IET Lancashire and Cumbria Events

Mike is going to take us through 30 years of processing, the interesting world of processing plastics, rubbers and composite materials for renewable applications, packing applications and aerospace automotive and we're going to have some fun!

The speaker is an experienced ex RAF fighter pilot, who was probably destined to fly the TSR2. This was not to be and he will give his personal view on the various factors that led up to the controversial cancellation in 1965 of, arguably, the most advanced strike aircraft of its time - cost, performance, innovation, politics, in-fighting, opposing cultures, information, disinformation, missing information, speculation.

Since plants may play several key roles in long-term life support systems on the Moon or Mars, it is crucial to know how plant seeds should be stored and transported across space before being germinated and grown in such systems.

The government has mandated that every household in Great Britain will be offered a smart meter by 2020. The talk will cover what led to this decision and what benefits the customer gain by having them fitted. It will cover the technology employed and why there are two generations of meter, why customers cannot switch energy supplier with the first generation and why the second generation is years behind schedule.

The Case for Carbon is about carbon capture and storage and then carbon utilisation and release of energy. All this is presented using concepts in school science and, incredibly, it benefits those who live in parts of the world where food and water are scarce.

The speaker will be talking about the landscape of UK electricity system, and how it has evolved over time. The advent of large-scale renewables and the challenges to the electricity grid they have introduced. How grid scale Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) are crucial part of the puzzle and how they are overcoming the problems introduced by growing penetration of renewable systems.

The presentation will provide an overview of the importance and progress made with recent robotics and AI (RAI) collaborations within the nuclear sector that enable safer, faster and more cost-effective mission delivery. RAI examples will cover areas such as remote handling, size reduction and digital infrastructure. Social value and impact will also be highlighted.

Nuclear fusion offers the possibility of long-term sustainable low-carbon energy, but some formidable technical challenges remain to be solved, including the fuel cycle. This talk will discuss the fuel used by fusion reactors and explore some of the challenges and potential solutions involved in providing a sustainable fusion fuel cycle.

Oil and gas fields in deep water have increasingly been exploited as the more accessible fields have become depleted. Their exploitation brings ever larger challenges for technology, scale and logistics and are a success story that is little heard about in the UK. Barrovian Tony Oldfield as, Project Director of most of the developments off Africa, has the firsthand experience to tell us about these engineering exploits.

During the 1930s, with the London Naval Treaty of 1930 placing limitations on heavy cruiser warship construction and characteristics, the US, Japanese and British navies attempted to circumvent the restrictions on heavy cruiser construction by building light cruisers (vessels with an armament no heavier than 6.1in / 155mm) of similar size and fighting power to conventional heavy cruisers with 8in artillery.

Thomas Collett will join us in April to provide an interesting analysis of "Our Universe under a Magnifying Glass".