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Wet & Wired
From artisanal microbrews to thriving tech start-ups, the Emerald City has a latte to suit every interest – including engineers’.
Sleepless? In Seattle, birthplace of Starbucks and home to the highest number of independent cafés per capita in North America, it’s understandable. Yet there’s so much more to the world’s second most caffeinated city than espresso made with locally roasted Kuma beans or reality-show baristas. Reinvention is part of this former boom-and-bust timber town’s DNA, and today’s high-tech hub brims with unique cultural and culinary attractions – many an easy walk from the Washington State Convention Center, site of ASEE’s 122nd Annual Conference and Exposition.
Those unable or unwilling to hoof it have a number of public transportation options. June’s average temperatures hover in the 60s – but skies can flip from sunny to spritzy in mere seconds. These conditions brighten Seattle’s verdant cityscape, as blossoms burst from its well-watered soil after a long, gloomy winter. Take the opportunity to explore the Emerald City in transition – a state in which it always shines.
Historic Pioneer Square
Downtown Seattle owes much of its charm – and sturdy engineering – to a pot of glue in a cabinetry shop that boiled over on June 6, 1889, igniting a fire that engulfed 25 city blocks and effectively eradicated the rugged, rapidly expanding outpost on the shores of Puget Sound that Europeans had established in 1852. Rather than pack up and start over elsewhere, its hardscrabble citizenry opted to rebuild – reconstructing wharves, raising street levels (up to 22 feet in places), creating a municipal waterworks, and mandating brick or steel buildings to replace the scorched wooden structures.
This handsome architectural redux still stands in Pioneer Square, the city’s oldest neighborhood. Its original streets, buried under the post-fire rebuilding, are delightfully revealed in Bill Speidel’s Underground Tour. Wear sturdy shoes – the pioneer-era subterranean passages are bumpy and poorly lit. While older kids will enjoy the talented tour guides’ bawdy jokes and casual conviviality, the narrow tunnels and talk-heavy format are ill-suited to infants and the very elderly (also claustrophobes).
During the Klondike Gold Rush, Seattle became an essential pit stop for prospectors headed north. Shopkeepers scrambled to outfit travelers with everything from mining lessons to extreme-weather clothing, while brothel and tavern owners hawked services of a different sort. History buffs can learn more about this period at the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, located in a three-story brick building at the northwest corner of Second Avenue South and South Jackson Street (a sandwich sign marks the entrance).
Hungry after all that walking? Pioneer Square is a mini-mecca of casual Italian cuisine. Try Pizzeria Gabbiano, chef Mike Easton’s delectable homage to Roman style pizza, or his ever crowded spaghetti joint, Il Corvo Pasta. Sandwich lovers should join the line for massive porchetta and meatballs sandwiches at Salumi Artisan Cured Meat, the pork-centric shop and deli run by the family of Crocs-clad celebrity chef and Seattle native Mario Batali.
Pioneer Square, still not the safest neighborhood after dark, has several noteworthy libation spots that lure urbane crowds to its brick-lined streets. The smartly named Damn the Weather, for instance, has earned its place on many a top bar list this year, thanks to concoctions like the Bamboo Cocktail, with sherry, dry vermouth, and orange and aromatic bitters. Nearby, at charming boutique E. Smith Mercantile, cognoscenti gather at a wee back bar for gin drinks and snacks of spiced chickpeas and candied pecans. Other attractions include the recently redecorated Il Terrazzo Carmine, a popular traditional Italian restaurant, and chef Matt Dillon’s rustic-chic beauty, Bar Sajor.
Family-Friendly Seattle Center
Built to impress guests of the 1962 World’s Fair, the Seattle Center is home to the Jetsons-evoking Space Needle observation tower, along with a number of family-friendly museums and attractions. A short monorail line ferries visitors between downtown and the 74-acre park, with trains departing every ten minutes. There’s no better way to orient yourself in this lake-rich and mountain-flanked city than to take a zippy, 41-second elevator ride to the top of the 605-foot-tall needle for a 360-degree view of the city. More oohs and ahs await at the nearby Pacific Science Center, featuring a balmy tropical butterfly sanctuary, an IMAX theater, and a gang of eight robotic dinosaurs.
Be sure to save time for the massive Experience Music Project — EMP — Museum. “Dedicated to the ideas and risk-taking that fuel contemporary popular culture” and funded by Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen, the undulating aluminum building was designed by architect Frank Gehry to resemble a smashed Stratocaster. Inside, visitors rock out with state-of-the-art instruments and computerized music tutorials, ogle Star Trek costumes and other sci-fi memorabilia, and enjoy world-class gaming exhibits. There also are 55 vintage guitars on display, and an interactive sound lab.
Before leaving the center, check out the Chihuly Garden and Glass, a trippy, indoor-outdoor wonderland featuring the signature serpentine sculptures and multicolored orbs of Northwest glassblowing artist Dale Chihuly.
Downtown: Art and Soul
A ten-minute walk down Pike Street from the Washington State Convention Center lies Pike Place Market, a popular destination for 108 years. Dubbed “the soul of Seattle,” it houses an impressive array of fresh-food stands, restaurants, curio shops, the original Starbucks, and stalls selling handmade jewelry, wooden toys, and cozy slippers made with wool shorn from sheep on nearby Whidbey Island.
At the entrance to the main arcade, an ever present scrum of visitors surrounds the much-photographed fishmongers as they toss their slippery wares just beneath the market’s iconic red-neon clock. Head one level down to buy tickets to ghost tours led by Mercedes Yaeger, a market lifer whose father has run a shop here since she was seven. Guiding groups through the labyrinthine layers, she tells tales of oft-sighted ghouls like Jacob, a young boy who perished in the 1918 Spanish flu, and Princess Angeline, daughter of chief Sealth—the Duwamish tribe leader for whom the city was named.
From the market, head south down Post Alley past the infamous Gum Wall, a colorful tableau of Wrigley’s and Double Bubble chewing gum that forms the backdrop to many a tourist photo. The alley opens up to the wide Harbor Steps leading to the waterfront and the Seattle Great Wheel, located at Pier 57. A 12-minute ride on this giant Ferris wheel, opened in 2012, offers exhilarating views of Elliott Bay and the city.
It’s a short climb back up the Harbor Steps to the Seattle Art Museum on First Avenue, home to an excellent modern and contemporary art collection, innumerable African and oceanic masks, and the astonishing “Porcelain Room,” lined with warmly lit, floor-to-ceiling shelves full of fine-detailed china. World-class traveling exhibits and an uncommonly well-curated gift shop – a great spot to pick up activity-focused kid’s toys – round out the visit. Before you leave, be sure to check out Mirror by artist Doug Aiken, a glass-covered screen that covers the section of the museum’s facade at the corner of First and Union and has been described as a “living kaleidoscope.” Nearby at First and University, 48-foot-tall “Hammering Man” toils 24/7 outside the museum’s original entrance. One of a series of sculptures by Jonathan Borofsky, this kinetic metal giant features a mechanized arm and is designed to inspire, according to the artist, “the worker in all of us.”
South Lake Union: Enterprise Zone
Connected to downtown Seattle by a 1.3-mile streetcar line that locals gleefully refer to as the SLUT (South Lake Union Transit), South Lake Union is a former warehouse district characterized by squat structures and barren sidewalks. SLU was the subject of much controversy in the 1990s, when Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen backed a measure to convert the industrial wasteland into a grassy park dotted with buildings designed to attract tech and biomedical companies to Seattle. That plan was squashed at the polls, but Allen had already invested $20 million in the project, and has since swayed big-name biomedical and global health companies to set up shop here, including PATH, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and Bio-Rad.
As if one billionaire in the ’hood weren’t enough, in 2010 Jeff Bezos moved Amazon.com’s headquarters into a new set of SLU structures large enough to accommodate 30,000 employees. Local restaurateurs soon scrambled to open shiny new versions of their businesses – from high-end pizza to organic sandwiches and upscale Mexican fare – for the well-paid techies who swarm the streets at lunchtime and happy hour.
On the edge of Lake Union, the Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI) offers an afternoon’s worth of edifying entertainment for families or anyone looking to bone up on the region’s history. First opened in 1952, the museum moved to its current digs – a 50,000-square-foot former naval reserve armory building – in 2012 following an extensive renovation. Upon entering, visitors encounter an airy atrium where kids frolic around a stunning, 65-foot-tall wooden spire that artist John Grade crafted from wood that once lined the sailing schooner Wawona, used to transport lumber between California, Oregon, and Washington State through the 1940s. Capping four floors of exhibits is a top-level maritime collection with a 39-foot-long periscope that rotates 360 degrees for views of downtown Seattle, Lake Union, and the Wallingford neighborhood. (Look out for Gas Works Park, an oddly beautiful public space on the edge of the lake, featuring storybook-evoking grassy hills juxtaposed with the rusty remnants of a former coal gasification plant.)
Beer fans traveling without children should pop into the Brave Horse Tavern, the 21-and-over brew hall from famed local restaurateur Tom Douglas. While some of Douglas’s spots have descended into tourist-trap territory, this warmly lit bar boasts the warm, glowing feel of a ski-lodge pub, with live sports on screens dotted around the long, brick-lined room and two shuffleboard tables where strangers compete while sipping on a selection of microbrews that represent some of the best brands in the Northwest.
Families, meanwhile, will enjoy a trip to outdoor outfitter REI’s spectacular, 100,000-square-foot flagship store, complete with a 65-foot-tall climbing wall (single-visit reservations are available – see the REI website for details) and a two-story stone fireplace, not to mention hard-to-find equipment for all manner of outdoor activity.
Capitol Hill: Music, Oysters, and Bookshops
Northeast of downtown, Capitol Hill was once an edgy grunge-rock epicenter for 20-something counterculture types drawn to its cheap rents and hip dives. Today this highly walkable neighborhood is somewhat slicker – catering to well-compensated young professionals with chic restaurants, bars, and markets; gorgeous green spaces; and a dizzying number of first-rate coffee shops. It remains the hub of the Seattle gay and music communities, and the upshot is a diverse and energetic urban neighborhood brimming with youthful verve.
From downtown, ascend Pike Street to the southern section of the hill known as the Pike-Pine Corridor and home to the recently opened Starbucks Reserve Roastery and Tasting Room. This gleaming, 15,600-square-foot roasting facility, cafe, and restaurant kicks off the hometown corporation’s latest endeavor: high-end shops aimed at serious coffee nerds. Nearby at Melrose Market, pop into Taylor Shellfish to sample just-shucked Pacific Northwest oysters along with a list of bivalve-friendly wines. Keep walking up Pike Street, and hang a left at Tenth Avenue to reach the Elliott Bay Book Company, a city institution that charms literary types with its carefully selected texts and cozy wood interior. Around the corner is Cal Anderson Park, home to the handsome Lincoln Reservoir. First constructed in 1889 in response to the Great Seattle Fire, the park is named for Washington’s first openly gay state legislator.
Farther up the hill on 15th Avenue East, Seattle’s geeky community gathers in the café and co-working spaces at Ada’s Technical Books, outfitted with a robust collection of science-focused texts – including an entire section devoted to engineering – gadgets and games.
In the evening, serious whiskey and cocktail fans are called to Canon, a self-described “whiskey and bitters emporium” on 12th Avenue East. This warmly lit boite from famed barman Jaime Boudreau recently ranked number six on the list of the World’s Best 50 Bars, and wait times can be lengthy. It’s worth the chance to try Milk N’ Cookies – a concoction of chocolate, milk, and Ardbeg single-malt Scotch that’s served in a ceramic milk carton and accompanied by house-made Oreos laced with Fernet Branca.
Best bets for dinner include upscale Korean barbecue at Trove, old school Italian at Machiavelli, and Indian-by-way-of-the-Pacific-Northwest samplings at Poppy, a favorite of the 30-and-over crowd that tends to congregate on the north end of Broadway, the neighborhood’s main thoroughfare.
Natural Landmarks
Flanked by the Cascades and Mount Rainier, Seattle’s natural surroundings are as much a must-see as the Space Needle. Engineers may find its man-made wonders equally alluring. In a movement known as “the Seattle Spirit,” the city literally moved mountains to build locks, a canal, and the world’s largest man-made island at the mouth of the Duwamish River. Local families enjoy watching yachts and tugs parade between Puget Sound and Lake Washington through the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks, built in 1911. A 15-minute drive from downtown, the locks include a fish ladder with underwater glass panels that let visitors watch salmon as they swim upstream to spawn, typically from mid-June through September.
Sporting Life
Seattle plays in the major leagues, and both baseball and soccer will be in full swing during the ASEE annual conference. Safeco Field, the Mariners’ home base, has America’s only retractable roof, a breathtaking view of Puget Sound, and a chandelier made from 100 baseball bats. CenturyLink Field, where stomping Seahawks fans generated two small earthquakes cheering their team to a Super Bowl victory in 2014, hosts the Sounders during fútbol season. Built from recycled materials and decorated with $2 million worth of art, the stadium’s overhang protects 70 percent of its seats from the rain.
From the convention center, catch the number 13 bus (at Third and Pike) to the north end of the downtown waterfront and this nine-acre park with panoramic views and astounding works by artists such as Claes Oldenburg, Ellsworth Kelly, and Beverly Pepper. Free admission and a wide, clean path attract neighborhood joggers, who dart between tourists taking in works such as Alexander Calder’s 39-foot “Eagle,” an imposing abstract bird made from crimson-colored sheet steel. Wander through Richard Serra’s “Wake,” formed by undulating sheets of curved weathering steel, or pause on the pedestrian bridge to study Teresita Fernández’s glass-and-photo piece “Seattle Cloud Cover,” designed to catch the city’s signature moody light. Before its opening in 2007, this stretch of scenic waterfront was home to a contaminated brownfield, and its transformation from foul blight to spectacular green space serves as a vivid visual cue that this once sleepy outpost in the upper left corner of the country has staked its spot among America’s foremost cities for art, culture, and civic ingenuity.
By Jessica Voelcker
Jessica Voelcker is a freelance writer based in Seattle.
122nd Annual Conference & Exposition
The ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition is the only conference dedicated to all disciplines of engineering and engineering technology education. As the premier event of its kind, the ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition fosters an exchange of ideas, enhances teaching methods and curricula, and provides unparalleled networking opportunities for engineering and technology education stakeholders, including deans, faculty members, researchers, and industry and government professionals.
The conference features more than 400 technical sessions, with peer-reviewed papers spanning all disciplines of engineering education; distinguished lectures, including the main plenary; award receptions and banquets; the “Greet the Stars” orientation for new ASEE members and first-time conference attendees; and the ASEE Division Mixer. The Exhibit Hall is also home to several exciting events, including the “Focus on Exhibits” Welcome Reception, Brunch, Summertime Social, and Luncheon. We look forward to welcoming you to Seattle!
Last Word
The Power of an Example
Minorities and women would be drawn to engineering if more instructors looked like them.
Opinion by Carlotta A. Berry
Last November 1, I shared my experiences as a female African-American engineering professor at a small, private Midwest college in a New York Times op-ed (They Call Me Doctor Berry). In response, I received an outpouring of messages from grateful readers of all ages, genders, and races. Some, like the lone female professor in an industrial engineering department, recounted similar tales of having to “run faster and jump higher” to gain basic levels of respect, such as students using one’s formal title – a courtesy automatically afforded to male colleagues. Others described having to prove themselves every day as among the few black women on the engineering team or faculty.
One memorable post came from a white, male medical professor. He recalled his own days as a student doing clinical rounds with his best friend and classmate, a brilliant Haitian-American woman, whom attending physicians often mistook for a nurse or cleaning crew member. As a result, he now talks with his residents and students about gender, race, and ever-present biases in medicine, trying to hit the problem head-on. Another writer, who teaches a doctoral education course, intends to include my column when the class discusses professional identity and thanked me for contributing in a “small but ongoing way” to more reflective practice.
I became an engineering professor because I never had one who looked like me, acted like me, or even seemed interested in me. I was typically one of just two or three female students and often the only African-American student. I wanted to show that the profession could be cool, interesting, exciting, engaging, and, most important, diverse.
Although I went to work for industry as an engineer to pay off student loans, I pursued a Ph.D. as soon as possible and, upon graduation, selected institutions where I felt I could be a catalyst for the change I sought in the academy. I wanted to teach at a place where my efforts would be recognized and where I could really make a difference.
Finding such a school, I worked with colleagues to create a scholarship and professional development program to recruit women and underrepresented minorities to engineering (ROSE-BUD), created a multidisciplinary minor in robotics, and worked with the FIRST Robotics program to draw more K-12 students to science, engineering, and math. Every day, I share my passion for teaching while also showing that engineering is not just for nerds or boys or the dominant culture.
On some levels, I have been able to change perceptions – at least in my classroom. However, many elements of engineering have barely budged. As of 2012, ASEE data indicated that there were only 140 African-American women in the engineering professoriate. That’s about 4 percent of current female engineering faculty – an increase of 1 percent since 2001. (Between 2001 and 2012, the number of African-American engineering faculty increased from 2 to 3 percent.) In November 2013, the Institute for Women’s Policy Research stated that women of color represent only 5.7 percent of all STEM faculty.
In an effort to increase these numbers, books have been written, organizations formed, and conferences held. In fact, I joined with a small group of African-American female engineering faculty to present panels on the subject at the Frontiers in Education, National Society of Black Engineers, and Keeping Our Faculties conferences.
Statistics don’t always spur action, however. Sometimes a personal example can illuminate a problem that some may not recognize or appreciate – as I learned from the torrent unleashed by my op-ed piece. I hope my words, and my presence in the engineering classroom, will inspire others to join the mission to increase diversity and encourage more young women and minorities to pursue careers in STEM. To change perceptions, it helps if the face of the profession better reflects the world in which we live.
Carlotta A. Berry is an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute, Indiana. She can be reached at berry123@rose-hulman.edu or on twitter at @DrCABerry.
Sea Change
From melting polar ice to savage storms, the shifting global climate inspires new research – and opportunities – in naval engineering.
On September 19, 2014, a 189-meter Canadian-owned cargo ship named Nunavik left Deception Bay in northern Quebec, carrying more than 23,900 metric tons of nickel concentrate. Twenty-five days later it sailed into the Chinese port of Bayuquan after a voyage that for centuries would have seemed impossible: an unescorted transit of the fabled Northwest Passage.
The Arctic’s opening is one of the effects of climate change spurring new interest and research at several leading schools of naval engineering – an interest shared by ship operators, oil companies, and cruise lines, and by national navies and coast guards. All are affected by a new Polar Code that is scheduled to take effect at the beginning of 2017. The international agreement covers everything from crew training to ship design to protecting the environment in the frigid waters surrounding the Poles. And those seas could become more navigable: The latest Arctic Report Card released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration last month found sea and air temperatures rising faster there than in the rest of the globe, potentially affecting global security and commerce along with the environment.
“I think our students are having conversations that are long overdue in our national policymaking circles,” says Michael S. Bruno, dean of the Schaefer School of Engineering and Science at the Stevens Institute of Technology, the lead institution in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Center for Maritime, Island, and Remote and Extreme Environment Security. “Do we need at least ice-hardened vessels, containerships? Do we in the United States need more U.S.-built and U.S.-manned icebreakers?” He foresees “significant potential changes coming in the next 10 years” as vessel owners and operators make decisions about routes and ship design.
Right now, however, there are crucial gaps in our knowledge about the Arctic. “We’re not where we want to be in terms of forecasting ice formation, ice breakup, ice floe movement – that’s a challenge,” says Bruno. And it’s hard to overestimate the difficulties of operating in a hostile environment. “People know there’s ice there, but a lot of people forget that it’s dark there for six months,” cautions Bruno, noting how difficult it was to find and clean up oil in the warm, sunny Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon blowout. “Imagine doing those operations in water that is at least partially covered in ice and in the dark! Those are the kind of things that keep people awake at night.”
Eye of the Storm
As it happens, the Stevens Institute has firsthand knowledge of extreme conditions that climate change could exacerbate. Located in Hoboken, New Jersey, the school held a key card in efforts to minimize damage as Hurricane Sandy swept into New York Harbor in 2012: a robust history of graduate research in ocean observations and forecasting, and in coastal dynamics. “We played a major role in assisting NOAA in their forecast of the surge” and helped Hoboken with “evacuation and preparations,” Bruno says.
Alan F. Blumberg, director of Stevens’ Center for Marine Systems, made headlines recently with suggestions for fending off the next big storm, ranging from dropping wave- or wind-powered pumps in its path to cool the water (“The TV stations love it!” he says) to building long, slender islands off the coast to break the onslaught. “I’m all about predicting how much water’s going to come in front of your house and then trying to figure out how to reroute it,” explains Blumberg.
Another New York-area school, Webb Institute, on Long Island, has seen significant student interest in designing vessels for the Arctic. (The school offers just one program, a double major in naval architecture and marine engineering.) Rick Neilson, Webb’s dean, says he and another professor recently felt the need to talk a group of students out of picking an Arctic oil production platform as their third-year design project. “A production platform itself is a complex animal; combining it with being in the Arctic makes it even more complex,” explains Neilson. Instead, he says, the faculty suggested building an “Arctic floatel” – a vessel that could house crews coming to work on drilling platforms, serve as a resupply base, or provide a series of functions. One plus: The students had to deal with ice loads, which are not part of the regular naval architecture curriculum. “I’ve already talked to the juniors about next semester, and they’re starting to zero in on their projects,” recounts Neilson. “One of them will be an icebreaker.”
In close competition with the Arctic for Webb students’ attention is another development affecting seaborne commerce, and one that could undercut the allure of polar transits: the widening of the Panama Canal to accommodate supersize vessels. That huge engineering project itself sits at the intersection of shipping and climate change: By eliminating the need for Asian products to traverse North America by truck or rail, the canal could contribute to a net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. However, the droughts and storms anticipated as a result of a warming climate may affect water levels along the passage, stalling ship traffic.
For years, Webb’s senior design project has been a “Panamax” containership, its dimensions tailored to fit the old canal. This year’s designs will fit the widened Panama Canal – “an acknowledgment that the world has changed a little bit,” says Neilson. There’s a downside, of course. The old size, says Neilson, came with “the extra thrill of stability issues.” The new dimension “makes the stability problem less, which is not what we want. But I don’t want the students to hear me say that.”
Capstone Designs
The shipping challenges presented by polar ice occupy a special place for seniors at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut. Cmdr. Thomas DeNucci, who teaches ship design, cut his teeth on icebreakers. His first assignment after graduating from the academy in 1998 was in New Orleans, where the icebreaker USCGC Healy was under construction. He sailed aboard Healy for three and a half years, and then worked in Seattle in support of the Coast Guard’s aging fleet of polar icebreakers.
Because the Coast Guard’s mandate extends to both national security and commercial missions, the academy typically asks half its cadets to work on projects involving Coast Guard vessels for their senior design course. The other half focuses on commercial vessels. This academic year, “we have the commercial team designing what we call an Arctic multipurpose support vessel,” DeNucci says. “That’s a mouthful, but it describes what we’re really getting at,” he adds, ticking off possible functions from vessel escort to personnel transport, cruise-ship support, pollution response, towing, and ice management.
The concept mirrors developments in the shipbuilding industry. In 2012, Louisiana-based Edison Chouest Offshore built a 110-meter ice-class vessel, Aiviq, to support Shell’s $4.5 billion bid to drill for oil in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas. Designed for multiple missions, including handling anchors, towing, firefighting, light ice management, and personnel support, it even has a small hospital unit. The project went astray that New Year’s Eve, however, when the drill rig Kulluk ran aground as the support fleet was retreating to its winter home in Alaska.
Alaska is also the home of Sikuliaq, an 80-meter ice-strengthened vessel that at the end of 2014 was heading to its homeport of Seward, where the School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences at the University of Alaska Fairbanks will operate it as an oceanographic research ship for the National Science Foundation.
Watching Arctic research closely is James Bond, director of shared technology at the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS), one of several classification societies around the world that set standards for vessels and equipment and check that shipyards and operators are following the rules – an oversight role on which all marine insurance depends. In 2009, ABS set up a Harsh Environment Technology Center at Memorial University in Newfoundland to support applied research on vessels and structures operating in ice-covered waters, low-temperature environments, and severe winds and waves.
Burning Questions
Driving the surge in harsh-climate marine engineering is the abundance of untapped natural resources that lie under the icy polar seas. Though just 6 percent of the Earth’s surface, the Arctic could hold some 13 percent of the entire planet’s undiscovered oil reserves and 30 percent of its undiscovered natural gas — 84 percent of which is offshore, according to a 2008 estimate by the U.S. Geological Survey. As oil and gas exploration ventures into deeper water and more extreme environments, notes ABS, the industry must develop new ice forecasting and management solutions to ensure safe operations of its floating structures. Already, technologies are under development to model the performance of ice breakers under different conditions and maneuvers.
Bond, who is based in Houston, sits on one of the panels at the International Maritime Organization (IMO) that developed the Polar Code. In recent industry magazine articles, he has scoped out the need for research in a number of critical areas. They include the physics of ice-vessel interaction, such as how a moored drill ship can stay on station amid drifting ice; ice-load predictions and breaking, clearing, or towing ice near installations; mooring technologies for disconnecting and reconnecting units in ice-infested waters; winterization; corrosion; and designing vessels for remote Arctic locations that have greater capacity for stores, fuel, and spare parts.
Take just one practical problem: how to set a safe design service temperature for operating a crane at 30 degrees below zero.
“Temperature is not as straightforward as you might think,” Bond explained in an interview. “A lot of the design service rules out there right now statistically use the mean daily average temperature. We’re pushing a change to use the mean daily low temperature. Practically nobody ever thinks about the average temperature during the day; they either think of the high or the low.”
Things then get “even more tricky. If we say it’s going to be minus 35, the question is, how long is it going to be minus 35? Because if it’s only going to be minus 35 for three hours, then maybe there’s just some things you don’t do during those three hours. If your certification point for a crane is minus 30, maybe you just don’t use the crane if it gets lower than that.”
Bond contends more research is needed into polar ice, which extends from the shoreline out, and then comes up against the permanent pack. “It’s rotating and they’re grinding against each other, and they’re making all kinds of nasty features for transits,” he says. Moreover, ice loss isn’t linear: The year 2012 marked an extreme low for the amount of ice in the Arctic, generating headlines. “There is definitely a trend – but 2012 looks like it may have been an anomaly,” cautions Bond.
ABS has a double interest in supporting university research. One is outreach: In 2014, it brought aboard 40 recent graduates in naval architecture. It’s also interested in filling in gaps in data. At the University of Michigan, for example, ABS is supporting work in such areas as computational fluid dynamics and robotic vehicles for underwater hull inspection.
Interest in Arctic shipping is leading to new research collaborations. At Newfoundland’s Memorial University, for example, engineering Ph.D. students like Doug Smith are researching how to make seas safer at the top of the world through a recently launched four-school consortium sponsored by Lloyd’s Register Foundation. The Joint Center of Excellence for Arctic Shipping and Operations includes Finland’s Aalto University, the University of Helsinki, and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Beyond being able to conduct important research, students can spend time at a partner school and establish their professional network.
While the melting Northwest Passage is a powerful example of both the effects of climate change and the engineering opportunities opening up as a result, it’s just one element of a broader environmental outlook at naval engineering schools. A Michigan freshman design-build course features not only an underwater robot but guest lectures on life-cycle assessment. Matthew Collette, an assistant professor of naval engineering, says the lesson is “basically environmental impact assessment, and carbon is a big part of that.”
The struggle to reduce emissions is having a huge impact on the marine industry – the port of Long Beach has led the way in the United States on mitigating pollution from vessels’ smokestacks. Collette, who is also founding director of Michigan’s Marine Structures Design Lab, says students are looking for alternatives to diesel, such as liquefied natural gas. Like the Coast Guard Academy’s DeNucci, Collette also finds increased interest in the Arctic among students working on capstone projects. Two or three have looked at intervention, maintenance, and repair vessels for oil wells, he says, “and I’ve had one LNG tanker designed to exploit the passage over Siberia from the Russian Arctic to Japan.”
Arctic shipping promises to keep students, researchers, and designers occupied for years to come, if the Nunavik’s progress is any indication. The powerful icebreaker will ply the Canadian Arctic year round, hauling nickel concentrate from a Deception Bay mine to Europe and returning with equipment and fuel.
By Peter Meredith
Freelance writer and editor Peter Meredith has more than 30 years’ experience writing about shipbuilding and maritime affairs.
Design by Nicola Nittoli