Engineering Advances the Common Good

By Jeff Ray, SolidWorks Corp.

You know the problems: climate change, poor healthcare facilities, high adult-illiteracy rates fomenting desperation and despotism in the developing world, and mountains of garbage polluting aquifers and squandering recyclable resources. These are problems that cannot be solved by politicians, lawyers, and bankers alone because they are also engineering problems.

  So, what can the engineering industry do to help solve our pressing environmental and humanitarian problems? What engineers do best:  create great designs and products that solve insolvable problems and save lives. Every great technology that has improved the lives of humanity has sprung from the imagination, problem-solving ability, and creativity of engineers.

  Engineering students are the lifeblood of the engineering industry and authors of tomorrow’s technological breakthroughs. What’s more,  students are not afraid to try new things, address big issues, or innovate.

  The University of Dundee, Scotland (dundee.ac.uk), should be celebrated for enabling student engineers to make life better. The university nurtures student innovation by providing its engineering students with the opportunity to solve real-world, stubborn problems.

  Medical ships supported by Vine Trust (vinetrust.org) ply the Amazon River Basin offering healthcare to villagers. Since most villagers do not regularly have access to basic healthcare, many suffer from treatable conditions like glaucoma. But performing delicate procedures such as eye surgery is difficult on a rocking ship. For his final project, Universityof Dundee engineering student Iain Heneghan designed an operating room floor that remains stable regardless of passing waves. Using SolidWorks (solidworks.com) 3D CAD software to create models of the floor as well as the actuators within the ship’s hull,  Heneghan’s design deploys gyroscopes to detect the ship’s motion and to activate electric motors with screw jacks that counterbalance the ship’s rolling motions.

  Design that Matters (DtM; designthatmatters.org), a nonprofit design firm, assembles and manages collaborative design teams of student and professional engineers. These volunteer teams not only work on some of the developing world’s most intractable problems but, like the University of Dundee, they help pass the legacy of engineering from one generation of engineers to the next.

  Adult-illiteracy rates in developing countries are appalling: upward of 75 percent in some places. These are people who can’t read the directions on a medicine bottle or the LEDs on modern machinery. The inability to read prevents them from being exposed to democratic ideals. In rural regions of the West African country of Mali, where unreliable lighting and a lack of books block the will to change, the Kinkajou Projector from DtM’s student-professional engineering teams has begun to make a difference. A rugged, lightweight, low-power video projection system, the Kinkajou Projector uses a microfilm cassette to store 10,000 pages of information at a fraction of the cost of paper books. As a result, rooms full of adults in rural Mali have access to reading classes. To date, more than 4,500 adults in 45 Malian villages have learned to read using Kinkajou Projectors, according to DtM.

  This same kind of thinking translates to professional engineering careers, economic contributions, and even more solutions to global problems when applied by corporations. 

  One such company is Bouldin & Lawson (bouldinlawson.com)  of McMinnville, TN, which is addressing the threat of our own waste burying us. The Fresh Kills garbage mountain in Staten Island, NY,  is rumored to be one of two man-made structures on Earth that can be seen from space. The average American creates about 4.5 lbs. of waste each day and rising consumer populations in places like China and India promise new mountains of garbage rising worldwide.

  Seeing opportunity where others saw a mountain of trash to climb, engineers at Bouldin & Lawson designed a series of green machines and a complementary process that solves part of the household-waste problem. Deployed on a commercial scale for more than four years by WastAway (wastaway.com), Bouldin & Lawson’s sister division, the machines remove pathogens, shred waste, separate recyclable materials, and transform tons of household garbage generated by the 38,000 residents of Warren County, TN, into “Fluff.”  Fluff is a bio-benign, wood pulp-like material. Engineers have figured out how Fluff can be extruded to form building materials, cooked into a peat moss substitute, liquefied for biodiesel, or gasified for electric generation. They’re still experimenting with more uses for Fluff.

  These three engineering solutions exemplify the role engineers play in making the world a better place. Iain Heneghan’s ship-borne operating table and DtM’s collaborative effort in creating the Kinkajou Projector demonstrate that the next generation of engineers is up to the task. Engineers have always created great designs that matter. Now, more than ever,  engineers are called upon to create great designs that can save lives.

Jeff Ray is the CEO of SolidWorks Corp. of Concord,MA. Send your feedback on this subject to [email protected].