CAD (Computer Aided Design) & FEA (Finite Element Analysis) play a significant role in making a product fail-proof, durable and long lasting especially for mission critical applications.
Balamurugan Gunasekar, our next pathbreaker, works as Simulation Engineer at LEAX Group (Sweden), a multinational company specializing in propeller shafts for commercial heavy duty vehicles, agricultural and domestic machines.
Balamurugan talks to Shyam Krishnamurthy from The Interview Portal about the wonderful opportunity to do his master’s thesis in collaboration with industrial partners RISE and SAAB Aerospace, to examine the use of composites in the wing joints of aircrafts to increase their durability and develop a lightweight solution.
For students, theoretical concepts might give you good foundational knowledge but there is no replacement for practical knowledge acquired by solving real industrial problems !
Balamurugan, Your background?
The journey of what I am today began in a big city in the southern part of India called Chennai. I was born and brought up in an educated middle-class family setup; both my parents had an engineering background. My father is a chemical engineer and mom has a civil engineering degree. But my drive for being an engineer was driven by my passion rather than by my parents’ wishes to raise me as another engineer in the family. Being a 3 year old, I was pampered with a lot of toy cars as a boy child. In fact I did not love playing with them but instead liked breaking them to see what was inside. The small pieces inside were of great interest to me. By the time I was in primary school, I was able to guess most of the cars that were on the road and also the parts inside a car. Also, I think people would be familiar with this book called “Top Gear”, it was my favorite book in the library periods, though it was pretty hard to grab a book as the stock was limited. The next thing that excited me after cars would be cricket, otherwise I am not an Indian. I loved playing cricket outdoors with my friends, represented my school team and always was an outdoor person in the PT periods. I also took up some athletics and piano coaching to keep off the stress of my studies. So, I encourage everyone to take up something you love to do, apart from studies and succeed in that. After 12 years of successful foundation, and being in the comforting environment of my parents and hometown, it was time to move to next chapter of my life ‘The College’
What did you do for graduation/post graduation?
Though the choice to take up mechanical engineering (BTech) as a core branch was very clear to me, the hardest part was to move to a hostel to pursue my passion, leaving my parents and hometown. I did my Bachelors in Technology from Amrita University, Coimbatore. When I stepped into college, I was a ball of mess with a lot of passion and aspirations but had no real idea about my role as a mechanical engineer in the community or world. But this was made clear by my professors who helped shape my career and channeled my thoughts into something meaningful. Having gone through the process, my only advice to the future generation is, it’s a journey and one needs to be patient, self-motivated and focused on what you desire, and eventually your hard work will propel you to your destination! So, never give up and keep hustling! Apart from that, college life is all about growing up to become independent, meeting strangers who are life-long friends and a million memories made that are cherished for a lifetime. The college years were in fact the crucial point in my journey, I say this because it gave me the opportunity to practically work on what I love in the form of internships, the platform to use my ideas in terms of projects and to realize my value as an individual to the society.
What were some of the influences that led you to such an offbeat, unconventonal and cool career?
If you ask me about the drivers that made me chose my career path, the answer would be ‘myself’. I always prioritized things into 2 categories, based on what topics that interest me and the topics needed to enhance my knowledge in the mechanical field. This was a win-win situation for me and made the job easier for my mentors to define the pathway to help me reach my desired career.
To give you an example, when you study mechanical, you would love some subjects a little more than others. So, I picked some of my favorites like strength of materials where you learn about how a material fails in an environment, design of elements using CAD models in order to develop amazing products that you get in the market. That led me to get some practical knowledge by doing internships or participating in inter-college automotive competitions like Baja or Supra where we make all-terrain vehicles. All these experiences propelled me to understand concepts that I was not able to learn from my text books or lectures. The fun fact is, I still use these basic concepts to solve the problems today, it’s that important. So believe in yourself and do not be afraid to choose what you like.
Tell us about your career path.
There was an exciting opportunity that clicked for me at the end of my BTech degree. I had an opportunity to carry out my BTech thesis project at IIT Guwahati. It was more of a research thesis and I spent most of my time learning things that I have never learnt before. It was exciting but scary as well to delve into something that I had not done before. Luckily, I completed the thesis with flying colours, thanks to my teammates and fellow research scholars of IIT Guwahati who supported me to push my limits. It was at this very moment
The project focused on an experimental study on a solar driven dehumidification system for air-conditioning using a desiccant solution. Basically in simple terms, a cooler operated by solar evacuated tube collector (solar grid/panel) for power and a heating source for the desiccant solution. My job was more oriented to the design & simulation side, where I was tasked to model the copper tubes inside the solar evacuated u-tube collector. This was straightforward due to my previous exposure working with CAD modelling. But the hardest part was the creation of thermodynamic simulation model, for which I had no exposure but had to do a lot of literature review on research journals and books to devise a method to create this model on the COMSOL software. The main ambition of the simulation was to study how much heat was transferred by the solar tube collector to the desiccant solution flowing inside.
Soon after my graduation, I had some gap months during the application processing period for my master studies. After a month or so, I felt extremely bored and had a lot of time to invest. So I decided to mature my skills and also sharpen my ideas through some professional exposure in the domain I did my bachelor’s thesis. So I started applying part-time jobs on Indeed and Internshala, to try my luck. To my surprise, I got a wonderful internship call up from Elgi Equipments (a air compressor manufacturing company) to work with their R&D team and devise a solution to one of their industrial problems. This was an eye-opening experience for a newbie getting into the professional world, where I went to learn about complex designing, benchmarking and various steps of product development. Finally, after the brief training, Elgi handed me a project to design an intake valve for oil filled air screw compressor. This was my first professional assignment, where I brainstormed from scratch and created a design based on my ideology. In fact, I also chose a bio-degradable material for the valve to make the solution durable and environmentally friendly which was appreciated and approved by the company for prototyping. A 3-D printed prototype model was made to see the design. The internship lasted for 3 months, this also paved a way for a new interest in me about 3-D printing and I decided to further enhance my knowledge on this blooming technology. I researched about the technology a lot on internet to learn some fundamentals but I always wat some hands-on experience. That’s where I found a summer internship course on Internshala at EngiGyan where I learnt some fundamentals on additive manufacturing. I also designed a IC engine piston from scratch and attempted 3-D printing of the component design. It was a team-based project for a client, and I played the role to design and analyze it.
I decided that I loved to explore and wanted to have a deeper understanding of the things I loved. So my next milestone was to go a step higher, by applying for a masters degree in a foreign land. After 6 months of consistent efforts and preparations, I got selected for my master’s at Linköping university in Sweden. I chose this particular university, as the curriculum was more practical oriented and I always loved to understand the concepts through experiences. I specialized in Solid Mechanics, something I fell in love before realization when I was 3 a years old boy breaking my cars. So my life story took off from India and moved to Sweden for the next 2 years. I was also overwhelmed to get a scholarship that reduced my tuition fees by 50 percent. Indeed, a proud moment for the hard work accomplished in the past 4 years!
The Solid Mechanics specialization focuses more on the CAE like strength of materials, kinematics, FEM, structural optimization and stress analysis (liner static, nonlinear & vibration). This branch is more to visualize how different components and assemblies interact with each other without implications, to provide the desired outcome of the machine as a whole. If you ask me, machine design course discipline focuses more on the design aspects like CAD based on the standard design principles and you take it if your aspiration is to be mechanical designer. My scholarship was awarded based on the SOP (statement of purpose), academic achievements, internship experience and IELTS score.
How did you get your first break?
I would say my first break was a little harder since the whole world was in the middle of a global pandemic. The opportunities were very limited due to the restrictions and it took quite some time to find my master’s thesis project. But if you ask me today about the persistent efforts and stressful wait, I would say fortune favors the brave.
I had this wonderful opportunity to work on a joint research project between my university and industrial partners RISE and SAAB Aerospace. The project was to see the use of composites in the wing joints of the aircraft to increase its durability and develop a lightweight solution, in simple terms. Indeed, the project was more of experimental testing and getting hands-on experience in analyzing the joint designs, a life changing experience to put to use something you have learned all these years to find a solution for a real military aircraft. I really sensed the engineer in me.
After 8 months of continuous effort, the research project was completed and I was extremely happy with the outcome. But an amazing news 2 months later gave me the happiness I could ever imagine; my thesis was selected as the best thesis in the composite materials and fatigue category. I was awarded a cash prize and an opportunity to present my thesis in a research forum where industrial partners came together to discuss the issues of the society. To achieve this in a foreign place, really made me believe in my potential and there was no turning back from there!
The next stop was me to find a job and settle down in Sweden for some years. The obstacle was not easy for a foreigner as you need to stand hundreds of applications and some innovations in the way I portrayed myself, like making a portfolio of my projects and the utility they provide to the society etc, I got my first job offer from LEAX GROUP for the role of a Simulation Engineer. This was exactly the job of my domain, and the end result for my master studies had been achieved.
What were some of the challenges you faced? How did you address them?
The pandemic had adverse problems on my master’s thesis project due to less physical interactions leading to delays in testing, but I never gave up, and propelled myself to go out of my comfort zone, be it working on late night lab sessions when less people were around, having regular online calls with my supervisor to maintain progress and maintaining the same rate of progress I set for myself at the start of the project.
Also, it was not easy for me as a foreigner to get my 1st job after my masters. I had to make my profile standout among local candidates.
Where do you work now? What problems do you solve?
I work as a simulation engineer for LEAX GROUP, a multinational company specializing in propeller shafts for commercial heavy duty vehicles, agricultural and domestic machines. Being a Simulation Engineer, my job is to analyze the designs generated by my design engineer and find the critical points of failure in the product. The product fails if you have high stresses in a particular point, so we need to take care of that before we can make the product suitable for use. It is a very important part of product development.
No , obviously we would like to do for aircrafts but at the moment our business model focus is for heavy duty commercial trucks, busses, fire engines and agricultural machinery like tractors, excavators and wheel loaders.
What skills are required for your role? How did you acquire the skills?
The skills needed for this job are very fundamental and basic. Infact, I use my bachelor’s degree concepts to solve my day to day problems like strength of materials, design of machine elements etc. One must be innovative and have the hunger to learn more and more in this domain. A problem can be solved in many ways and you need to choose which is the best way to solve the issue economically as well as with high quality. Most of the skills you need like CAD programming, FEM software etc, can be learnt during your university education.
What’s a typical day like?
A typical day in my life would be to learn something new everyday. You are not given the solution, but you need to find the solution. Once you see the result, the happiness you get is unimaginable, you have to experience it. You also need to communicate a lot and make sure the idea reaches the concerned person at the right time to avoid delays.
I love everything about my job. To be the only simulation engineer in my organization, I have added responsibility to get the results right. I am also given the freedom to execute my ideas and always feel respected by my fellow team-mates. The recognition and constant support of my manager motivates me to shell out my fears and achieve greater heights in each problem case put forward to me. I love challenges and each day is a mystery in my domain!
How does your work benefit society?
Being a product development engineer, you dedicate each of your ideas based on societal needs. It impacts the society when the product is long lasting, eco friendly and ergonomic for the user. The first part of making a product fail-proof and long lasting is where I play an important role in validation, to ensure that we have a robust propeller shaft design for our customers, who indeed serve the society in various transportation sectors.
Tell us an example of a specific memorable work you did that is very close to you!
It’s just been a year since I started to work professionally. But my experiences so far have just been a fairytale. To specify one among all the successes I have achieved so far would be, when I created a fail-proof design modification in an existing shaft to reduce the weight of the component by 50 percent and enhance its durability just 6 months after being employed. In fact it was not rocket science, I used my university design knowledge to execute it and was appreciated for it. So never think the knowledge gained will be wasted, you will find use for it somewhere !
Your advice to students based on your experience?
I always remember this proverb that my father taught me: Winners do not do different things but do things differently! I want to pass it on to future generations. You need to express yourself, prioritize what you like and put in continuous effort. The passion will propel you to achieve the unthinkable!
Future Plans?
At this moment, I have achieved my initial professional goal. So my next priority is to spend some professional years molding myself in terms of my leadership skills, taking up responsibilities and enhancing my knowledge in the field of mechanics. Then maybe when the time comes for me, I would like to be an entrepreneur and be a mentor to the young minds coming into the job market. Definitely a long demading path but not an impossible task! Thank you for this opportunity Shyam!
Note: Sorry, I did not have the time to give it a final check. But, I have explained everything elaborately, feel free to shorten the text as per your needs. You make it precise and crisp as per your needs Shyam.