Programme
Meetings are held on the first Wednesday of each month in the East Horsley Village Hall, Kingston Avenue, KT24 6QT, off the B2039 just south of Horsley Railway Station, (OS Ref. TQ090542; phone 01483 285019). The meetings normally start at 10:15 for coffee. Partners are welcome; no attendance fee is payable. Parking at the Hall is very restricted and members are requested to make best use of the space available.
Technical meetings are indicated below by #. Funding assistance is supplied by the IET.
The programme for 2010 can be found here and that for 2011 can be found here.
The committee tries to determine the programme for some time in the future. Inevitably it it possible that talks many months ahead may be subject to change.
| 2012 | ||
| February 1st | Improving sustainability in new and existing homes# We live in a world with dwindling resources, increased reliance on energy supplies from unstable areas and the need to minimise our impact on the environment. The government has set very demanding CO2 reduction targets as we move towards a low-carbon economy, and we are regularly exhorted 'to do our bit' for the environment. This presents us with numerous economic, technical and social challenges which require us to increase efficiency, innovate, and improve our skill base to meet these challenges. This talk focuses on the domestic building stock and what is being done to improve its energy efficiency and sustainability. With new dwellings there is a drive towards 'zero carbon' homes in terms of the energy that occupants use, but they also need to be more sustainable with respect to their other impacts - the materials used, the waste produced, the water consumed, etc. Existing dwellings have considerably more impact not only because the stock is so vast in comparison but also because much of it performs so poorly. The talk will look in detail at the challenges faced and the technical solutions being advocated to improve the performance of our homes. |
Richard Hartless, Associate Director, Housing Group, Building Research Establishment |
| March 7th | Atkinson's High Efficiency Engines # The talk describes the successful attempts to build practical engines based on a sound theoretical idea, first put forward by James Atkinson in the 1880's, which offers an improved thermal efficiency over that of the usual four stroke Otto cycle. After first discussing the theory of the Atkinson cycle, the talk briefly outlines Atkinson's early life and patents leading up to the formation of the British Gas Engine and Engineering Company. The medal winning 'Differential' engine and the very successful 'Cycle' engine are described together with the comprehensive Society of Arts Trials of 1888, which pitted the engine against three other engine types. Atkinson's story ends with his final engine, the 'Utilité', and the subsequent demise of the Company. The withdrawal of Atkinson from the scene did not signal the end of engines operating on the Atkinson cycle; four more very different machines have been constructed, tested, and sold, over the course of the past one hundred years. These are the Holzwarth Turbine, the Humphrey Pump, the Citroën Andreau Motor and, more recently, the engine of the Toyota Prius Hybrid motor car. The paper examines the operation and thermal efficiency of these designs. Ed Marshall served an Indentured Apprenticeship in Agricultural Engineering and, following service in the Royal Air Force, he joined British Petroleum Research, carrying out studies into the relationship between engines and their fuels. In 1978 he was elected to a Fellowship at Cambridge University where he spent a number of years investigating combustion in 'lean burn' engines. He returned to BP to set up, and run, a facility designed to carry out fundamental combustion studies in reciprocating engines using Laser Doppler Anemometry. Upon retirement from BP he ran his own consultancy for 10 years. He has published a number of papers and technical articles and is the editor of a book on motor gasoline. He is an active member of the Newcomen Society |
E.L. Marshall, C Eng. MIMech E., Member of Newcomen Society |
| April 4th | What is a leadership - Taking Ernest Shackleton as an example Ivar commanded the Commando Logistics Regiment, Royal Marines, during the Falklands War, and was responsible for the logistics for the land battle. He specialised in Mountain and Winter Warfare as well as serving with Special Forces. Since active service, Ivar has specialised in asymmetric risk; security; risk and crisis management; military logistics and counter-terrorism; lecturing extensively at Cranfield University's Defence Academy. Ivar is also a member of the Harvard Group U.S. think tank. His MPhil was on militant Islam and the roots of Islamic Jihad. Ivar is an avid mountaineer having conquered peaks in the Alps and Himalayas, culminating in the 1976 Mount Everest expedition and leading the successful Sasar Kangri expedition in the Karakoram in 1987. He is Patron of Peak Leaders. Ivar is also a Guest Speaker on Cunard Liners. |
Colonel (Retd) Ivar Hellberg OBE MPhil FRGS |
| May 2nd | AGM followed by Is Everything Electromagnetic? # The title "Is everything electromagnetic?" asks whether electromagnetism is the key to the formation of a theory of everything (ToE). A ToE joins all branches of physics together into a coherent framework. But is this at all possible without significant changes in all areas of physics? Will some cherished preconceptions have to go to the wall? The talk is at a general science level and summarises and leads on from a paper presented in the PIERS conference in Marrakesh in March 2011: "A physical model of electro-magnetism for a theory of everything", available in PIERS Online, Vol.7, No. 2, 196-200, 2001 . |
Prof Michael Hill has an Oxford degree in Physics and a Surrey PhD in Electronics. He spent 31 years in industry (MRL, PRL, MEL and Thorn-EMI) and 14 years as Professor of Electronics etc. at Surrey. He was founder and Research Director of Toric (an SME tackling on-chip time jitter and phase noise) for 10 years. He is CEO of Underhill Research Ltd supplying scientific research services to academe, industry and government (MoD). |
| June 6th | Displays in the flat panel age and the technologies behind them # That the days of the Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) are numbered is not news. We are now confronted with a baffling new array of acronyms, but it is the technology behind the Plasma, LCD, LED backlights, SED and OLED displays which interests engineers! What other display technologies may appear in the years to come? How do 3D displays work? Could they work better in the future? All this, along with the inevitable questions about what type of TV to buy (well, it depends…), will be covered! Richard is a Lead Research Engineer at BBC R&D, with particular expertise in TV colorimetry and display technology, and as one of the UK's pioneers in HDTV research, has a deep technical understanding of the entire image chain from the studio set and its lighting, via the camera, compression systems, to the display and the viewer's impression of that image. He is chairman of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) project group on Displays, and is also active in the EBU's Beyond HD and LED Lighting technical groups, and the UK Digital TV Group. He is a member of the SMPTE, the Society for Information Display and the IET. |
Richard Salmon, Lead Research Engineer, Displays and HDTV specialist |
| July 4th 2.30pm | Cream Tea followed by The Thames (sewage) Tunnel project # |
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| August 1st | TBA | |
| September 5th | Formula I cars development and design # McLaren: The MP4-12C project and current Formula 1 Cars |
Richard Farquhar CEng MIMechE |
Past Meetings
| 2012 | ||||
| January 4th |
| Paul Whittle | ||
