Aerospace Engineer · USA

Ashwin Sundararajan

I work across aerodynamics and mechanical design, with experience in wind tunnel testing, CFD, uncertainty quantification and CAD. My work runs from published research to production-ready manufacturing drawings.

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  • Master'sAerospace Engineering · University of Dayton, Ohio
  • B.TechMechanical Engineering · SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Chennai
Portrait of Ashwin Sundararajan in a grey suit
NACA 2412 V∞ t max = 0.12c at 0.3c camber max = 0.02c at 0.4c c (chord) TE LE
Fig. 1  NACA 2412 airfoil, the section from my wind tunnel PIV study. Maximum camber 2% of chord at 40% chord; maximum thickness 12% of chord at 30% chord.

About

Between the wind tunnel and the drawing board

My work bridges academic research and hands-on engineering practice. I have published on uncertainty quantification and wind energy, and I am proficient in CAD design and manufacturing drawings.

On the practical side, I focus on making design and production workflows more efficient. On the research side, I use experiments, simulation and surrogate modeling to understand aerodynamic performance.

Combining theoretical insight with practical skills is how I approach complex engineering problems, and it is what I bring to mechanical design and analysis work.

Research areas

  • Wind energy
  • Uncertainty quantification
  • Surrogate modeling
  • Experimental aerodynamics
Ashwin standing at a wooden overlook among bare winter trees

Research & projects

Selected work

Fig. 2  Surrogate form, and the 11 high- plus 51 low-fidelity XFOIL runs that matched a 50,000-run Monte Carlo.

Graduate research · University of Dayton · AIAA SciTech 2024

Multi-fidelity surrogate models for uncertainty quantification

Built multi-fidelity sparse polynomial chaos surrogates for the UQ Challenge Problem: a NACA 2412 airfoil with a simple flap, analyzed in XFOIL. The surrogates reproduced 50,000-run Monte Carlo results for the aleatory, epistemic, discretization-error and uniform-input cases from as few as 11 high-fidelity runs, with compressed sensing performing best.

Method
Multi-fidelity sparse PCE with compressed sensing
Test case
NACA 2412 with flap, XFOIL
Result
Matched Monte Carlo with 11 to 151 high-fidelity runs
Co-author
Markus P. Rumpfkeil
Wind tunnel test section lit by a green laser sheet, with smoke seeding the flow
Fig. 3  PIV setup in the wind tunnel test section, with laser illumination and flow seeding.

Experimental aerodynamics · Wind tunnel

Particle image velocimetry of a NACA 2412 wing

Measured the flow around a NACA 2412 wing in a wind tunnel using particle image velocimetry. A laser sheet illuminates particles seeded into the flow, and paired camera images of those particles give the velocity field around the wing.

Airfoil
NACA 2412
Technique
Particle image velocimetry (PIV)
Facility
Wind tunnel
Output
Velocity field around the wing
Fig. 4  Press play to watch the finished turbine turn on its stand (49 s, final assembly, 2019).

B.Tech project · SRM IST · Published 2019

Design and fabrication of an omnidirectional wind turbine

With a team of four, I designed and fabricated an O-Wind turbine, an omnidirectional rotor that captures wind from any direction without a steering mechanism. Angled, tapered fins use Bernoulli's principle so the rotor turns in light wind. We modeled it in SolidWorks, analyzed the flow in ANSYS Fluent, and built the blades in glass fibre from CNC-machined MDF molds. Tests in natural and forced wind charged a battery through a permanent-magnet generator.

Concept
Omnidirectional, no steering, for low-wind sites
Build
8 glass-fibre blades (4 inner, 4 outer) from MDF molds
Analysis
SolidWorks design, ANSYS Fluent CFD
Testing
Fin angle and shape variants; direct drive and 5× gearing

Publications

Papers

  • Conference paper
    Uncertainty quantification · 2024

    Multi-Fidelity Sparse Polynomial Chaos Surrogate Models Applied to the UQ Challenge Problem

    A. Sundararajan, M. P. Rumpfkeil

    AIAA SciTech 2024 Forum, AIAA Paper 2024-0708

    Multi-fidelity sparse PCE surrogates for a flapped NACA 2412 airfoil in XFOIL match 50,000-run Monte Carlo results from as few as 11 high-fidelity runs.

  • Journal article
    Wind energy · 2019

    Design and Fabrication of O-Wind Turbine

    H. Mohammed Ali, S. Seetharam, S. Ashwin, M. S. Adithya

    International Journal of Recent Technology and Engineering (IJRTE), Vol. 8, Issue 1, pp. 381–385, May 2019

Skills

Methods and tools

Engineering

  • Wind tunnel testing and simulation
  • Computational fluid dynamics (CFD)
  • CAD modeling
  • Product design
  • Manufacturing drawings
  • Uncertainty quantification

Software

  • MATLABAnalysis
  • PythonAnalysis
  • AnsysSimulation
  • HyperMeshMeshing
  • SolidWorksCAD
  • CATIA V5CAD
  • PTC CreoCAD
  • AutoCADDrafting

Contact

Let's talk

Questions about my work, or an opportunity to discuss? Email me or connect on LinkedIn.