Nanosystems and Mechanical Engineers

The term 'mechanical engineering' generally describes the branch of engineering that deals with the design and construction and operation of machines and other mechanical systems. Students training to become engineering professionals have to delve into subjects such as instrumentation and measurement, thermodynamics, statics and dynamics, heat transfer, strengths of materials and solid mechanics with instruction in CAD and CAM, energy conversion, fluid dynamics and mechanics, kinematics, hydraulics and pneumatics, engineering design and so on. If you are currently doing coursework in mechanical engineering, better add nanotechnology courses to your core curriculum.

Back in April, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) convened more than 120 engineering and science leaders from 19 countries representing industry, academia and government in Washington, DC to imagine what mechanical engineering will become between now and 2028. They identified the elements of a shared vision that mechanical engineering will collaborate as a global profession over the next 20 years to develop engineering solutions that foster a cleaner, healthier, safer and sustainable world.

One of the key conclusions from this Global Summit on the Future of Mechanical Engineering was that nanotechnology and biotechnology will dominate technological development in the next 20 years and will be incorporated into all aspects of technology that affect our lives on a daily basis. Bio- and nanotechnologies will provide the building blocks that future engineers will use to solve pressing problems in diverse fields including medicine, energy, water management, aeronautics, agriculture and environmental management. Mechanical engineers over the next two decades will be called upon to develop technologies that foster a cleaner, healthier, safer and sustainable global environment" reads one of the key statements from the summit's final report "2028 Vision for Mechanical Engineering". As it is becoming more and more obvious that biotechnologies and nanotechnologies lie at the core of technological innovation, many of the greatest opportunities for mechanical engineers lie in the intersection of these two fields of technology. If you follow this argument, than mechanical engineering will become THE field to get into if you want to make the world a better place. Among the many interesting trends and ideas captured by the ASME report are two particularly intriguing conclusions: the curriculum for mechanical engineers must be restructured to include addressing the needs of destitute people; and because globalization has made the world 'flat', a convergence of emerging technologies will drastically change how engineers work and create a renaissance for engineering entrepreneurs that actually strengthens local operations.

Source: https://www.nanowerk.com/spotlight/spotid=6791.php

Advances in nanoengineering expand the mechanical engineer’s toolbox. Naturally occurring materials have a certain range of material properties and functions that most mechanical engineers have utilized. In contrast, nanoengineered materials can be designed to provide enhanced properties such as biochemical sensitivity, mechanical strength, selective transport, thermal or electrical conductivity, and optical properties. 

“Although the underlying science of nanotechnology is interesting and important, most mechanical engineers tend to focus on the parts of nanoengineering that best support their own particular design needs,” says Carol Livermore, associate professor of mechanical engineering at Northeastern University in Boston, MA. “For example, the strong, lightweight, high-conductivity nature of carbon nanomaterials makes them of high interest to MEs working on airborne and space applications.”

Products created with nanoengineering can often be incorporated into a mechanical engineer’s current work, with only a little additional training or education to use them effectively. An example is the integration of carbon nanotube yarns or sheets into airborne or space applications as shielding or electrical conductors. 

owever, not all nanotech products can be used immediately; instead they require further testing to see if they work as intended in macroscale applications. The special properties of nanoengineered materials and structures are enabled by their tiny sizes. “When larger-scale systems take advantage of nanoengineering, their properties are determined by large ensembles of nanoscale structures and how they interact with each other and with the rest of the system,” Livermore says.

This can frustrate engineers at times—often the properties of larger-scale systems that use nanoengineered elements are less exceptional than the properties of the individual nanoscale elements themselves. 

The specialized properties of nanomaterials continue to improve the performance of many products and processes. A good example is additive manufacturing and 3D printing—the most disruptive force in manufacturing is becoming even more so, thanks to new nanotechnology applications.

For example, Rutgers University researchers have developed a method for binding nanomaterials during additive manufacturing that could lead to faster and less-expensive manufacturing of flexible thin film devices, such as touch screens. The “intense pulsed light sintering” method uses high-energy light over an area nearly 7,000 times larger than a laser spot to fuse nanomaterials in seconds.   

Engineers at the California Institute of Technology have discovered a way to 3D-print the smallest complex nanoscale metal structures ever created, with diameters of  roughly 1/1000th the size of the tip of a sewing needle. The process involves mixing metal ions with organic ligands to create a structure that is then heated and shrunk at temperatures as high as 1,000 °C.

In September 2017 researchers from HRL Laboratories developed a new method for 3D printing high-strength metals and alloys using a technique called “nanoparticle functionalization.” The process involves placing specially selected nanoparticles over layers of high-strength metal alloy powders. During subsequent melting and solidification, the nanoparticles act as nucleation sites for the desired alloy microstructure, which retains its full alloy strength. Further, the researchers did not need to be nanoparticle experts themselves: to determine which nanoparticles had the properties they needed, they consulted a materials data firm that reduced the material possibilities from hundreds of thousands to only a few.

Source: https://www.asme.org/engineering-topics/articles/manufacturing-design/nano-engineerings-new-frontier