The Shinkansen trains speed at up to 300 kilometres per hour between Tokyo and Osaka. On board things are progressing just as swiftly: an army of Japanese business men are hacking away at their laptops. For them the Shinkansen is especially comfortable. Unfortunately, that is not the case for a huge number of other Japanese people. Whenever the train rushes through one of the many tunnels between Osaka and Hakata, a huge wave of pressure is created that explodes out of the tunnel exit with the speed of sound. Not exactly zen-like if you live close to such a tunnel. But what can be done about it?
Set up sound barriers next to the tracks? Kilometres of concrete and steel? OK, but consider that you’d not only be getting rid of the noise but also the view. Don’t worry, sooner or later the first Graffiti sprayer will come and liven up the whole thing. Followed on its heels by littering, crime, neighbourhood decline and … noisy streets.
Maybe you could dig a tunnel under every residential area and literally stomp the problem into the ground. That would keep you busy for a few years with digging and drilling. Or maybe just make a quick loop around the town. Noise gone! But nature and the houses in the surrounding areas too. You’ll solve that with a little bit of extra infrastructure, you say? Great, but keep in mind that there’ll be even bigger detours and longer travel times.
Tip: go have a look and see if the solution can’t be found in nature itself because no business is as ruthless as evolution and natural selection. Only the best idea can – literally – survive. This was exactly the conclusion that Eiji Nakatsu reached, and that is how a railway engineer like him came to know everything about the silent flight of the owl and the rippleless dive of the kingfisher.
The result was phenomenal. Wind tunnel tests with owl wings resulted in an electric conductor around which the air could stream in such a way that the Shinkansen 500 could rip through the land of the rising sun much more quietly. And the solution for the pressure wave was found in the shape of the kingfisher’s beak. It can dart into the water like an arrow without creating even a single splash. The long, streamlined beak of the kingfisher became the model for the new ‘nose’ of the Shinkansen 500 and so turned out to be the way to guarantee peace and quiet for all Japanese.
This is a great example of what we at GROUP T call Beyond Engineering: the art of approaching things as part of an entire ecosystem and not simply from one angle. And above all: the art of finding solutions that don’t create new problems, but make a real difference.
That’s how we see the engineer of the future: as an agent of change. Can you make a difference?
