My 'Praktikum', as the Germans call it, is in the Combustion Engines Labratory at my university. In this labratory there are about 10 undergraduate/masters students working on a total of 6 different projects. The projects all consist of motors mounted to steel frames and set up on their own 'test bench' - which is a vibration resistant block of cement (10' x 10' x 10'!) which keeps the engine from vibrating the surrounding building all day while the engine runs. From each engine runs about 100 different cables hooked to measuring devices from each of the components on the motor (temperature sensors for heated parts, and pressure sensors for all fuel and oil regulation components) to the a series of computers in a monitoring station. Facing each test bench is a row of blast-proof windows looking into the monitoring area. Here, we can sit at the computer control boards, regulate stuff, and make sure that if anything blows up nobody will get hurt.
The projects are pretty cool. One guy is working on maximizing the fuel efficiency of the newest HOREX motorcycle engine. I had never heard of HOREX before I started work here, but they make sleek bikes!
Another guy, Peter, is working on a project for some truck company called Alantum. Peter's job is to find the right running conditions of the engine to minimize the carbon/NOx emissions of a 16 cylinder truck engine. His engine is easily the loudest, is right next to our test bench, and is always running. Any given day he'll come to work saying something like, ''I was thinking about this project all night, and it hit me that all I have to do to reduce the emissions might be to reduce the length of the exhaust pipe!'' He'll then go on to give some wild theoretical explanation as to why this new realization is valid, and then spends the rest of his day testing the hunch. Usually, he leaves disappointed, having maybe reduced carbon emissions, but reciprocally increased NOx emissions beyond the legal limit, or vis versa. Sometimes he makes serious headway though, and we all celebrate with cookies and coffee.
It's like that everyday, someone makes minor headway while the rest leave having learned what not to do.
My team's project focuses on reducing the friction losses of a 2012 or 2013 BMW Mini Cooper engine (we don't know the year, and they won't tell us). To do this, we hook the Mini engine to a powerful electric motor and run the electric motor. By knowing how much energy it takes to power the electric motor, we can find out how much friction is lost to the Mini engine by observing how much energy is lost to torque based on how fast we run the motor. This isn't accurate enough for BMW though. In order to optimize the friction losses of our engine, we must first find what percentage of the total friction loss is due to each individual component, so we run, stop, remove a component (like the turbocharger, or the oil pump, etc.), run again, test for friction, and compare. It's a nightmare of calculations, records, and electrical wiring to observe everything, but super exciting to be a part of. I mean, I'm indirectly working for BMW on an engine that's not even in production yet! Awesome.
Currently, most of my team is on vacation. Since I'm never given big picture tasks (so it goes for interns), this means that my time lately has been my own. When there's nothing to do at work, you can only check your emails so many times a day before you start to totally lose faith in the workforce. Therefore, I started learning two different computer programs, Catia and Abaqus, to occupy my time. I will spare you the nerdy details of these programs, but ultimately they're drafting programs that I can use to work on my own projects.
My latest project is a bit bad-natured. It's a collapsible rainbow spraypainter. I must admit, the idea wasn't originally mine, but I love it nonetheless and have a few idea on how to improve the original design. Here's where I got the idea (left). My idea is to do the same thing without the bike, without the electronics, and all with cables and a collapsible arm!
Here's my preliminary sketch and design in Catia and right now I am working on creating a stress analysis of the forces exerted on the sheet metal bracket. Uh oh, nerd alert...
So that's my job! It's quite boring some days, and super cool others. The most important thing I have learned from this job is that I will never go into the auto industry. Hey, at least now I know.
Thanks for reading!
Myles
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