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COUNTERFOG is a new, rapid response system for collapsing all kinds of dispersed agents (smoke, fog, spores, etc.) by using a fog made of a solution that could eventually contain any kind of neutralizing component. It will be a permanent installation in large public buildings like railway stations or critical infrastructure but also a portable COUNTERFOG for use outdoors, used to counteract a CBRN attack in its earliest stages, greatly reducing the number of potential fatalities. In fact, COUNTERFOG uses the same “weapon” as a CBRN attack: a dispersed state with a large surface/volume ratio. Under certain conditions, it can penetrate all the intricate holes CBRN agents are able to infiltrate. As it needs a minimum quantity of decontaminant, it is intrinsically an environment-friendly and electric-compatible system. It has several benefits: firstly, to neutralize and collapse the CBRN cloud quickly limiting its extension and, secondly, to rapidly decontaminate all the affected area and any equipment. Prototypes have been developed and tested with agent surrogates in a specifically developed Fog Dynamics Laboratory. The results show that COUNTERFOG is effective against chemical, biological, and radiological surrogates and has a potential to be used both to counteract and to decontaminate. This work has been funded by FP7-SEC-2012-1 program of the EU Commission under grant number 312804.

Harmonic drives are profusely used in aerospace mainly because of their compactness and large reduction ratio. However, their use in cryogenic environments is still a challenge. Lubrication and fatigue are non-trivial issues under these conditions. The objective of the Magnetic-Superconductor Cryogenic Non-contact Harmonic Drive (MAGDRIVE) project, funded by the EU Space FP7, is to design, build, and test a new concept of MAGDRIVE. Non-contact interactions among magnets, soft magnetic materials, and superconductors are efficiently used to provide a high reduction ratio gear that smoothly and naturally operates at cryogenic environments. The limiting elements of conventional harmonic drives (teeth, flexspline, and ball bearings) are substituted by contactless mechanical components (magnetic gear and superconducting magnetic bearings). The absence of contact between moving parts prevents wear, lubricants are no longer required, and the operational lifetime is greatly increased. This is the first mechanical reducer in mechanical engineering history without any contact between moving parts. In this paper, the test results of a −1:20 inverse reduction ratio MAGDRIVE prototype are reported. In these tests, successful operation at 40 K and 10−3 Pa was demonstrated for more than 1.5 million input cycles. A maximum torque of 3 N·m and an efficiency of 80% were demonstrated. The maximum tested input speed was 3000 rpm, six times the previous existing record for harmonic drives at cryogenic temperatures. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme ([FP7/2007–2013]) under grant agreement n° 263014. The FP7 MAGDRIVE project (www.magdrive.eu) is a cooperation project inside the Space program of the European Commission. Seven partners have participated: Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (Mechanical Engineering department), Università di Cassino e del Lazio Meridionale (LAMIA group), CNR (Istituo SPIN), CAN Superconductors, BPE e.K., LIDAX ingenieria S.L., and the Faculdade de Ciencias da Univerisdade de Lisboa (SIM lab). Special acknowledgment to Fernando Serrano, workshop technician at UC3M.

The MAGDRIVE project, granted by the Space program of the EU-FP7, is developing a gear able to produce reduction ratios from 1 to several hundreds by means of magnetic teeth. The teeth, unlike the conventional gears, do not touch one to other. This makes that this gear does not need any kind of lubrication. In case that the maximum torque is passed over the axle simply clutches, but nothing breaks down. Therefore, it has an intrinsic antijamming characteristic. It is also reversible: it can reduce but also multiply the velocity. It can also go clockwise or anticlockwise. Ratio, maximum torque, stiffness and damping can be customized. Even more it can also be customized to be direct or inverted (inverting the sense of the rotation). A low noise level is also a remarkable feature of this kind of device. These characteristics make this technology very attractive for a number of different fields like aerospace, automation, automotive and others. Two different prototypes have been developed: the first one is a “room-temperature prototype” for working temperature from −40°C to 100°C, while the second one is a “cryogenic prototype” that can work at temperature as low as 70 K. The results of the tests for the first prototype are shown in this work.