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| Portraits 2020

reading time: 3 min

Aerospace students revive Leonardo da Vinci’s aerial screw (and turn it into an electric personal aerial vehicle for today)

In the midst of the corona pandemic, five aerospace engineering students from Delft University of Technology designed a vertical take-off and landing vehicle based on Leonardo da Vinci’s Aerial Screw and demonstrated its feasibility and physics.

reading time: 3 min

‘We are showing how we can take something as dramatic as Covid-19 and use it to develop world-class scientific research’

For years, Distinguished Professor Smart Urban Mobility Serge Hoogendoorn had been dreaming of a sensor network for research into traffic flows. The fact that it would happen on the TU Delft campus was never part of the dream. A perfect case of “never waste a good crisis”.

reading time: 3 min

‘The lines of contact were suddenly a lot shorter because of coronavirus’

TPM student Zara-Vé van Tetterode was chair of the Delft Student Council when coronavirus arrived. She is very positive about the cooperation with the Executive Board during the crisis, but she also sees how coronavirus threatens the mental health of students.

reading time: 4 min

‘It’s the practical choices you make that shape your moral values, not the other way round’

What moral choices do we make during the coronavirus crisis and why? Researcher Caspar Chorus discusses taboos, moral lullabies and misconceptions about the foundations of our behaviour.

reading time: 5 min

‘We’ve achieved a nice modus operandi’

You need a lot of practical training to become a mechanical engineer. So how do you achieve that for 2,500 Bachelor's students in the time of coronavirus? Programme Director René Delfos has quite a job on his hands, but he's keeping on top of it thanks to the help of colleagues like John Lander from Campus Real Estate.

reading time: min

‘I woke up in the middle of the night and just knew: we would build this platform’

What do you do when the coronavirus crisis brings your student project to a halt?
For Eco-Runner Team Manager Antonios Kouzelis it was an easy decision:
arrange an alternative! Besides which he and two friends also set up the website
kiezeninquarantaine.nl (choosing while in quarantine), just like that.

reading time: 3 min

‘Rapid development of LEDs offers all kinds of medical potential’

You can use ultraviolet light from LEDs to combat coronavirus. But it’s not as simple as commercial providers are presenting it right now, concludes Professor Guoqi Zhang. On the need for a sound scientific basis and the potential for LEDs in medical applications.

reading time: 4 min

‘Coronavirus has brought the service team closer to the faculty’

The buildings were virtually empty and an icy silence filled the corridors, but colleagues in Service Cluster 3 have continued their hard work since the outbreak of coronavirus.

reading time: 4 min

‘This is the kind of education students have been asking for’

reading time: 4 min

‘Making big problems manageable and solving them: that’s what we do as engineers’

Switching to online education in the middle of the semester wasn’t easy for anyone, but how do you do that for a course in which building and testing are so important? Lecturer Michiel Schuurman took it as an opportunity to innovate the production process.

reading time: 4 min

‘We were able to crowdsource professional assistance from across the world’

When Covid-19 struck, Anteneh Tesfaye Tola worried about family and friends in Ethiopia. Supported by the Delft Global Initiative, he was able to take some time off from his PhD research to focus on developing design guidelines for the setting up of emergency medical facilities in Ethiopia. In that way, he was able to assist his country from afar.

reading time: 5 min

‘Once the dust had settled, it was time to focus on quality’

Developing an online course normally takes about nine months. So when all education had to be provided online in mid-March, Teaching & Learning Services had to pull out all the stops. Learning Developers coordinator Sofia Dopper reflects on a hectic period, which also gave satisfaction.

reading time: 5 min

‘They were difficult months, but also some of the best’

Professor Jaap Harlaar (3mE) had 25 students with no internships to go to but also saw a looming shortage of ventilators. Combining the two brought about OperationAIR, a textbook example of fast-track medical innovation.

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reading time: 6 min

Making corrosion a soft target

Corrosion is a plague to aviation and countless other sectors worldwide. Paul Denissen is literally targeting this phenomenon: with his ‘Corrosion Imager’ he can display the presence of corrosion in high resolution and real-time.

reading time: 5, 5 min

And the winner is... three graduation research projects into circular building systems receive awards

Can the current system of linear production methods and consumption patterns be transformed into a circular economy with more value retention? The three winners of the first circularity prize for budding architects are convinced it is possible. For example, there is no need to throw out insulating glass because it has signs of wear and tear, and houses can be constructed of locally grown hemp.

reading time: 4 min

Understanding complex coral reef coasts

Fringing coral reefs provide a sheltered habitat for many sea animals and are a snorkelers’ paradise. But they also form a natural barrier which protects the shoreline and the area further inland. Experiments using 3D printed replicas of a coral are helping Marion Tissier gain an insight into how coral reefs influence and dampen wave energy.

reading time: 6 min

Tasty vegetables from a smart greenhouse

A smart greenhouse that calculates when vegetables need water and more heat. That’s what professor Tamás Keviczky from TU Delft’s 3mE faculty is working on. This approach cuts costs and is good for the environment.

reading time: 4 min

Showcase ‘P-lab’: urban raw materials in a small-scale circular economy

Urban food and material chains contain huge amounts of valuable materials, a considerable proportion of which is still lost as waste. Take phosphorus for example, an indispensable and irreplaceable nutrient. Whilst the global supplies of phosphates contained in ores are steadily diminishing, we all excrete them in our urine where they return to the environment via sewers, mixed with other substances. Researchers at TU Delft demonstrate an alternative with their mobile mini-lab in a shipping container which has been built in a plot near to the AMS Institute, to be tested within the context of an urban living lab.

reading time: 5 min

What can mussel shells teach us about the circular economy?

In a circular economy, design is about more than just creating a sustainable product. In this system based on eliminating waste and minimising the use of resources, the design process is aimed at preserving the value of products and materials and keeping them in the economic system for as long as possible. So how do you do that? PhD candidate Marita Sauerwein came up with a novel material based on ground mussel shells and showed through 3D printing technology that the end life of a product is really just the beginning.

reading time: 4 min

A supermodel for all the glaciers on Earth

The Dutch coastline is continually changing. Coastal engineer Sierd de Vries is using ventilators, wind tunnels, drones, jet skis and laser scanners to gain an insight into the development of coastal areas and dune formation. He can often be found counting grains of sand.

reading time: 4 min

Breaking habits for a green world

We separate our waste, take shorter showers and there has been an increase in roof-mounted solar panels. Climate psychologist at TU Delft Gerdien de Vries, sees that in the Netherlands we are trying to put our greenest foot forward.

reading time: 5 min

What is the coolest tree?

On a hot, windless day, a leafy neighbourhood may feel 10 to 15°C cooler than an urban area that is more exposed to the sun. Trees thus play a key role in preventing heat stress and the design of climate-proof and healthier cities. “Although we already understand a great deal about the performance of tree species in the built environment, there is very little empirical knowledge about their cooling capacity.”, says researcher Lotte Dijkstra. In order to determine how physical properties such as the trunk and crown shape and the leaf characteristics influence the local air temperature the research team designed and built special ‘climate arboreta’ with sensors installed in each of the 75 tree species.

reading time: 6, 5 min

Data drives the circular economy

More than nine million kilometres. That is the distance covered every year transporting Amsterdam's waste from source to its final destination, which is usually a waste processor. This is one of the insights gained from the monitor platform that has been developed in Delft, with which governments will soon be able to analyse and optimise their waste streams.

reading time: 8 min

The first Flying-V test flight

Since 2017, a team of researchers from TU Delft has been working on a new, more sustainable type of passenger aircraft, the Flying-V. After the research phase, July saw an exciting and significant next step in the programme: the scale model’s first test flight. Would the aircraft remain stable when airborne, even at low speeds?

reading time: 5 min

Alive and Kicking: designing with living materials

Imagine a future in which our materials can morph. Your crisp white cotton shirt has been replaced by a living textile that purifies the air around you. As you settle down on the sofa to enjoy some wine, the glass bottle of yesteryear has been superseded by a tactile mycelium packaging which you can peel off to pour. And no need to switch on the light: bioluminescent organisms in your lamp set to work as light levels dropped, creating a warm evening glow.

Reading time: 6 min

Lockdown presents unique opportunity to study sustainable taxiing at Schiphol

Starting a PhD on the first day of the Covid-19 lockdown was a bit challenging for Bieke von den Hoff. But the lockdown also gave her an unexpected and unique opportunity. As part of a trial programme at Schiphol Airport, she was asked to measure noise levels of a sustainable aircraft towing vehicle called the TaxiBot.

reading time: 6 min

Urban Ecology: the increasing importance of nature in the city

‘Urban Ecology can have a positive influence in many other areas in addition to biodiversity, such as climate adaptation, health, water and energy consumption and circularity’, according to Nico Tillie, who, together with 26 students, looked at how the forces of nature could be given more room on TU Delft Campus. The coronavirus wasn’t much of a help though.

Reading time: 3 min

Moved by moving water

Newton’s law of universal gravitation is good news for the Dutch. Ice melting in Greenland and the Arctic glaciers has caused the Netherlands to rise by about 4 centimetres over the last century. Riccardo Riva has been studying the effects of moving water masses from one place to another.

Watching time: 3 min

Project Safeguard

TU Delft students of Industrial Design Engineering and Technical Medicine have joined forces to develop a smart protective wall that enables testing of possible COVID-19 patients without using scarce personal protective equipment and in any desired location.

Watching time: 7 min

The voice of Solotvyno

Former salt empire Solotvyno is located in western Ukraine. Today, the area suffers from the effects of salt extraction: an unstable subsurface resulting in massive sinkholes that threaten the life of the community. Two researchers from Delft University of Technology participated in a consortium to develop a disaster risk reduction plan together with the community. With the aim of giving the population a voice and building on a safer future. This short documentary provides insight into the process.

reading time: 6 min

A fresh perspective on potato growth

Requiring less water and less time to grow than rice, corn or wheat, potatoes may well be the answer to the growing worldwide demand for food. But what are the key factors that determine a successful potato harvest? Asked to provide a fresh perspective, Neil Budko develops numerical methods for the analysis of carefully controlled potato growth experiments.

reading time: 4 min

A post-coronavirus society

Piet Van Mieghem usually researches all kinds of complex networks, like the internet or the brain. He now uses his knowledge as a weapon against COVID-19 and he is working on a exit-strategy.

corona

reading time: 3 min

A revolution in modelling travel behaviour

reading time: 3 min

Aerospace students revive Leonardo da Vinci’s aerial screw (and turn it into an electric personal aerial vehicle for today)

reading time: 3 min

‘We are showing how we can take something as dramatic as Covid-19 and use it to develop world-class scientific research’

reading time: 3 min

‘The lines of contact were suddenly a lot shorter because of coronavirus’

reading time: 4 min

‘It’s the practical choices you make that shape your moral values, not the other way round’

reading time: 5 min

‘We’ve achieved a nice modus operandi’

reading time: min

‘I woke up in the middle of the night and just knew: we would build this platform’

reading time: 3 min

‘Rapid development of LEDs offers all kinds of medical potential’

reading time: 4 min

‘Coronavirus has brought the service team closer to the faculty’

reading time: 4 min

‘This is the kind of education students have been asking for’

reading time: 4 min

‘Making big problems manageable and solving them: that’s what we do as engineers’

reading time: 4 min

‘We were able to crowdsource professional assistance from across the world’

reading time: 5 min

‘Once the dust had settled, it was time to focus on quality’

reading time: 5 min

‘They were difficult months, but also some of the best’

reading time: 4 min

Sustainable aviation starts on the ground

reading time: 4 min

‘Phenomena is such a great word, too’. Delft’s quantum expert on shifting atoms

reading time: 6 min

Making corrosion a soft target

reading time: 5, 5 min

And the winner is... three graduation research projects into circular building systems receive awards

reading time: 5 min

Is it dangerous to sit in a cinema for two hours with thirty people?

reading time: 4 min

Understanding complex coral reef coasts

reading time: 2 min

'We measure people' so doctors can treat patients in a more targeted way