Environmental Engineering

CEEES

The Confederation of European Environmental Engineering Societies is an independent organisation, promoting the advancement of science and technology in the field of environmental engineering and related branches of science. CEEEs also co-ordinates the exchange of information and experience in all related fields. It arranges and participates in national and international conferences and seminars on environmental techniques and their application. Its members are active in the establishment of national and international standards and codes of practice. CEEES encourages the member societies to support each others' activities. The professional work is carried out in the Technical Advisory Boards, covering mechanical stresses, reliability and environmental stress screening and climatic and pollution effects on equipment and structures.

Environmental engineering - ensuring product life and performance

Technical products are, during their entire life-span, subjected to a multitude of influences from their environment, thus affecting their functional ability, their durability and their quality and reliability.

It is, therefore, technically and economically essential to design and manufacture products in such a way as to withstand the imposed loads and reliably fulfill their tasks.

Methods of environmental engineering examine the interactions between object and its environment. With a view to possible synergisms, system-technological considerations and thinking in the entirety are indespensable.

Environmental engineering deals in principle with questions of

• functional ability
• durability

Environmental Engineering in its working methods combines ecology and economy, protection of the environment and product quality, as it applies technical knowledge to ecological problem areas. A longer life-span of products serves the consumer as well as the conservation of resources, it results in a reduction of waste and a more economical approach to energy the environment.

Methods of environmental simulation are, to an increasing extent, also used on non-technical products, e.g. examination of the recent forest decline, damage to ancient monuments and simulation of substance emission into the environment.

Environmental Factors

Environmental factors are all forms of physical, chemical or other influences on the object under examination, stemming mainly from the direct or indirect surrounding during production, shipping and operation.

From the point of view of the object under investigation it is initially irrelevant whether the environmental influences are of natural origin, e.g. climate, or of a technical nature, e.g. vibration, shock, or air pollution.

Procedure

Environmental engineering is an interdisciplinary engineering/scientific field, working on a very wide scale. Its methods of operation comprise the following steps:

• Determining environmental factors
• Simulating environmental effects under controllable conditions
• Assessing the interaction between environment and object

Environmental engineering attempts to achieve on optimising principle. Environmental tests are tailored in order to guarantee that a product is sufficiently tested, but not over-tested. Economic considerations play a large part in environmental simulations. Expenditure for technical products in order to obtain environmental qualifications is normally offset by better quality and greater reliability.

Environmental Laboratories

Environmental Engineering requires testing facilities such as climatic test chambers, shaker systems, shock tables, EMC-facilities, fumigation chambers, or radiation simulators and laboratories for identification of effects, such as scanning electron microscopy, IR-spectroscopy or similar methods.

Laboratories with that sort of equipment can be found in most industrial companies, Institutes, Governmental and Armed Forces, Testing Agencies. In general, these are also accessible to external users against payment.

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