Research Assistant

Role & responsibilities

Role & Responsibilities:

• Identify and define appropriate locations on diesel engines (combustion & exhaust subsystem, cooling system, lubrication system) for deployment of temperature, pressure, vibration and ultrasonic sensors in a non-intrusive strap-on mode.
• Select suitable sensors (temperature, pressure, vibration, ultrasonic) for the above task, considering environment (heat, vibration, oil mist), mounting feasibility, repeatability, and data quality.
• Design, fabricate (or coordinate fabrication of) simple attach-and-detach mounting mechanisms for sensors on the engine while the vehicle is in-situ (i.e., the engine remains mounted in the vehicle).
• Create detailed fault-mapping tree(s) and diagrams correlating measured parameter changes (temperature, pressure, vibration, ultrasonic) to subsystem/component health states or fault conditions.
• Devise experimental plans: acquire baseline data on healthy engine operation under different loads/speeds; introduce controlled simulated faults (one at a time) and generate labelled data sets for comparison.
• Develop testing protocols aligned with available standards, defining sampling

rates, operating envelopes, sensor calibration, safety and environmental

correction procedures.

• Acquire the test data, ensure data logging, preprocessing readiness and

hand-over of data to the software/algorithm development team.

• Provide domain-expert support to the software/algorithm team: explain diesel

engine fundamentals, subsystem behaviour, fault manifestation in sensor signals,

and how fused sensor data can feed into health-assessment algorithms.

• Maintain documentation: sensor mounting reports, experimental logs,

fault-mapping diagrams, protocol documents and data-archive indexing.

• Collaborate with a cross-functional team (hardware, sensors, data acquisition,

software) and support integration and test phases.