Royal Academy of Engineering

About: Royal Academy of Engineering is a nonprofit organization based out in London, United Kingdom. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Finite element method & Bayesian network. The organization has 67 authors who have published 94 publications receiving 1768 citations.

A collaboratively-derived science-policy research agenda

Abstract: The need for policy makers to understand science and for scientists to understand policy processes is widely recognised. However, the science-policy relationship is sometimes difficult and occasionally dysfunctional; it is also increasingly visible, because it must deal with contentious issues, or itself becomes a matter of public controversy, or both. We suggest that identifying key unanswered questions on the relationship between science and policy will catalyse and focus research in this field. To identify these questions, a collaborative procedure was employed with 52 participants selected to cover a wide range of experience in both science and policy, including people from government, non-governmental organisations, academia and industry. These participants consulted with colleagues and submitted 239 questions. An initial round of voting was followed by a workshop in which 40 of the most important questions were identified by further discussion and voting. The resulting list includes questions about the effectiveness of science-based decision-making structures; the nature and legitimacy of expertise; the consequences of changes such as increasing transparency; choices among different sources of evidence; the implications of new means of characterising and representing uncertainties; and ways in which policy and political processes affect what counts as authoritative evidence. We expect this exercise to identify important theoretical questions and to help improve the mutual understanding and effectiveness of those working at the interface of science and policy.

Environmental sustainability of biofuels: a review

Abstract: Biofuels are being promoted as a low-carbon alternative to fossil fuels as they could help to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the related climate change impact from transport. However, there are also concerns that their wider deployment could lead to unintended environmental consequences. Numerous life cycle assessment (LCA) studies have considered the climate change and other environmental impacts of biofuels. However, their findings are often conflicting, with a wide variation in the estimates. Thus, the aim of this paper is to review and analyse the latest available evidence to provide a greater clarity and understanding of the environmental impacts of different liquid biofuels. It is evident from the review that the outcomes of LCA studies are highly situational and dependent on many factors, including the type of feedstock, production routes, data variations and methodological choices. Despite this, the existing evidence suggests that, if no land-use change (LUC) is involved, first-generation biofuels can-on average-have lower GHG emissions than fossil fuels, but the reductions for most feedstocks are insufficient to meet the GHG savings required by the EU Renewable Energy Directive (RED). However, second-generation biofuels have, in general, a greater potential to reduce the emissions, provided there is no LUC. Third-generation biofuels do not represent a feasible option at present state of development as their GHG emissions are higher than those from fossil fuels. As also discussed in the paper, several studies show that reductions in GHG emissions from biofuels are achieved at the expense of other impacts, such as acidification, eutrophication, water footprint and biodiversity loss. The paper also investigates the key methodological aspects and sources of uncertainty in the LCA of biofuels and provides recommendations to address these issues.

On the performance of strain smoothing for quadratic and enriched finite element approximations (XFEM/GFEM/PUFEM)

Abstract: By using the strain smoothing technique proposed by Chen et al. (Comput. Mech. 2000; 25: 137-156) for meshless methods in the context of the finite element method (FEM), Liu et al. (Comput. Mech. 2007; 39(6): 859-877) developed the Smoothed FEM (SFEM). Although the SFEM is not yet well understood mathematically, numerical experiments point to potentially useful features of this particularly simple modification of the FEM. To date, the SFEM has only been investigated for bilinear and Wachspress approximations and is limited to linear reproducing conditions. The goal of this paper is to extend the strain smoothing to higher order elements and to investigate numerically in which condition strain smoothing is beneficial to accuracy and convergence of enriched finite element approximations. We focus on three widely used enrichment schemes, namely: (a) weak discontinuities; (b) strong discontinuities; (c) near-tip linear elastic fracture mechanics functions. The main conclusion is that strain smoothing in enriched approximation is only beneficial when the enrichment functions are polynomial (cases (a) and (b)), but that non-polynomial enrichment of type (c) lead to inferior methods compared to the standard enriched FEM (e.g. XFEM). Copyright (C) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Steering Manufacturing Firms Towards Service Business Model Innovation

Abstract: Increasingly, manufacturing firms are turning to services as a new way of creating and capturing value. Despite its potential benefits, many new product-service providers struggle to deploy service activities effectively, not least because they fail to reflect the presence of service activities in their performance management systems. This article reports the results of an in-depth case study, which examines how manufacturers can steer the transition towards services. It shows that manufacturing firms need to emphasize two separate but related dimensions of the market performance of service activities: “service adoption,” reflecting the proportion of customers who purchase the manufacturer's services; and “service coverage,” signaling the range of service elements or the comprehensiveness of the service contract that customers opt for. These two indicators, reflecting service market performance, should be supplemented with a “complementarity index” designed to disclose whether the relationship between products and services is reinforcing or substitutive. When combined, these indicators allow manufacturing firms to deploy a service-based business model in an integrated and sustainable manner.