Undergraduate coursework at IIT Madras

A list of things I've worked on as a part of various undergraduate courses. I don't have many pictures because while this was after the invention of the camera phone, I didn't own one. Some of the project presentations include screenshots of various designs.

Engineering coursework:

Industrial Design 110 (team of 3 with Saubhagya and Jithin)

CD storage rack made out of thermocol and plastic bottles. No surviving pictures, but we built an extremely heavy circular CD storage structure. The rack used plastic bottles in the core so it could be turned a full 360 degrees.

Bicycle speed sensor built using a motor being driven backwards. We tried to calibrate the the back emf of the motor with speed and display the "correct value" on a 6 segment LED display. Before the final project demo we managed to break the motor shaft while trying to mount it on a bicycle.

Kinematics and Dynamics of Machinery (team of 5 with Rahul, Jaskirat, Sriram and Sanjay):

The goal of this project was to design and build a shoe testing mechanism. We chose to build something similar to the Theo Jansen Strandbeest leg since this mechanism is meant to replicate the motion of the human foot at the end effector. We simulated the mechanism in Matlab (both in script and using simulink) and built a prototype out of wood. A project report is attached on this page.

Heat Transfer (team of 5 with Abhinandan, Anubhav, Rajesh and Vinay):

We designed and analyzed a fingerless glove with inbuilt heating for improved dexterity in cold weather applications. The analysis included a Matlab simulation and a CFD simulation in FloWorks. We learned a lot about how blood moves heat in the human hand and worked on calculating the amount of extra heat that would need to be supplied at the palm to overcome convective and conductive heat losses in the fingers. A project report is attached on this page.

Computational Fluid Dynamics (solo project):

I modified a FORTAN based CFD code to simulate tadpole tail undulations while moving through water. I had made an error in the original version of this project with how I was treating the viscous damping term in the simulation, as I recall I was treating the tail as a momentum source rather than as a pressure source. A project presentation is attached on this page.

Design Synthesis and Principles of Product design(with Anubhav, Harshal, Neelesh, Rajesh and Raghav):

The goal of these courses was to learn the design process, going from brainstorming initial concepts, using market surveys to determine if such a product would be viable, using decision matrices to decide determine the most important design parameters and coming up with a final concept. We decided to work on a hand-cranked cellphone charger. We made a prototype of the final product which worked (as long as you crank fast enough). The project presentation is attached as is a sales pitch courtesy of Raghav.

Humanities coursework (I have a minor in World Literature):

Literature and values (solo project)

I was and am a big fan of science fiction, particularly the works of Asimov and Clarke. For this course I worked on an analysis of 'The Gods Themselves' by Isaac Asimov.

Literature in translation (solo project)

The goal of this project was to translate a short story into English and talk about the difficulties in achieving this translation. I chose the short story Cheelein by Bhisma Sahni.

Shakespeare (solo project)

I found an alchemical analysis of Julius Caesar and presented that to the class in addition to some of my own thoughts on the play. I learnt a lot about alchemy, including the fact that Isaac Newton was very into the occult and tried making his own Philosopher's stone.