Self Cooling Engines
Modern cars and trucks run on reciprocating (piston) engines. In essence, these engines convert fuel into mechanical motion. However, they also generate heat as a by-product. A part of the mechanical design of a car/truck engine is devoted to dissipating this heat. Typical technologies involve the use of radiator that adds up weight and occupies space.
Can you design the next generation of reciprocating diesel engines for a 100HP truck with a brake thermal efficiency of at least 35%.
* The space available for housing the engine system remains the same
* Cooling should be without radiators as well as be environmentally friendly
* Fully loaded truck should be able to travel nonstop for 24 hours
You are, of course, free to alter the geometry and base materials of the engine.
Diesel Engine Reference book --- Challen, Baranescu
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air-cooled
http://www.adiabatics.com/adiabatic%20engine.htm
Train Informatics
Imagine you are a station master in a train station of the 21st century. A train went by your station without stopping. Is it possible for you to design a communication device or system by which it will be possible to capture all essential knowledge of the train passing by; for example length, number of bogies, speed, etc? How far you go towards determining the characteristics of the rolling stock, i.e. passenger coaches, goods compartments, etc? Note that you are not allowed to make additions to the train. However, you have control over the track near your station and you can install wired or wireless devices on your station premises.
You can review some of the existing products that GE offers in this area such as hot bearing detection, hot wheel detection are available at www.getransportation.com/na/en/signalingcommunications.html
Please note that some of the products require additions to the train and may not measure all the parameter of interest from the train. The solution you develop will have to be lowest possible cost and should consider weather, people, and environment into consideration. You will be evaluated on getting the maximum data about the train with the lowest cost solution.
Home Energy Solution
One can easily imagine a typical house in an Indian city equipped with several electrical appliances such as TV, audio system, personal computer, lamps, ceiling fans, air conditioner, refrigerator, washing machine, water heater, electric oven, food mixer, vacuum cleaner, electric iron etc. All of these devices essentially draw electricity and do not run at 100% efficiency. Apart from the unavoidable losses due to limited efficiencies of these devices, substantial energy gets wasted in the form of unused heat, light and mechanical energy due to design limitations of these devices and negligence on part of the user. The total electrical energy used in a small family home may range from 4 to 10 kWH per day. Added to this one hour of daily gas stove usage in kitchen may spend 3-6 kWH heat every day. Again, not all heat produced by burning gas goes in cooking food.
On the other hand, we do receive enormous energy from nature in the form of wind and solar radiation right at the walls, roofs and windows of a house. Solar power received may be as high as 1.3 kW/m2 on a bright sunny afternoon.
Notwithstanding the future improvements by appliance manufacturers in the energy management of their products and increased awareness among the users about the energy crises, some energy will continue to get wasted in the form of unwanted / unused heat, light and mechanical energy.
The challenge is to build a portable device that will use only this normally wasted energy and / or the free natural energy received in the house to provide 20 Watt-hour energy for at least 1 hour duration, without increasing the normal energy expenditure towards each individual appliance in a house.
Early Detection for Disease Management
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease that spreads through contact with an infected person. The mycobaterium tuberculosis germs are transmitted through air droplets during coughing and sneezing. Appropriate antibiotic therapy for a TB patient can quickly reduce the risk of them infecting others. So, early diagnosis of infected patients can ultimately stop the spread of the disease. While the diagnosis of TB is well studied and many methods are available (skin test, sputum culture, chest X-ray, blood tests) these tests are time consuming and not always conclusive.
Currently there are 5 ways to detect TB:
· Manteux Test (requires at least 2-10 weeks of response time)
· Sputum Test (requires 6 weeks of culture)
· X-ray test (specific for lung TB, and not a confirmatory test)
· PCR based Blood test (Very sensitive but can keep be positive in latent infections)
· Protein based Blood test (sensitive but can keep be positive in latent infections)
The challenge is can you propose a method that is rapid (less than 20minutes), accurate (accuracy > 90%), can diagnose TB early within 10-15 days of first reported symptoms (fever and persistent cough for 2-3 weeks)? Remember that 2 out of 5 people in India carry the tuberculosis germ, but do not have active disease and will not infect others (so beware of false positives).
Reference material
http://www.medicinenet.com/tuberculosis/page4.htm#tocf
http://www.tbalert.org/resources/paper_pub/back_to_basics/watson.pdf
http://www.cdc.gov/Features/TBsymptoms/
http://www.tulipgroup.com/Zephyr_New/product_range.htm#
http://www.standardia.com/
http://www.professionalbiotech.net/pdf/MTB%20COMPLEX%20.pdf
http://www.labtestsonline.org/understanding/analytes/afb_culture/glance.html
All the above stuff u can get
geedisonchallenge
No comments:
Post a Comment