IEEE RS UK & Ireland News

The IEEE RS UK & Ireland Chapter reaches out to serve engineers within and outside our territory. Often we collaborate with other professional institutions who represent the raft of engineers across UK and Ireland and the rest of Europe. We have also had the pleasure of meeting with and having participation of our US colleagues, some of whom are now friends and supporters.

Among the 9 events held in 2017 and posted in our IEEE L31 reports an important event we hosted in Dublin was the Research to Industry (R2i) Innovation Workshop https://www.ieee-ukandireland.org/event-review-research-to-industry-innovation-workshop/ jointly with the IEEE Region 8 Action for Industry initiative http://ieeer8.org/category/technical-activities/action-for-industry/. The latest planned RS event is our biennial OutReach Workshop consisting of one day of learned lectures and a second day of educational tutorials by reliability aficionados, to be held at the Old Royal Naval College (Admiral Nelson’s officer training academy and lately the site of many period movies) which is now the base of the University of Greenwich, London, England. The 2018 OutReach Workshop programme will comprise:

22nd May 2018, Programme
‘Reliability Challenges for Medical Devices’
Learned Lectures by Experts:

‘Medical Devices, the Need for Biosensors and Bio-tools’
Richard Doyle, Senior Member IEEE and IEEE Distinguished Lecturer: Created and lead the Biotechnology Council for four years. It consisted of IEEE, ASME, AIChE, BMES and HIMSS and initially included five medical organizations including AMA, RSNA, AMIA, SCAR and SFB.
Describing reliability analyses in identifying and using biochemical (predictive and diagnostic), biomechanical, sensor information and imaging data for patient care - including molecular pathology, laboratory diagnostics and medical diagnostic imaging.

‘Reliability & Test Engineering in MEMS Enabled Systems’
Nihal Sinnadurai, CEO ATTAC, Fellow IEEE, Fellow Inst. P, CEng, IEEE Distinguished Lecturer
Describing trends in MEMS, core components of Reliability Engineering within MEMS enabled systems, applicable standards, use of FMEA, design-for integrated MEMS and bio-Fluidics

‘Prognostics and Health Management for Medical Devices’
Chris Bailey, Senior Member IEEE. Director of Computational Mechanics and Reliability Group, Director of Enterprise, University of Greenwich, London
Describing Applications with Sensors, Data Analysis, Remaining-Life Predictions, implementation in industry

‘Hermeticity and Corrosion in Active Implantable Medical Devices’
Anne Vanhoestenberghe, Implanted Devices Group, UCL Dept of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering
Describing the outcome of decades of implant experience, working with University College Hospital, London, in achieving robust protection of implants from hermetic titanium packaging to more practical organic protection for 50-year survival.

‘How to protect an endoscopic capsule’
Marc Desmulliez, FRSE, FIET, FInstP, SM.IEEE. Deputy Head of Research Institute of Signals, Sensors and Systems (ISSS), Director/Founder of MicroSense Technologies Ltd (MTL) and Nature Inspired Manufacturing Centre (NIMC), Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh
Describing the various measures taken to guarantee safe passage of an Ultrasound Capsule Endoscopy (USCE) capsule as well as optimum operation of the medical digestible device, as it is swallowed by the patient and must withstand several hours in the harsh environment of the gastro-intestinal gut.

23rd May 2018, Programme
‘Reliability Issues and Solutions in Engineering’
Educational Tutorials by Experts:

‘Large and Small Companies Make Reliability, Quality and Safety Choices (They Choose to go out of Business or Not)’
by Richard Doyle, IEEE Distinguished Lecturer
Case Studies of manufacturers who made good or bad decisions: Japanese Airbag manufacturer - chose to file for bankruptcy; paid class action suit for poor quality laptop and desk top computers - no longer in the laptop or desk top computer business; Nuclear Generation plant - their upgraded steam generators never worked and were shut down (utility customers stuck with the billions of dollars for the shutdown and removal of the plant); Space Shuttle O-ring failure on the flight of a Space Shuttle was common; it was just not addressed until after the disaster. Contrast with companies that made proactive best practice decisions.

‘MEMS Failure Modes and Reliability Modelling’
Marc Desmulliez, FRSE, FIET, FInstP, SM.IEEE. Deputy Head of Research Institute of Signals, Sensors and Systems (ISSS), Director/Founder of MicroSense Technologies Ltd (MTL) and Nature Inspired Manufacturing Centre (NIMC), Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh
Reliability is the greatest challenge and can be a critical barrier to successful commercialisation and wide acceptance of MEMS (Micro-Electronic-Modular-Systems) technology. At Heriot-Watt a taxonomy targeted at practitioners has been set up to classify the various MEMS failure modes, their mechanisms, acceleration factors and possible mitigation techniques. This serves as a first-hand knowledge base for designers to develop efficient and reliable MEMS as well as end-users to understand possible modes of failures. Best practise FMEA methodology is proposed to determine MEMS failures. A case study illustration is a micro-motor and MEMS thermal actuator. Failure analysis of MEMS thermal actuators data is shown.

Nihal Sinnadurai
CEO ATTAC
IEEE Region 8 Action for Industry, Former Chair IEEE UK & Ireland
Fellow IEEE, Fellow Institute of Physics, CEng
IEEE Distinguished Lecturer