Internship Experience at OSU feat RIYA

Introduction:

Hey there, I'm Vikas, just your regular fourth-year Mechanical Engineering student. Figured I'd share a bit about my internship over the summer – a virtual internship at Ohio State University. I was hoping for some hands-on experience, but thanks to the after-effects of COVID, it turned into a virtual one. Surprisingly, it turned out to be really good and those ten weeks taught me more than I could have imagined. 

A brief overview of the program RIYA (just in case you're curious!):

RIYA is essentially a prestigious internship for Indian Mechanical students. The person behind this endeavour is Prof. Rajendra Singh, founder and director of the RIYA program (fortunately, he was one of my mentors during the internship). This initiative aims to provide students with the kind of enriching internship experience that Prof. Singh himself would have liked as a student. The internship is a bit selective – only a handful of students are chosen (you can check out the stats on the website; this year, only 5 lucky souls made the cut). But hey, why not give it a shot? Round one involves filling out a form where you share your CGPA and other necessary details, along with a succinct 50-word snippet about your motivation to join the program. This was followed by crafting of the all-important Statement of Purpose (SOP) essays (By the way, I'll admit it straight up: I was a newbie when it came to SOPs, so I reached out to seniors for feedback). If you've got a project under a professor on which you have been working for a long time, that's your ace – I would suggest you explain it well and make sure you get your essays reviewed from those who you think might help in giving you some good advice. And then, the grand finale – the interview. Big thanks to Dr. Subbareddy Daggumati, Dr. Sriram Sundar, and Dr. Girish Kumar Rajan for the letters of recommendation – couldn't have done it without them. 

And so, the process of selection began...

When the internship season began, things got stressful (especially for me, since I was really keen on a research internship). There are various other internship programs out there that you might want, and I'd recommend exploring or asking your seniors regarding them as early as possible. Keep your options open and start searching, because not every program you apply to will say yes (so the more you apply, the better your chances).

Luckily, I received a positive response from two different places. Ultimately, I chose RIYA, even though it wasn't a paid internship. While discussing with my seniors, I realized that this could be more beneficial for me in the long run, even without a monetary aspect. By the way, Prof. Singh truly went the extra mile to ensure that our internship would be a well-rounded and enriching experience.

Briefly about the Project I Worked On:

I worked in the Acoustics and Dynamics Laboratory under the guidance of professors Dr. Luke Fredette and Prof. Rajendra Singh. My work was primarily focused on the Ford Motors-commissioned project "System Modelling and Analysis of Hydraulic Bushing" (Note: I should note that the numerical numbers I handled were normalized due to their private nature).

In today's automotive industry, hydraulic bushings filled with fluid that can adjust their stiffness and damping properties have become incredibly popular. These components offer the potential to enhance vehicle comfort, minimize vibrations, and reduce noise levels. Typically, these bushings are analysed based on sinusoidal dynamic stiffness at lower frequencies and amplitudes. However, in real-world applications, they face not only sinusoidal vibrations but also intense transient loads. 

The complexity of hydraulic bushing behaviour makes traditional analysis methods, such as Finite Element Analysis, computationally expensive. Accurately predicting the amplitude-dependent dynamic behaviour of hydraulic bushings demands meticulous attention, especially when both the frequency and time domain responses are of simultaneous interest. My role involved system modelling for these bushings in Simulink that accounted for the nonlinearities introduced by the fluid, and subsequently enhancing its adaptability to incorporate additional nonlinearities. Then, I extended this work by integrating these models into reduced-car models to assess how it was acting on the targeted frequency modes.

Overall, this project taught me a lot of things which I couldn’t have learned if it were not this project. I hope my contribution has positively impacted the project.

Internship experience:

In the first week, I was pretty clueless about how things would kick off. We only received email instructions and work assignments. Apparently, we were required to present twice weekly. I could handle the project-related tasks, but effectively presenting them was the most difficult task for me (it had always been my problem).

One of those presentations was a group discussion to improve presentation skills, soft skills and critical thinking (which actually helped me a lot!!). The second presentation was a technical meeting where we examined the development of our idea. At first, I had this notion that as long as my work was solid, I wouldn’t need to care about presenting them properly, but then I realised that my notion was redundant as I wasn’t good at it (my weakness..).

I had trouble understanding things at first, but by the end of the first week, things began to make sense. Fortunately, my mentors were always available for questions and provided prompt answers. We had the honour of meeting the Director and the Founder of ANSOL, both of whom graduated from Ohio State University, during the internship. They discussed their software, its function, and the inspiration behind its development. They also taught us about BEM (Boundary Element Methods), which motivated me and extended my outlook on possible research fields. 

Overall, this internship gave me the chance to develop a wide range of technical skills, enhance non-academic skills (especially those that I needed to work on), and to interact with professionals in the industry. Prof. Singh, of course, took great care to streamline our process, and I'm grateful for his tireless efforts to make sure that this internship experience was beneficial for us in the long run.

Summing up:

I found the internship to be truly remarkable! For those interested in pursuing graduate studies, engaging in a research internship could probably be highly beneficial. As for individuals within the Mechanical Engineering field, I can personally attest that this internship experience exceeded my expectations. If you possess a strong inclination towards a specific domain and wish to delve profoundly into it, I would ask you to consider pursuing higher studies.

Feel free to reach out if you need any clarifications. Best of luck with your internship journey – go ace it!