The Bhel week

This week has been a week of mixed emotions, as you would find in the road-side Bhel Puri with the various (sometimes unknown) eatables (atleast!) mixed in it. And all those mixtures have come from this place called BHEL. Well, the so-called Compulsory Mini-Project kicked off with me and Chakradhar visiting the BHEL R&D industry (where his dad works) and we decided on a project (or rather, we were enforced upon a project) called "CFD Analysis of the Spiral Casing in a Hydro-Turbine". Well, in the beginning, I was pretty disappointed that this was a more Mechanical Project than Aeronautical, but sometimes, you have no choice. Though a Gas Turbine study was available, we were doing this because of certain circumstances. Whatever they were, I don't know, but we sure had a worry in our heads whether we could finish the project within a month. We were already late in starting and in case our thing dragged on, the first few weeks of college would be gone as well. And as an Engineering Student, I have noticed that my peak learning occurs in the first month of the semester. The trailing months just pass by before realizing it. If I missed that crucial month, the semester would be a disaster. So I was really keen on giving a quick start and a happy ending. With that, and all the terms and conditions settled, we were in!

We are in, and 'End of the Story', but not so fast buddy! There are many hurdles you have to cross, to reach the finish line. First thing, travel on the Hyderabad roads with enough guts! Then face the lazy staff of the office. Then you might not have a system for yourself. You'll have to wait till that person gets over with his work. The power-cut might suddenly ruin your entire design. As a multimedia guy, I should have had that habit of saving work after every move. But I never learnt that! It taught us big lessons while working. An 'unusual' power-cut wiped out our complete design. Then the tutor attempted something and ruined one of the curves which we took hours to repair. The same tutor once asked us to add an extra section which swallowed 2 days of very hard work. At one point when 80% of the work was over, we found out that there was a major flaw in the meshing, and had to go back right to the beginning. It's all been a very tough ride. And yet, by, don't know who's grace, we nearly came to the end of the project in just 6 days. That's something the tutor was amazed about, an apprentice (who was helping us) was surprised about, and the other heads were impressed about. We did our work as normally as we would. Arriving at 8, starting work by 8:45, taking a break at 9:30, working upto 11:00, taking another break, running for lunch, and then mostly leaving after lunch. All this counts up to about 2 hours of real work daily. That was all that was needed to come to the final stages of the project! Ofcourse as the staff pointed out, our project is only a small piece of a big thing. But doing it in a professional place, in hardly any time, in softwares we were using for the first time, (ICEM-CFD, TascFlow, CFX, I-deas, etc.) was pretty impressive both for us and the rest.

As of now, another hurdle has come up against us. The guide's out of town for a few days, and our closing ceremony will have to wait another week. Had he been here for another day, we could have successfully closed our project and proudly say, "Our month project took one week to complete!!"

His going out left us with a few holidays ourselves, and we are hoping to put our first holidays of this vacation to good use. Givson Panther (with Fndr-sytle Pick-ups) and Chetan Bhagat, here I come!