Palm Jumeirah-Dubai

While many islands are known for their natural beauty, there are islands dotting the world's seas that were formed by man rather than Mother Nature. Some of these man-made islands were created for flood protection, some were developed for tourism and others serve as wildlife sanctuaries. While many of these creations are true feats of engineering, there have been reports on the ecological impact of some of these artificial islands. Dubai's mega-projects such as the World Islands and the Palm Jumeirah, for example, are projects "so substantial that they have changed the ecology in ways that are only going to become clear in decades," said Peter Sale, a marine ecologist at the United Nations University (UNU) Institute for Water, Environment and Health who co-authored a report on the impact of development of the Gulf.

Part of the planned Palm Islands, a cluster of "manufactured" islands in the United Arab Emirates, Palm Jumeirah is an artificial archipelago designed in the shape of a palm tree. It consists of a trunk, a crown with 16 fronds, and a surrounding crescent island that forms an 6.8-mile-long breakwater and is now the home of the luxury resort Palm Atlantis Hotel. Construction on the Palm began in 2001, and it added 40 miles to Dubai's coastline. Once complete, the island will have hotel rooms and homes for 65,000 people, according to Guardian.

The Palm was created using 7 million tons of rock, according to its developer Nakheel. The island also includes a curved breakwater using natural rock, intended to encourage the creation of a natural reef and provide habitats for sea life. In 2009, the Palm Jumeirah Monorail opened to the public. It's the first monorail in the Middle East, and connects the trunk of Palm Jumeirah and the Atlantis Aquaventure Station on the crescent and will ultimately connect the archipelago to the mainland.

Langeled Pipeline-Norway to Britain

The Langeled Pipeline project, spearheaded by Exxon Mobil, Stat Oil and Royal Dutch Shell, was undertaken to exploit one of the world’s largest reservoirs of natural gas in Norway’s Ormen Lange (in Norse mythology: “Giant Serpent”) field, located on the Norwegian Continental Shelf. The project included the construction of a new gas terminal at Nyhamna to process the gas coming from Ormen Lange. A consortium now exports natural gas from Nyhamna to Easington on the east coast of England through this state of the art marine pipeline.

The pipeline has a length of 1,166 km (745 miles) and delivers 26 billion cubic meters (900 billion cubic feet) of natural gas to the UK National Transmission System each year; the price tag came in at 1.7 billion pounds ($2.8 billion). At the time of completion it was longest sub-sea pipeline ever built.

Building the pipeline was an immense technological challenge. The North Sea bed is not a flat bottom but is a treacherous series of channels, trenches, and ridges and it has cyclical plate tectonic events, not to mention a number of existing pipelines. It plunges to depths of 5 km (3.2 miles) making water pressure a significant factor in design and construction. An autonomous underwater vehicle, Hugin, a product of Kongsberg Maritime, was employed to survey the sea bed, using advanced radar to determine the most cost effective route.

With an understanding of the features and hazards, design engineers went to work on plans to allow a 44 inch pipe, with 25mm (1 inch) thick walls, to negotiate the terrain while minimizing impact on fisheries and ecosystems.

Langeled pipeline simulated view

In order to lay the pipeline a remote-controlled underwater excavating vehicle called the Nexan Spider, capable of moving underwater mountains, prepared the seabed floor. Three million tonnes of rock was brought to areas of the sea floor to level the terrain where needed.

The pipeline was built using 100,000 pipe sections, each coated in asphalt to reduce corrosion and a stability coating of concrete. Two pipe laying ships, including Solitaire, the largest pipe laying ship in the world, laid 8 km (2.5 miles) of pipe a day. Once the pipe was laid, deep water hyperbaric welding teams welded the pipes together from inside a watertight enclosure called Pipeline Repair Habitat.

The project was completed in 2006 after three years of work and both Norway and the UK have benefited enormously from the project; the UK receives about 20% of its natural gas directly from the pipeline.

Automobiles and Aviation, Robots-Mechanical Engineering

Mechanical Engineering has been around for centuries and will be, for a long time to come, unless there is a miracle in science that allows humans to deny all laws of mechanics and still allow them to build stuff that can be used. As of now, the situation is unfathomable.

From basic objects like wheels to the ever useful screws and inclined planes, from cars to planes, from paperclips to ships, from bridges to skyscrapers, they all work under the foundations and principles laid out by the laws of mechanics.We have seen how machines have made our lives easier. Thanks to mechanical engineering, they have increased the efficiency of the machines that we use and also made it easier to make them. 

Automobiles and Aviation - Mechanical Engineering has helped in creating the fastest cars that are capable of traveling 400+ kph (248 mph) and in the making of the most comfortable vehicles on the planet that are used by millions. The huge aircraft that enable millions every day to reach from one corner of the globe to the other in a matter of hours all are the result of extensive improvement and implementation of mechanical engineering. The strength of the body and the way the automobiles and aircraft are built are results of extensive mechanical engineering and testing. Advancements in mechanical engineering are applied to automobiles to decrease their carbon footprint and make them more Eco-friendly and economical while simultaneously giving more efficiency. 

(Hennessey Venom GT)  

(Bugatti Veyron0)

Robots - Robots like ASIMO can walk, jog, climb stairs, greet people, and do a lot of other things. Robots like ASIMO are the future. For all those actions the robots need to work like humans and mechanical engineering helps in the functioning of the limbs and other body parts. The same principle of bio-mechanics is used in this area of science. Nano robots are also in the making that are said to be of immense use in the field of medicine, though many oppose the concept as they are also potential weapons of mass destruction and cannot be stopped easily

.