Light DIYstrict - Build, Plug , Play

I just finished the drawings of the DIYstrict Light for Letsevo. Super simple and easy to build, you can leave on the floor to give your house a mine field look or hang from the ceiling.

Step by Step:

DIYstrict light - Build, Plug and Play!

Neptuno Submarine, a small step towards a more natural way of exploring the oceans - Part 2

In part 2 of this series of posts, I will be explaining some of aspects of nature’s design that appeared during the research phase of the Neptuno Submarine. How many fins should a fin propelled submarine feature and how are they arranged? such question can only be answered when we stat to understand the evolution of maritime swimmers and their behavior. Lets begin with: Form, Kinematics and Stiffness.

Finding the Right FORM

Looking at nature for the best Form for a fin propelled submarine can be quite overwhelming at first. Trying to define a specific fin shape for the Neptuno Submarine was no easy task giving into to account the HUGE number of different forms and configurations marine creatures have. Thanks to biology research, a lot has been written on this subject.

Form Specialization - (Illustration: A.Kesel 1997 adapted from P.Webb 1984)

Every maritime biological being has passed through various stages of adaptation in the course of its evolution. Thus optimization to different living conditions eventually led to various forms and characteristics. This illustration from Prof. Dr. A. Kesel shows a comparison chart between fish shapes and their behavior characteristics (read strenghts). On the top we see fishes who can accelerate very quickly,on the left fishes which can maintain very high speeds for long distances and on the right of the chart, fishes that can maneuver very precisely.

How many Fins?

When we look closer to a fish, we see that there are many different fins, and that each one of them has a different function. This seems quite obvious, but understanding their functions can bring key insights for design decisions for future vessels.

Tail Fin: Is the mail propeller for a fish, It has also the function of controlling the direction of the swim.
Pectoral Fin: In most of the fishes, pectoral fins help them control their level (maneuvering up and down) but some coral reef fish have very strong pectoral fins that act as the main propulsion system (i.e. Box Fish).
Dorsal Fin:The Dorsal fin acts like a stability aid, keeping the body from oscillating to much when accelerating.
Pelvic Fin:This fin act like an hydrodynamic parachute help fish to brake and slow down.
Anal Fin:the Anal fin has the same function as the dorsal fin, it is there to keep the ride stable.

Kinematics

the correlation of form and function is clear as you look deeply in to the matter, but there is also one other aspect the greatly influence the performance of swimming, its their body movement.

Most importantly, there is a distinction between the actuating angle of the movements between fish and aquatic mammals. Probably because of their need to come back to the surface for air, aquatic mammals have their fin swinging in the vertical plane, making them more agile in that case. Fish have their bodies swinging in the horizontal plane (there are exceptions like the Plaicefish).

What also varies a lot between species, is the amount of body which swing and the type of curvature that it makes. Basically there are fish that use almost the whole body, and there movement is characterized by a wave that travels through the whole body. Which is often called ondulating movement. One example of this kind of kinematics is found by the eel. What is interesting in these kind of fish is the ability to switch the curve direction of their body movement to swim backwards. These fish are very precise in maneuvering but aren’t that efficient when it comes to speed.
On the other hand, Fish like the Tuna, can achieve enormous speeds underwater (up to almost 100 km/h), by having a partial undulating movement of their bodies which on the end of each swing cause a oscillating movement of the tip of their fin (thus called sub-undulating). Their highly hydrodynamic bodies and stiff/narrow fins make up the perfect combination of high speed swimming for long distances in the many situations when it has to swim in open water looking for food.
By contrast, some fish leaving in the narrow environments like coral reefs have the necessity to maneuver very precisely in very small paths, some times even swim backwards. The box fish for example, uses mainly their pectoral fins for propulsion leaving there caudal fins almost exclusively for steering, there fin Oscillate from side to side, almost as if it were pivoted in one point.

Flexibility X Stiffness

Researchers of the MIT working on this subject of flexible fin propellers have come to many achievements regarding the developments towards a more efficient and quite way of propelling vessels underwater. Their Robotuna project served as a platform for testing different functional aspects aroung the theme.

One particular study caught my attention, which was the study from Michael S. Triantafyllou, Alexandra H. Techet, and Franz S. Hover, entitled: Review of Experimental Work in Biomimetic Foils*. This study tell us a bit about the effects of stiffness in the efficiency of such propulsion systems, drawing the conclusion, that with every different swing frequency/amplitude ratio, a specific stiffness of the fin would bring the best results regarding the consumption of energy. This suggested that there was another variable to be taken into account when designing flexible fin propulsion systems, which is the flexibility of the body of the submarine. * IEEE JOURNAL OF OCEANIC ENGINEERING, VOL. 29, NO. 3, JULY 2004

Wraping it up for now

These were some of the aspects that I considered most important and to keep in mind during the next phase, the conceptual phase. On the next post I will be writing about the design strategies I developed after this analysis and I will also tell a bit about the festo pneumatic muscle technology which I used as starting point for my proposal.

Neptuno Submarine, a small step towards a more natural way of exploring the oceans - Part 1

Some weeks ago I received an email from Thomas Brien, a Marine Design student at Massey University Auckland, New Zealand, who wants some help with his ongoing graduation project, two-person submarine. After writing back and forth I am posting here some detailed info about the Neptuno project, an experiment into to the development of a design concept for future submarines and their propulsion systems. It may help Thomas or anyone else in the pursuit of the little mermaid as I like to put it.

The Neptuno Submarine Concept submarine was my graduation project at the School of Arts and Design in Offenbach, Germany. I time where the letsevo website was not yet existent. It was first presented in the 17 of February of 2005. My supervisors for this project were: my great mentor Prof. Dieter Mankau (HfG Offenbach) and Dr. -Ing. Robert Mayr. The work was sponsored by the german automatization company Festo AG, which had interest in applications for there Pneumatic Muscle Technology.

Goal of the project:
Design a submarine that makes use of new developments in maritime propulsion research, more specifically: Flexible Fin propulsion (read: Fish Propulsion). Learn from what research was telling us about flexible fin propulsion and translate that in to a design of a two person research submarine propelled only, by the means of such propulsion system.

Startpoint at that time (Jun 2004) were research results from the MIT Robotuna (2000), and the “Forelle Flossenantrieb” from the university of Saarland, Germany (1995) along with many scientific articles on the subject from brilliant minds like W. Nachtigall, R. Blickham and Dr. A. Kesel on the great Biona Report.

Neptuno Submarine, 2005, HfG Offenbach. Design: Henrique Monnerat

In the next days, I will we writing a series of posts to explain in detail how I came to this design and what happened after my graduation, when I received a full scholarship from Festo AG to develop a working model of the propulsion system conceptualized for the Neptuno Submarine in form of a post graduation study.

Stay tuned!

Does the world need another Carbon Fiber bike?

If it looks as awesome as the amazingly crafted C-Thru Bike from BME, I am afraid it does.

The C-thru road frame is made from solid carbon rods carefully bonded together into its geometry. BME is the effort of the Slovakian engineer Brano Meres who has been experimenting among other things, with bamboo/carbon fiber constructions.

Now what would happen if we added a little bit of biology’s intelligence to Brano Meres’ construction?
Lets say, some adaptive design strategies regarding the spacing and dimension of the carbon rods….what do you think?

Nature puts material only where its needed… so there is a variation in the density of structures, always. Are the forces equal along the top tube of a Road Bike? If not…There could be some generative design patterns being applied to the construction defining its shape in relationship to the forces acting upon it…

Steffen R? What do you think? Ansys meets Generative Components meets Bike frame?

Give it up for Brano Meres. Amazing work, congratulations!

DIY Skateboard Project

I just finished out my latest project. A contribution for the DIY (Do it yorself) community. Since I love skateboards I just couldn’t start anywhere else. Inspired by the amount of waste produced by the growth of consumerism in Europe, specially here in Frankfurt, seen through the weekly dispose of old stuff in the middle of the streets. I wanted to show one way of rethinking the use of old materials in the example of a DIY skateboard.

The idea is simple: Download the DIY Skateboard Design PDF, Print it out, stick them together over any rest of wood to be recycled, cut, put on some wheels and enjoy the ride.

If you want make your own design, Download this DIY Skateboard Blank PDF (90cm long) and make it happen.

I would love to see some of your creations, so send a picture if you are proud of what you made.

a step by step of the building process can be found here.

SIGG Bottle Design Contest

A just posted my entry at the Sigg Design Contest. All you creative junkies should do the same. Simply download the template and let it be. The winning design will be produced and a portion of the sales (I hope not 0,00001 %) will be given to the Surfrider Foundation which is committed since years in protecting the ocean life.

This is my concept. It came from a photo I took in 2003 when I first got in Germany. As a Brazilian, I was amazed by the aesthetic of trees during the hard winter when all the leafs fall. The “greener” look of the naked branches was my way of illustrating the life that resists in them during the cold.
Go do your own design or participate on the voting

Lets Evo at Hannover Industry Fair 2007

Today is the last day of the most important event of the industry calendar, the HMI 2007, which happens every year in Hannover, Germany. There, companies, research intitutes and universities show their lastest developments in technology. The HfG Offenbach Design School participated once again with the supervision of Professor Dieter Mankau.

The project I have been working on since August 2006 together with Dr. Deane Harder from the Plant Biomechanics Group of the University of Freiburg and Dr. Markus Milwich from ITV Denkendorf - Institute for Textile and Fibre Research Denkendorf was presented at the Bionik - engineering powered by nature booth. Done in collaboration with Rittal GmbH & Co. KG, the project concerned the development of new shock absorbing concept for a transport pallet used for transporting overseas sensible products like huge computer servers.

Unlike other years, the Research & Technology Hall showed fewer breakthroughs in technology as last year. One thing to notice is that there isn’t yet much of a communication between engineers and designers in order to present prototypes of technologies closer to reality. Designers can play an important roll inside a research team because of their ability to foresee applications of technologies and to communicate speciall caracteristics of a future product through design. Still, most of the research works lack the ability to communicate what are they meant for mainly because of the absence of a product designer.Best of Hannover Industry Fair 2007

EVO New School

Its been a long time since I started working on this but like y’all know, everything has its time to come to life. I have been working hard the last weeks to finish EVO’s newest skateboard.

The deck is 83cm long and is a mix of an old school skateboard and a Longboard. It’s aimed for riding with ease around town but still allow some tricks here and there. It was build using 7 layers of 1,5 mm Canadian Ahorn Plywood pressed together at exactly 27,69 Tons/cm² using epoxy resin.

Its griptape design was inspired by the leaf’s Gestalt. After drawing the desired shape and printing it out, a lot of time was invested to cut and apply the separate peaces of the grip on the deck. I image how difficult it might be to produce this in large scale but until I find a engineer to come up with better solution I will be cutting and pasting the old school way.

Special thanks should be given to Teimaz from Azita Skateshop who kindly lent me wheels,trucks,bearings for the photos.

just for me productions

 

Be your next Armani

This could be a tool for democratizing textile design, a computer background generator that lets you design your on patterns right inside your internet browser and save it. Awesome thing!

why worry about the fashion industry when you can be it. lets Gucci

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