First look into the Future

Today, finally, we had the first peep into what we could be doing over the coming month or so, or maybe even after that for a few. After a 2 week toiling, we got the ‘temporary’ entry passes at the Research Centre and were given a brief idea of what our project deals with. There was too much to take in. The amount of effort that we are supposed to put in is way too much after having a very mild 4 year study experience. We are suddenly required to recap huge chunks of structures, CFD, and materials all in a few days. Moreover before even starting the project and getting an abstract, we already have homework. A huge title to deal with in the first place, we were given a few drawings containing a few details about our project and we were asked to calculate stuff like bending moment, shear loads, centrifugal loads (rotating arm), lift-drag forces and coefficients on paper, and a first static deflection and flow analysis run on software. The real tricky part is, all this has to be completed by Monday. If it were all given to us before, it would have been easy, but then things aren’t made to be so easy. We are supposed to research on the materials and try out different lengths to obtain a specified RPM so that a balance between the weight and strength is found. For us, who assumed Engineering life is all about fun and vacation, all this feels like the same 100000 Pa of pressure on the head, like my previous post.

 

That was one side of the story. The bad part. Now comes the better part about what we got to see in there. The test facility we are doing the project in, had some interesting vibration testing machines, along with a few centrifuges to create Gs up to 80 !!!! When one of them was looking like it was going slow, the G value was 35 !! It didn’t look practical in any sense… Moreover we also paid a visit to the area where another group of friends was doing their project. That place was another museum for us. The missile warheads were strewn around like how the guitars are, in my room. A mighty missile of real scale was lying horizontally in that huge test facility, maybe ready to undergo a big systems test. Everything was huge, and though it’s been 2 weeks of experience, we are still unable to adjust to the titanic size of everything. It might take us another month, by when our project should be completed.

That brings me back to my first real, serious homework in 6 years !! I gotta run for work. I might not fall asleep tonight because of those hauntingly beautiful images of the missiles and their systems… sadly my project does not deal with them. Boo Hoo! I am jealous.