Experience

During my internship at Rolls-Royce, I performed the task of defining requirements and functional interfaces for a DC power feeder cable. This experience took me beyond my mechanical engineering background, exposing me to electrical engineering concepts like partial discharge and electromagnetic interference.

Afterwards, I sized the cable using industry standards, although they were limited to constant electrical currents whereas the actual current profile was highly transient. To solve this, I developed a thermal model in MATLAB to simulate cable temperature rise using MATLAB's PDE toolbox (like in Energy Storage ). I validated the model against standards using a constant current and conducted a sensitivity analysis to assess critical parameters and validate assumptions. In the end, the MATLAB thermal model enabled me to optimise cable selection, identifying the lightest cable that would not overheat based on the transient current profile.

Additionally, I got the opportunity to go to RIAT and see some of the aircraft with Rolls-Royce technology, such as the Lockheed Martin F-35B and Eurofighter Typhoon.

My internship at Renishaw helped me to understand more about the design process in an engineering environment, specifically working in collaboration with electrical engineers and physicists, as well as mechanical engineers, to optimise the design of an encoder.

I tested multiple methods to seal the encoder, and evaluated the ingress protection performance using a leak detector. I then subjected the seals to chemical and thermal exposure to test their performance in representative operational environments. I also used Siemens NX to design and build an injection mould prototype which I tested in multiple hostile environments, such as heat cycling, temperature shocks and chemical exposure.

Finally, I correlated the ingress protection performance with the material properties of the seal (viscosity, glass transition temperature etc).

During this insight programme, I learnt about careers in asset management, wealth management and financial technology.