Hilti Manufacturing India Pvt. Ltd (Gujarat, India) | Summer R&D Intern [May’17 – July’17] • Designed and simulated concrete grinding wheels with an aim to reduce cutting segment temperature. • Analyzed airflow through the wheel using ANSYS Fluent, and proposed design changes to improve convection. • Achieved 37% more cooling of the segments leading to an enhanced performance of the grinding wheel.
Projects
Master’s Project: Dynamic modeling of 3D Tumbleweed rover for Mars exploration Tumbleweed is a spherical wind-driven rover that is primarily used to explore Mars terrain with 6 internal masses to control its trajectory. Objective was to develop a 3D prototype and perform open-loop experiments for proof of concept. • Developed dynamic equations using Newton-Euler formulation which takes in position and velocity of masses as inputs, and location, linear & angular velocity and orientation of the Tumbleweed as states. • Electronics framework was developed to have independent control for all 6 masses using Arduino Mega microcontroller • Currently designing Model Predictive Control that tracks the desired trajectory and developing the electronic framework.
SolarPack | Vehicle Dynamics: Project Performance & Data Acquisition SolarPack is NC State’s solar vehicle team that makes use of solar energy to power a multi-occupancy car leading to a more sustainable future for transportation. Vehicle Dynamics subsystem focuses on developing the actuators, power, and load transmission components, and evaluating the performance of the vehicle using sensors • Analyzed the strength of rear suspension shock mounts, under static loads, on ANSYS to assess potential weak points • Devised nondestructive experiment to test weld strength of rear suspension shock mount using an array of strain gauges
Optimal Control for Lateral dynamics of a vehicle for Lane Keeping Assist • Developed real-time optimal controllers such as Tracking LQR with Extended Kalman Filter and MPC for non-linear lateral dynamics of a vehicle. The plant was linearized for Tracking LQR by calculating the Jacobian at each time step. • Driving Scenario Designer of MATLAB was used to generate reference trajectories.
Comparison of analytic and heuristic techniques for solving optimization problems • Performed unconstrained optimization of a “black-box” objective function using Heuristic approaches like Simulated Annealing, Genetic Algorithm and compared with the solution obtained by analytic method. • Minimized volume of Golinski Speed Reducer using Heuristic approaches and compared them with the solution obtained by Augmented Lagrange Multiplier method.
Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV – IITB) Designed and developed an unmanned Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) that uses propellers and pneumatic actuators to perform realistic missions based on feedback from visual, inertial, acoustic, and depth sensor. • Simulated the static stability of the AUV using FEA on ANSYS Workbench to ensure the reliability of the structure including hydro-static pressure and stress analysis on components, weight reduction, and optimization of the structure. • Designed and fabricated waterproof pressurized hulls of the vehicle housing all kinds of water sensitive sensors and electrical components of the vehicle and w