Parachilna Solar Site
My experiences within the domain of engineering are quite varied and overlap with my IT experiences. I am currently working for DrillScan as a Drilling Engineer and I perform studies, perform training sessions and actively add additional functions to Drilling Engineering software. I worked as a consultant for the Government of South Australia within the Energy Division determining the efficiency of remote power generation sites. During both my undergraduate and postgraduate degrees I completed various projects that enabled me to learn important engineering skills such as: assembly drawings, computer aided drafting, document control, preliminary drawings, project coordination and execution as well project management and team coordination.
I am currently working for DrillScan, a company that specialises in Drilling Engineering. I have taught a class on Rotary Steerable Systems outside of London and Directional Analysis of Bottom Hole Assemblies in Paris. I have also participated in a well re-entry in Pau, France. I have been working on an API Casing Design module that should be released very soon. This work involved the creation of a programming workflow and redaction of various API equations to be in a suitable form for programming.
I worked as a consultant for the Government of South Australia's within the Energy Division. Initially, I worked for the government as an employee for one and a half years but while looking for a job in Europe, I worked 10 hours per week through teleconferencing. Within the Energy department, I was responsible for creating and managing the historical data of remote power stations through the creation of an Access database. This database is able to display the data from multiple remote power generation sites, in multiple formats including period generation and load duration. Each of the power stations have differing data outputs and therefore need to be converted into a unified data structure for importation. The primary focus of my task is to create efficiency curves through comparison of fuel use and power generation. I have had exposure to Simex Loggy Soft and ComAp generator set logging systems. More information can be found in the programming section.
I have also participated in an onsite inspection at the Parachilna remote power generation station which features an augmented solar and diesel generator. During the inspection I determined which batteries were defective while the solar array inverter was being fixed. This experience was fulfilling because I experienced an onsite visit first hand and was able to apply knowledge gained in university.
Due to the hot nature of the outback, cooling of the generator sets was very important, both for efficiency and operator comfort. During my employment, I determined the air-conditioning requirement of a power station.
In addition, I took notes during various meetings with contractors such as Caterpillar in regards to regional power generation installation and maintenance.
As well as the above tasks, I also have experience in item procurement and helped setup the first 3G telephone link between the office in Adelaide and a remote power station logging system. With the new system in place, the data can be downloaded quicker and managed in near real time.
After completion of my Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering in December 2010, I worked for 6 months and then started my Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering while continuing working for the government.
My Masters project was within the domain of acoustics and titled: Characterisation of noise in homes affected by wind turbine noise. The project lasted a year and a conference paper with the same name was submitted and accepted to the Australasian Acoustic Society in Fremantle (2012).
A link to the journal paper can be found here: HERE
The tasks that were completed during this project were:
- Initial meeting with resident to understand the problem. The problem was described as an intermittent noise depending on certain meteorological conditions that manifests itself as headaches and sleepless nights. The resident described the noise as a pounding within the head.
- Design a methodology for testing for low frequency noise within the resident’s home. The methodology must be repeatable and give consistant results.
- Augmented physical system consisting of previous hardware to test methodology using a data acquisition device, computer, microphone and amplifier and coded a program to facilitate the sound recording. The system used a Brüel & Kjær 4958 – 20 kHz precision array microphone, 4mA microphone signal conditioner, The Krohn-Hite Model 3362 Dual Channel Filter with 50dB gain and a LabJack U3-HV.
- Write a computer program to initiate recording of the sound and also alow the resident to select an annoyance rating as well as any aditional data.
- Write software in matlab to perform an analysis of the data and determine if any correlation between an annoyance rating as well as sound power spectrum density exists.
pref = 20*10^-6; %% Unfiltered Results [PSDu,fu] = pwelch(data(:,2),fs/2,[],samples,fs); % find spectrum PSD1u = 10*log10(PSDu/pref^2); % power spectral density calibdatau= 0.5411*data(:,2); [PSD2u,f2u] = pwelch(calibdatau,fs/2,[],samples,fs); % find spectrum PSD3u = 10*log10(PSD2u/pref^2); % power spectral density %dB unfiltered calibrated under PSD %10 to 30Hz lb = 10; ub = 30; lowerbound=find(f2u>=lb,1,'first'); upperbound=find(f2u<=ub,1,'last'); dBfSu=cat(2,f2u(lowerbound(1):upperbound(1)),PSD2u(lowerbound(1):upperbound(1))); dBu1030u=10*log10(trapz(dBfSu(:,2))*(f2u(2)-f2u(1))/pref^2);
- Working in tandem, the device above was able to measure the power within the 10 to 30Hz spectrum and determine that there seems to be a relation to power within the 10 to 30Hz spectrum and annoyance and that more research within this area is needed. The methodology was tested and verified within a residence and discovered that low frequency noise from wind turbines may be a problem.
My Bachelors project was within the domain of Aerospace and titled: Design, Build and Implementation of a VTOL (Vertical Take-off and Landing) Maritime UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) . This project was sponsored by the Australian Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO).
There were five people involved with this project and I was both the team leader and safety officer. I designed the frame and landing gear using PRO Engineer and ANSYS Workbench and built the frame out of aluminium. The Pro engineer model is as follows:
The Ansys static analysis of the frame is as followed.
The Ansys dynamic model of the landing gear is as follows:
The project resulted in a successful test flight of a variable pitch quad-copter and a video can be seen on the following page:
During my 2nd year of Mechanical Engineering, we were required to design and build a robot that performed a specific task. The task in 2009 was to drive across some obstacles and drop a payload on the top of a ramp. Various points were gained for completing various aspects of the course. I was in a group of three and in charge of team leadership, the electrical subsystem and programming of the microcontroller. Our group of three people came second within a pool of approximately 15 groups.
A video of the robot working can be found on the following page:
The microcontroller used was a PIC16F628a and programed using JAL. An example of code used is as followed.
forever loop pin_a0 = off pin_a1 = off pin_a2 = off pin_a3 = off pin_b0 = off pin_b1 = off pin_b4 = off pin_b6 = off ' Wait until start button is pressed' Wait_for_start pin_a0 = on ' power on tracks' pin_a1 = on ' forward is specified direction' delay_sec(13) ' forward for a specified number of seconds' pin_a0 = off ' turn off power tracks' pin_b1 = on ' drop ball' delay_ms(100) pin_b1 = off ' stop drop ball' delay_ms(100) pin_b1 = on ' drop ball (second chance)' delay_ms(100) pin_b1 = off ' stop drop ball' pin_a0 = off ' power off tracks' delay_sec(1) pin_b4 = on ' Start Resistor' pin_a1 = off ' Set Track Direction' pin_a0 = on ' power on tracks' delay_sec(4) pin_a0 = off ' turn off power to tracks' delay_sec(1) pin_b4 = off ' Off Resistor' pin_b6 = on delay_ms(50) pin_b6 = off pin_a0 = on ' Start Track without resistor' delay_sec(9) delay_ms(200) pin_a0 = off ' End Run' end loop