Mechanics

Using heat from underground parking lots to warm apartments

EPFL spin-off Enerdrape has developed technology that can recover heat from underground parking lots and use it to warm the apartments above. Its geothermal wall panels are currently undergoing pilot tests at a building in Lausanne’s Sébeillon district.

ETH students place second in tunnelling competition

Swissloop Tunneling, a team of students from ETH Zurich and other universities, has won second place in a tunnelling competition hosted by Elon Musk in Las Vegas. Their tunnelling machine has also won the Innovation & Design Award.

EPFL now has its own Hyperloop test track

Engineers at EPFL’s DESL lab, working in association with EPFL spin-off Swisspod, have built a Hyperloop test track on the Lausanne campus. They will use the loop – a large vacuum tube for ultra-high-speed travel – to test a linear induction motor. The research is being funded by an Innosuisse grant.

Harvesting drinking water from humidity around the clock

Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed a condenser for countries where water is in short supply. Theirs is the first zero-energy solution for harvesting water from the atmosphere throughout the 24-hour daily cycle. It relies on a self-cooling surface and a special radiation shield.

Modeling the friction between pages in a book

Engineers at EPFL and École Polytechnique in France analyzed the friction between pages in a book and the mechanical force needed to bend them. Drawing on their experiments, they developed a new theoretical model for predicting the elasto-frictional behavior of stacked layers.

Chain length determines molecular colour

Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed fluorescent polymers whose colour can be easily tuned. Depending on their length, the polymers emit a different colour. Potential applications include biomedicine, security printing and solar energy.

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