Helion
During my time at Helion, I primarily worked with a small team of Engineers on the Arc Fused Quartz Glass program which successfully produced the world's largest quartz glass tubes!
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My role involved developing hardware used in the plant for manufacturing the tubes, post run data analysis, and leading the manufacturing/analytical efforts for turning a sand covered glass crucible into a tube that could be tested and used as a vacuum vessel.
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Video of the process here!
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Skills: NX, Teamcenter, Structural/Thermal Analysis, Ansys, GD&T, Machining, Process Development, Material Testing
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Overview
Overview
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Was one of three engineers and operators on the arc fused quartz program which successfully manufactured the world’s largest quartz glass tubes, helped develop the hardware used in the plant and the process for manufacturing the tubes
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Designed water-cooled stainless steel electrode extensions capable of operating steady state at 900C with peak heat fluxes in the MW/m^2 that stiffened the formerly pure graphite rod electrodes to resist oscillations from magnetic loads
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Wrote an automatic data processing script in MATLAB which took in over a hundred inputs from thermocouples, pressure transducers, flowmeters, the electrical system, and robot data allowing us to optimize system parameters across tests
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Used 3D laser tracker scans to model as-built individual tubes in NX, performed structural and buckling analysis in ANSYS
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Tested glass for composition, strength, and stiffness for analysis inputs, derived custom equations for non-standard samples
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Led a team through the process development for machining the 900+ kg quartz crucibles into vacuum vessels for Polaris
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Water-cooled Extension Design
WIP
Includes thermal/fluids/structural/electrical/mechanical analysis, design, verification, and testing. The peak heat flux was estimated in the 2+ MW/m^2 which, for reference, is greater than re-entry heat fluxes for spacecraft entering the atmosphere. The extensions had to withstand a high heat flux environment with an unknown atmosphere at steady state for approximately one hour per run. They had 8000+ amps at peak flowing through them to the graphite tips attached to them where the plasma arc was. They were internally water-cooled 4" diameter tubes with over 60 gallons/minute flowing through them. Variations in the arc also subjected them to magnetic loads pushing them apart and they were designed for steady state operation of over 900C.
Data Processing
WIP
Includes MATLAB work to combine data streams from over a hundred different sources all in different formats. Scrip was fully automated and synchronized all the data to the same time table. Certain sets of data was filtered and this allowed us to view data from thermal, fluid, electrical, and robot systems all at the same time to see how they interacted with each other. We could view system parameters, compare them against the physical produced crucibles, and adjust the following test parameters accordingly to get a repeatable process. This also allowed us to set bounds as operators for what we should be keeping an eye on.
Tube Processing and Analysis
WIP
Includes in depth ANSYS structural/buckling analysis as well as custom meshed models for each tubes based on converting 3d point clouds from a laser tracker scan of each tube into a model for analysis.
Also includes material testing and custom equations derived from Castigliano's theorem to get mechanical properties on non-standard curved material coupons
Also includes the process development that I led to turn the sand covered glass crucibles into a polished glass tube vacuum vessel with windows cut in them for diagnostic instrumentation pass throughs.