Senior Year Academics

In the fall semester of my senior year, I had the opportunity to take some classes I'd like to share.

Engineering Electives: Skills

FEA/ CFD Simulation

SolidWorks Testing and Simulation

Mechatronics

Mechanical/ Electrical Motion

Senior Capstone

Senior Group Project

Finite Element Analysis

My FEA/ CFD course was separated into 2 halves. Here is part one focusing on solid body analysis.

Engineering Electives: Video

Computational Fluid Dynamics

Part 2 of FEA/CFD course at Penn State. This section of the computational tools courses focuses on fluid mechanics and thermal transfer.

Engineering Electives: Video

Mechatronics Redbot

Mechatronics review and Redbot demonstration and my favorite class at Penn State.

Engineering Electives: Video

Siemens Capstone

Lare Silo Bin Mapping

Engineering Electives: Welcome

Capstone Overview

The goal of the Large Silo Bin Mapping project is to develop a code and interface to accurately predict the volume of material in a silo based off sensor data.
Our task was to recommend sensor locations and provide the percent error depending on the number of sensors, all in a usable GUI.

Computer Science Project

Using Code to Optimize and Predict

Python GUI and MatLab Calculations

Two Main Sections

For a comprehensive summary click below:

Easy One Page Summary (PDF)

Engineering Electives: Projects

The Plan

Challenges

Solutions

After discussion with my teammates and Siemens we outlined the project. We split into two groups, one for continuing the previous semesters work in MatLab and then the GUI. Weekly meeting times and memos were set up, and academic due dates were established.

Weeks into the semester, the project became much more difficult. GUI's take time, predicting the grain geometry with less than 5 sensors is near impossible, and integration involves a database. In each one of those major issues, dozens of challenges had to be solved.

Our first change was to regroup the team. With everyone working on a similar section we were able to accomplish more. We also had to concede defeat on impossible sections (MatLab) and focus on the interface. Additionally we worked with our sponsor to reset the expectations for the project.

Engineering Electives: Skills

Personal Role

How could a mechanical engineer help on a coding project?

In addition to assisting in the MatLab, I carried out the following duties:

Project Management

After a few weeks, I assumed the role of project leader because I had the most experience and drive to organize the team's efforts.

Big Picture Ideas

Although I cannot code python, I can help solve problems and assist in overall decision making.

Communication

With weekly memos and calls with our sponsor, I soon became the liaison with Siemens and with our professor.

Technical Writing

I was the main contributor for each report for Penn State and was entirely responsible for the summary above.

Engineering Electives: Skills

Results

After the fall semester Siemens was pleased with our progress and I received an A in the course. Although overall successful, we developed a functional GUI and MatLab code complete with a database to store the data. Unfortunately the accuracy of our MatLab estimations is incorrect; therefore, the project could not be completed within the semester.