Intelligent Structural Health Management of Aerospace, Mechanical and Civil Structures

During the month long PIRE-ISHM India research program I learned and grew more than I ever anticipated. Each day that passed was a new, learning experience that I will be able to take back with me to the United States and use in my future endeavors. I’m not going to lie, the trip was undoubtedly harder than I expected coming in, but a growing experience nonetheless. I believe that you grow the most when you struggle a little bit and when you are put into uncomfortable situations, and this trip to India was definitely not the most luxurious and comfortable place to visit.

8/10/09

8/8/09

Today I woke up at 4:30am, and I couldn't get back to sleep, so I just decided to stay up until we were to get breakfast at 7. I spent this time listening to my Punjabi rap CD and watching some rugby on the Australian channel, it was tons of fun. At 7 we met to have breakfast.

8/5/09 - Chennai

India was a remarkable place. It sometimes felt like the cities were the very meeting places of the industrialized world and the cultural and traditional lives of centuries ago. The differences in social norms, some subtle and some drastic, proved to me the importance of investing in exchange programs.

I remember from day one, as our small group stood huddled by our airport terminal, our excitement. This excitement never left us as we tasted the foods, explored the cities, and interacted with India's people.

It's been quite a trip to Harbin. This is my last week in Harbin. I've been here for almost a month. Initially, we had planned to perform some wind turbine blade failure testing using FBG sensors and demodulate the signals using a Michelson Interferometer. However, the process of getting the unit into China has proven to be a very cumbersome process. We have to wait for the unit for two weeks to clear the Chinese Custom; we have to deposit $7000 in order to retrieve the unit;and we have to pay an agent to perform the paperwork for us.

Since I've been in India, I've been working on probabalistic failure prognosis with Professor Kulkarni at IIT-Bombay. We have looked at a problem with integration, and some Bayesian statistics. As a civil engineer, all I have to say is that the the infrastructure around here (on campus and off) needs some serious help. Concrete should not be growing mold, I assure you.

The past three and a half weeks have been eventful, to say the least. I don't want to bore you with a week by week or a day by day account of what happened, so I'll summarize the trip to the best of my abilities. Here it goes:

We arrived in Chennai on the midnight of Wednesday, August 5th, and because IIT Madras opened classes on the 9th, we stayed off-campus at the Trident Hotel during our first four days here. Being a nice hotel that catered towards foreigners and the upper class, it was sort of like a gated community. I loved our excursions out of it and into true India.