BASc (Mechanical Engineering)
Problem solving
Root Cause Analysis
While working as a Wind Engineering Test Technician for RWDI I ran an aeroelastic study on a proposed solar farm and was able to diagnose an issue that had been unresolved for over a week. Testing had been delayed due to various technical issues. Most of these issues were easily solved except for an undiagnosed noise causing a phase shift on an entire data acquisition module. I was the technician on duty when the project engineer postponed any further testing until the noise was dealt with. I was working a night shift and did not have any support from senior staff, but I was able to diagnose the issue by tracing the source back to a broken port on the module.
To the right is the live raw data and spectra of the data acquisition module without anything plugged into it. Since nothing was plugged into these channels, and they should therefore all be flat lining. The green channel has a 60Hz spike that was the source of the noise. After replacing this port the issue was resolved.
Vacuum Chamber Black Powder Test
Rockets generally use black powder to eject their parachutes, because it is light weight and reliable. Our rocket was designed to reach an altitude of 35,000 ft. ASL, and above 20,000 ft. ASL the low pressure causes a lower heat transfer coefficient, lowering the burn rate of black powder. Typically high altitude rockets solve this dilemma by using pressurized carbon dioxide instead of black powder, unfortunately those systems are heavy and expensive.
I decided to design a lighter and more cost effective device. The device used black powder which combusted in a pressurized canister, however solving this problem was more challenging than expected, since I also needed to prove that the new design would work in a low pressure environment. To solve this, I designed an experiment to test the device, involving a vacuum chamber to simulate the conditions expected during combustion.