Civil Engineering News

June 15, 2024

Top Headlines

Nanosized Blocks Spontaneously Assemble in Water to Create Tiny Floating Checkerboards

June 13, 2024 — Researchers have engineered nanosized cubes that spontaneously form a two-dimensional checkerboard pattern when dropped on the surface of water. The work presents a simple approach to create complex ...

Quantum Dots and Metasurfaces: Deep Connections in the Nano World

June 12, 2024 — A team has developed printable, highly efficient light-emitting ...

From Seashells to Cement, Nature Inspires Tougher Building Material

June 11, 2024 — Inspired by the material that makes up oyster and abalone shells, engineers have created a new cement composite that is 17 times more crack-resistant than standard cement and 19 times more able to stretch and deform without breaking. The findings ...

Newly Developed Material Logs and Stores Stress Information of Infrastructure

June 6, 2024 — A new material may be the key to quickly flag damaged infrastructure. This material offers a way to reduce the manpower required to regularly monitor structures that undergo daily use such as ...

Latest Headlines

updated 8:58pm EDT

New Dart Launcher May Be Better Way to Inject Animals With Drugs

June 13, 2024 — A new type of dart launcher has been developed as a safer and more cost-effective alternative to firearms or air guns to inject animals with drugs or tracking ...

Accelerating the R&D of Wearable Tech: Combining Collaborative Robotics, AI

June 4, 2024 — Engineers have developed a model that combines machine learning and collaborative robotics to accelerate the design of aerogel materials used in wearable heating ...

A New Way of Designing Auxetic Materials

June 4, 2024 — Auxetics defy common sense, widening when stretched and narrowing when compressed. Researchers have now made the process of using them much easier, paving the way for new types of auxetic products -- ...

Innovative Demand Strategies for Clean Energy

June 4, 2024 — A perspective piece describes innovative strategies that significantly reduce both resource consumption and fossil fuel ...

Combining Simulations and Experiments to Get the Best out of Fe3Al

May 30, 2024 — Researchers combined computer simulations and transmission electron microscopy experiments to better understand the ordering mobility and formation of microstructure domains in Fe3Al alloy. They were ...

Researchers Create Materials With Unique Combo of Stiffness, Thermal Insulation

May 29, 2024 — Researchers have demonstrated the ability to engineer materials that are both stiff and capable of insulating against heat. This combination of ...

Wind Farms Are Cheaper Than You Think -- And Could Have Prevented Fukushima, Says Global Review

May 28, 2024 — Offshore wind could have prevented the Fukushima disaster, according to a review of wind ...

Performance of Eco-Friendly Cooling Applications Enhanced

May 28, 2024 — Researchers have developed a sustainable and controllable strategy to manipulate interfacial heat transfer, paving the way for improving the performance of eco-friendly cooling in various ...

Researchers Design New Metal-Free Porous Framework Materials

May 22, 2024 — Researchers have used computational design methods to develop non-metal organic porous framework materials, with potential applications in areas such as catalysis, water capture or hydrogen ...

Researchers Introduce Programmable Materials to Help Heal Broken Bones

May 21, 2024 — Natural materials like bone, bird feathers and wood have an intelligent approach to physical stress distribution, despite their irregular architectures. However, the relationship between stress ...

Diagnosing Damaged Infrastructure from Space

June 6, 2024 — Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) remote sensing systems allow researchers to inspect and characterize pavements, retaining walls, and embankments from space and can help determine if there are flaws ...

Best of Both Worlds: Innovative Positioning System Enhances Versatility and Accuracy of Drone-Viewpoint Mixed Reality Applications

June 5, 2024 — Researchers have developed an innovative positioning system that enhances the versatility and accuracy of drone-viewpoint mixed reality (MR) applications by aligning real and virtual world ...

Traffic Speeds Decrease When Bike Lane Is Present

June 3, 2024 — Researchers conducting a study at a high-traffic intersection in a Jersey Shore town have found that the installation of a bike lane along the road approaching the convergence reduced driving ...

Blueprints of Self-Assembly

May 20, 2024 — Scientists have taken a step closer to replicating nature's processes of self-assembly. The study describes the synthetic construction of a tiny, self-assembled crystal known as a ...

What Is the Carbon Footprint of a House in Japan?

May 15, 2024 — Researchers conducted a comprehensive analysis on the carbon footprint of constructing a wooden house in Japan. The team found that the estimated carbon footprint of a house in Japan is 38 tons of ...

Green Concrete Recycling Twice the Coal Ash Is Built to Last

May 15, 2024 — New modelling reveals that low-carbon concrete can recycle double the amount of coal ash compared to current standards, halve the amount of cement required and perform exceptionally well over ...

Getting Dirty to Clean Up the Chemical Industry's Environmental Impact

May 9, 2024 — The global chemical industry is a major fossil fuel consumer and climate change contributor; however, new research has identified how the sector could clean up its green credentials by getting ...

Bio-Inspired Materials' Potential for Efficient Mass Transfer Boosted by a New Twist on a Century-Old Theory

May 7, 2024 — The natural vein structure found within leaves -- which has inspired the structural design of porous materials that can maximize mass transfer -- could unlock improvements in energy storage, ...

Caterbot? Robatapillar? It Crawls With Ease Through Loops and Bends

May 6, 2024 — Engineers created a catapillar-shaped robot that splits into segments and reassembles, hauls cargo, and crawls through twisting ...

The Clues for Cleaner Water

May 6, 2024 — By using experimental electrochemical analyses, mass spectrometry, and computational quantum chemistry modeling, the researchers created an 'atomic-scale storyline' to explain how ozone is ...

This Highly Reflective Black Paint Makes Objects More Visible to Autonomous Cars

May 2, 2024 — Driving at night might be a scary challenge for a new driver, but with hours of practice it soon becomes second nature. For self-driving cars, however, practice may not be enough because the lidar ...

Marriage of Synthetic Biology and 3D Printing Produces Programmable Living Materials

May 1, 2024 — Scientists are harnessing cells to make new types of materials that can grow, repair themselves and even respond to their environment. These solid 'engineered living materials' are made by ...

Innovation Promises to Prevent Power Pole-Top Fires

Apr. 30, 2024 — Engineers in Australia have found a new way to make power-pole insulators resistant to fire and electrical sparking, promising to prevent dangerous pole-top fires and reduce blackouts. Pole-top fires ...

Details of Hurricane Ian's Aftermath Captured With New Remote Sensing Method

Apr. 29, 2024 — Using aerial imagery data and LiDAR, a study remotely identified the hardest-hit areas of Southwest Florida's Estero Island in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian. Researchers estimated the extent of ...

Pattern Formation in the Nano-Cosmos

Apr. 24, 2024 — A new model extends the theory of elastic phase separation towards nanoscopic structures. Such patterns are frequent in biological systems and also used in nano-engineering to create structural ...

Novel Material Supercharges Innovation in Electrostatic Energy Storage

Apr. 18, 2024 — Scientists have developed artificial heterostructures made of freestanding 2D and 3D membranes that have an energy density up to 19 times higher than commercially available ...

An Ink for 3D-Printing Flexible Devices Without Mechanical Joints

Apr. 18, 2024 — Researchers are targeting the next generation of soft actuators and robots with an elastomer-based ink for 3D printing objects with locally changing mechanical properties, eliminating the need for ...

Clearing the Air: Wind Farms More Land Efficient Than Previously Thought

Apr. 17, 2024 — Wind power is a source of energy that is both affordable and renewable. However, decision-makers have been reluctant to invest in wind energy due to a perception that wind farms require a lot of land ...

A Smarter City Skyline for Flood Safety

Apr. 9, 2024 — With climate change and rising urbanization, the likelihood and severity of urban flooding are increasing. But not all city blocks are created equal. Researchers investigated how urban layout and ...

Building Blocks for Greener Energy: Reconfigurable Elastic Metasurface

Apr. 2, 2024 — Energy harvesting, an eco-friendly technology, extends beyond solar and wind power in generating electricity from unused or discarded energy in daily life, including vibrations generated by passing ...