December 23, 2021

The company PACCAR, through the UW Department of Mechanical Engineering, seeks an ECE graduate or undergraduate student for their two-quarter project* titled, “New Stress Durability Fixture.” Project details and application instructions are below. See the eligibility requirement at the end of this email in bold red font.

Project Description:

Students will work to develop a constant stress or strain durability test fixture based on the design completed by 2020 capstone students.  The new fixture will utilize the same overall design but with pneumatic actuators instead of servo-electric motors and with load washers instead of a custom made load cell. The fixture is to be capable of applying a constant stress or constant strain on a chain of test specimens while the test specimens are subjected to high and low temperatures, salt fog exposure, high humidity exposure, and water submersion.  Load, displacement, and temperature are recoded throughout the test.  The controls system should allow the user to set the specified test stress or strain based on specimen geometry and desired test condition.

Helpful skills include (but are not limited to):

  • Mechanical design and fabrication – fixture design, pneumatic actuator selection, load washer selection, displacement sensor selection, mechanical and pneumatic integration of components on the fixture.
  • Electrical systems design – electrical integration of components and controller (suggested Arduino or Raspberry Pi)
  • Controls system design and fabrication
  • Computer coding – develop computer code for control of the system

To apply

Email me, paymana@uw.edu and Lead TA Shruti Misra, shrm145@uw.edu with a PDF of your unofficial transcript, a PDF of your resume, and a brief statement of interest before January 7. cc the Faculty Mentor for the project, ME Professor Junlan Wang, junlan@uw.edu, and ME Professor Eli Patten,  epatten@uw.edu. Candidates will be considered on a rolling basis. We need only one EE student.

*If you are already assigned to a capstone project, you are not eligible for this and so please do not apply. You will focus on and only work on one project at a time; the one already assigned to you. You cannot switch out of your current project to this project either – this opportunity has come late to us after our deadlines and is seeking a previously unassigned/unregistered student.

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