Anchoring Power: Ensuring Control and Stability in Offshore Energy Hubs

We rely on electricity daily, from checking our phones in the morning to grabbing breakfast from the fridge. We drive to work in electric cars and spend much of our day on computers. And just like our internet connection, we need our power supply to be stable. That’s where Assistant Professor Aleksandra Lekić plays a key role. She focuses on the control and stability of High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) power systems, including offshore energy hubs like wind farms and floating solar panels. Her work is vital in preventing major disruptions, such as blackouts, that could impact the entire power grid.

Energy hub als krachtig concept in de energietransitie

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reading time: 7 min

Knit to find the perfect fit

The bearing structure of a building made out of knitted material? Assistant Professor of Parametric Structural Design and Digital Fabrication shows that unusual building structures can be created more efficiently and more sustainably using 3D knitted textiles. She hopes her innovative approach will inspire new generations of designers and engineers to think outside the box.

reading time: 2 min

From sheep’s wool to spatial fabric

Disposable clothing made in low-wage countries is anything but sustainable. Yet it is this fast fashion that dominates our shopping streets. Jin-Ah Duijghuisen is committed to influencing this consumer culture for the better by means of spatial design. She put the textile production chain under the magnifying glass. For her master thesis, she explored how textile production in the Province of Noord-Brabant is related to the configuration and use of the landscape.

reading time: 3 min

Urban food production on the right track

"Everything revolves around food.” When Adrianna Karnaszewska was asked to zoom in on metropolitan London she saw an opportunity to utilise leftover spaces near railways by transforming them into ‘foodscapes’. She created a network of multifunctional hubs and productive sites that constitute an urban food supply chain bringing the production of food close to home.

reading time: 2, 5 min

Urban transformation as an act of preservation

‘Gleaning’, which means ‘collecting leftovers from the fields after harvest’ was the central theme of last year’s Urban Architecture graduation studio. As a design approach to the redevelopment of post-industrial areas it inspired Alex Kirschstein to imagine and plan an elaborate transformation of part of a former industrial site in the city of Maastricht, reusing material stock on site and enabling citizen empowerment.

reading time: 2, 5 min

How to redesign insulated glass units for disassembly

Insulated double and triple glazing have enabled the design and construction of fully glazed facades with minimised thermal losses. The insulated glass units (IGUs), however, still serve as products with a limited lifespan, often ending up as demolition waste. In her Building Technology master thesis Sofia Kouvela designs for disassembly as a means to improve the end-of-life of IGUs, increasing the potential for reuse and recycling of glass.

reading time: 4, 5 min

Designing in extremes: sustainable for users, educational for students

Creating a design for a location in extreme conditions is not only challenging, it's also hugely educational. By having students do designs in places that are incredibly hot and dry or where there are frequent hurricanes, lecturer and architect Job Schroën encourages them to think outside the box and explore sustainable solutions. “Giving students freedom and having faith in them is all the motivation they need.”

reading time: 4 min

Putting the urban mobility jigsaw together, piece by piece

Having your own car, bike or moped may be convenient but it’s also clogging up our city centres. Shared mobility can make cities easier to navigate and improve air quality. But adopting it efficiently is easier said than done. Maaike Snelder is helping local authorities to piece together the urban mobility jigsaw.

reading time: 10 min

The battle of the Amsterdam quayside bulge

The canals and quaysides in historic cities such as Amsterdam, Delft and Utrecht make a pretty picture. In order for these often busy cities to remain safe, the quay walls, some over 300 years old and built on wooden piles, need to be well maintained. But which ones to tackle first? And which quay walls still pass the test? PhD candidate Mart-Jan Hemel is investigating the condition of these centuries old quay walls by doing exactly what the local authorities are trying to prevent: put pressure on them until they collapse.

reading time: min

Building differently to combat aircraft noise

Aircraft noise around airports is a major problem, and a persistent one. Researcher Martijn Lugten asked himself whether the way we build houses might hold the key to solving this problem.

Collection Climate Action

reading time: 5 min

Compact nature for the compact city

Urban dwellers need green public spaces. To put oxygen in their lungs and improve their mental health. To capture carbon dioxide and mitigate extreme weather. To ensure balance between the built and the natural environments. But in densely built-up cities there is little space for greenery at ground level. So, what can be done about this? For his graduation project, Menno de Roode studied and designed compact urban public green spaces: “Following nature as far as possible enables you to avoid unnecessary maintenance and management.”

reading time: 4 min

Shelf-stocking robot working independently

A robot that helps store employees by moving independently through the supermarket and shelving products in their proper place. According to researcher Carlos Hernández Corbato of the Department of Cognitive Robotics, this may be possible in the future. But the robot must be able to adapt to the dynamic and challenging conditions in a supermarket.

reading time: 10 min

Innovation needs a place to grow

Mitigating the impact of climate change, facilitating the energy transition, solving the housing crisis… The built environment needs to address pretty big challenges, which ask for innovative solutions. Students at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment have plenty of good ideas to create the necessary innovations, but how can their ideas successfully evolve?

reading time: 4, 5 min

With each other, for each other

Building more homes without rethinking the way we live together will not solve the fundamental issues with the housing crisis. Besides more quality homes for lower and middle incomes, we also need housing solutions that are sustainable, foster strong social connections and are affordable.

Collection Climate Action

reading time: 5 min

Sand on the horizon

It’s a decade since the creation of the Sand Motor, an artificial sand bank off the North Sea coast. What happens to a natural system following human intervention on such a large scale.

reading time: 9 min

‘As a student, you simply cannot get closer to the professional field’

Fitting new infrastructure into our densely built-up country is becoming increasingly complex. The Integrated Infrastructure Design minor teaches students how to handle this complexity. “This helps us to train a completely different type of engineer,” says minor coordinator Hans de Boer.

reading time: min

A giant pink rabbit on Grote Markt

A 7 metre tall pink origami rabbit has hopped its way over to the Grote Markt, making Delft’s living room its temporary hutch from May 30. The animal was designed with the Delft Fringe Festival in mind by two TU Delft computer science students. ‘We were positively shocked when we heard that we, two computer science students, had come up with the winner,’ Bartek Kotlicki from Poland and Irishman Ben Provan-Bessell said.

reading time: 5 min

Safety in numbers in times of Corona? There can be.

When did we last dance at a pop festival, cheer on our favourite football team or get together with friends for a meal at a restaurant? It all seems an eternity ago. Dorine Duives misses the crowds as well, and not just for the atmosphere. As a TU Delft researcher Duives studies pedestrian crowd behaviour and the arrival of coronavirus and the 1.5 metre society has made her expertise more relevant than ever. As the crisis developed, the focus of her research became firmly centred on safe ways of opening up society again.

reading time: 5 min

Sweet solutions to a salty problem

Some sixty kilometres, all the way up to Gouda, that’s how far inland the Rotterdam Waterway has been carrying salty North Sea water over the last few years.
Salt intrusion in Dutch rivers is a growing problem for the country’s drinking water supply and agriculture, not only in the Dutch delta but in deltas worldwide. Julie Pietrzak is trying to find better ways of predicting and combating the problem.

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reading time: 4 min

Dutch lessons in the Chinese Pearl River Delta

The Pearl River Delta in the province of Guangdong in southern China is one of the most rapidly urbanising deltas in the world. More than sixty million people now live in an area approximately half the size of the Netherlands. The pace of developments, combined with the consequences of climate change, are creating a complex set of issues. How can a small country like the Netherlands help out?

reading time: min

Hit the roads safely with autonomous vehicles

When the time comes for autonomous cars to hit the roads, they’ll have to take other road users into account. For example, they’ll need to stop when a cyclist abruptly turns. Laura Ferranti is studying how this can be best achieved. Even when roads are packed with traffic.

reading time: 5 min

Sand on the horizon

viewing time: 11 min

How to Print a Dinosaur

Anchoring Power: Ensuring Control and Stability in Offshore Energy Hubs

Energy hub als krachtig concept in de energietransitie

reading time: 8 min

Puzzling over behavioural models for sustainable greenhouse horticulture

reading time: 5 min

Battling the data hunger of Big Tech

reading time: 5 min

Cybersecurity | Story of Team Science | Technische Universiteit Delft

reading time: 4 min

Heating your home with lake water: the 'magic' of aquathermal energy

reading time: min

Protecting vital infrastructure from cyber-attacks with physics-inspired AI

leestijd: 5 min

How do we keep our cities clean and accessible? | TU Delft
Mahnam Saeednia sits on a bench at the train station. Next to her is a package that points a megaphone at her.

reading time: 10 min

Giving freight a voice

reading time: 4 min

Our concrete inheritance: not always desired but definitely important

reading time: 2 min

How to design the train stations of tomorrow

reading time: min

Rethinking transport in cities

reading time: 8 min

Hassle as a limiting factor for using energy when the sun shines

reading time: 10 min

Damping waves with 50,000 rubber grass blades

Solar panels, solar systems, photovoltaics, energy transition

From waves to shadows: Optimizing solar systems by modelling their energy output

Social skills for digital humans

reading time: 3, 5 min

From industrial heat to a social glow(-up)

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Open data is taking off in aviation – thanks to BlueSky

reading time: 5 min

Supercharged sustainability: designing circular solar panels

reading time: 6 min

Critical raw materials, from our own European backyard
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