on the bonding surfaces creates the bond in the same way that Gwo joined fused silica pieces.

The process can be used to join SiC to itself or any number of dissimilar materials, such as sapphire, aluminum, silicon and zinc. The thinness and stability of the joint make it especially well suited for manufacturing high-precision equipment and instruments.

According to the story, the bonding process can be tailored to specific applications. But, Killow offers the caveat, “The logistics of bonding things is a strange process. It will either fail spectacularly or really work quite well. … We’re still developing the process and refining it.”

In an unusual move, the researchers have made the technology available without charge through the Easy Access IP program at UG.

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