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Ph.D. SOP
Ph.D. SOP
Fall 2010
STATEMENT OF PURPOSE
My educational objectives have been subjected to consistent refining through the
course of my academic career. I completed my undergraduate education at Anna
University, Madras. With an interest for mechanics and machines, I found myself
exploring the intricacies of any operation and found that mechanical engineering played
a significant role in controlling the crux of any operation. During this period of my
undergraduate education, I was exposed to the various facets of Mechanical
Engineering. With my educational and research experience as a Mechanical Engineer, I
understood that Quality Control, Reliability Analysis and Efficiency Optimization are key
components of any industry’s growth. I developed a keen interest in these highly
influential fields. As a result of my pursuit to gather an in-depth understanding of
various phenomena behind the science of Quality and Reliability, I decided to continue
with my Masters degree. Here I was engaged in active research in Applied Statistics and
Simulation in the field of Quality Control, Reliability Analysis and Efficiency Optimization,
which constantly motivates and inspires me to pursue a career in research and to get a
Ph.D. degree is certainly the next step towards that goal. The highlight of my education
has been my strong research and academic background, which I believe forms the basis
of my pursuit in a research oriented career. I was among the top 5 rank holders in high
school with an overall percentage of 93%. I received a sponsorship and the young
innovator award for my project during my bachelors. I hope to carry the same
excellence to University of Wisconsin, Madison while pursuing my Ph.D. degree.
for my project in my final year and received the Best Project Award from my
department.
I have also compiled a number of other papers in diverse fields like HCCI Engines,
Nanotechnology and Phase Change Materials which I presented at several National
Level Symposiums and Conferences. My summer internship at the Production and
Quality Unit, Hyundai Motors, a leading Automobile company globally, helped me
develop valuable problem solving and creative thinking skills. I worked on a project
which required me to do an in-depth study of Quality Control Charts and operations
optimization in CAM processes. The CAM processes had to be analyzed and the errors
which occurred had to be corrected to specification limits in the control charts. Apart
from academics as a member of the Society of Mechanical Engineers in my college, I
contributed in publishing the department magazine. I also held the responsible position
as a financial coordinator while hosting the National Level Mechanical Symposium at
our college (Mechamorphis).
My time at Northeastern University has been highly fruitful and a crucial stepping
stone. One of the very important aspects of my Masters degree is my research with
Prof. Nasser Fard. We have been successful in presenting a probabilistic fatigue life
prediction of specimens under fatigue loading, provided the research an experimental
verification and also conducted sensitivity analysis. The research is done based on the
two stages of fatigue failure namely, crack initiation and crack propagation stage.
Cumulative damage rules were used for strain-based life prediction, which was the
Miner’s rule for the crack initiation stage and the Walker’s rule for the crack propagation
stage. With the sensitivity analysis, we concluded that the randomized behavior of the
material parameters is the most influential on fatigue life than the other parameters.
Since the loading is of variable amplitude, the life prediction at any given stage was
inherently challenging and required smart ways to expedite the analysis without
compensating on the accuracy. During the course of this research, I was able to gain
valuable insight into Fatigue nature of materials, Failure Analysis, Strain-life
relationships, Safety factors. I am also working towards compiling a research paper
focusing on the above work, which we plan to submit to the Journal of Safety and
Reliability.