Okay, next try at restarting the blog. Seems like I haven’t really had the motivation to post a lot since I came back from Poland. That’s not really for lack of things happening, but because I haven’t made an effort to post the interesting things that did happen. Timing, I guess.
I’m one week away from handing in my diploma thesis. It’s 150 pages with over 100 pictures and the result of an entire year of experimental and programming work. What does it do? It’s a proof of concept for a process control system. Polyester (for clothes, or backpacks, or other stuff) is spun from the polymere melt, and then entangled in an air current to keep it from splitting up under stress – like yarn always does when you try to get it into a needle’s eye. My thesis demonstrates that by attaching an ultrasonic sensor to the nozzle where the entanglement happens delivers enough information to extract the relevant process parameters from it. This means that someone after me can implement an actual control system based on this method.
Eventually, some company might make an actual industrial system for this, if it proves itself. Such a system would consist of ultrasonic sensor to pick up the sound, and a real-time electronics component to perform the algorithm – which is multi-stepped and involves things like FFT, PCA and neural networks. By then, additional optimization and an appraisal of reliability in industrial conditions (meaning less mechanical failure than incorrect claims because of unexpected circumstances) would have been performed. It’s uncertain whether that will happen, but I’m now quite certain that the necessary information is in the signal. Not so bad for one year undergrad work. Did I mention I had to calibrate my sensors? NOBODY apart from NIST seems to calibrate ultrasonic acoustic emission sensors, but I got a decent calibraiton in two weeks. Hahahaha!
I’m checking out PhD positions atm. Got an invitation for cavitiy quantum electrodynamics in Bonn, an application running to german aerospace in Göttingen, and I’m preparing applications for PTB in Berlin (the german NIST equivalent), as well as the ultra-short pulse laser people in Munich. I’m also considering a position at TU Delft (snaker uw neerlands? 
) and something in Aachen that’s also laser-related, but more of an engineering position. That means that it takes five instead of three years.
I’ll be back!
