Also spending most of the summer in West Cambridge, at the Whittle Laboratory, 2nd year Engineering student Soham has been researching the effects of reverse thrust in variable-pitched turbojet engines.
“I was warmly welcomed to the lab by my exceptionally bright and supportive colleagues, many of whom I already knew from King’s. The project involved using an experimental rig to obtain measurements and determine, for example, whether the thrust produced varies with rotor RPM in a hysteresis loop.
The open-ended nature of my project has allowed me to delve into many engineering disciplines: I’ve gained experience in 3D printing, coding, using CAD, and even automating my own experiments using Arduinos. In the next two weeks I will be using machine learning techniques and computational fluid dynamics to validate my experimental results.
As someone who was previously unsure of what to specialise in, this project has massively helped to guide my decision. I’m glad I got the opportunity to take part in the Summer Research Programme, and would love to return to the lab for my 4th year project!”
Photographed by Lloyd Mann (@cambridgeuniversity), Soham can be seen here using a smoke machine to visualise the streamlines of the flow created by the model jet engine and the fans above it.
#summerincambridge
@engineeringatcambridge
