1. Srijith Umakanth – MS – Mechanical Engineering – Fall 2016
 I was employed as a Research Assistant at the Pillai Institute of Information Technology and
Engineering, New Panvel, affiliated to the University of Mumbai. My project was titled
‘Design, prototyping and testing of a Dynamic Material Analyser (DMA) ’. I’ve employed
programs like Data Acquisition System by National Instruments(NI) and LabView. The project
involved working with various sensors like PCB accelerometers , Futek load cells and other
industry grade hardware. This project enabled me to get well versed with coding and using
Micro controllers like Arduino and Rasberry Pi to control various DC , stepper and Servo
motors. Fabrication of the test bench also had me working on 3D printing, laser cutting and
PLC controls.
 During my undergraduate course, while working on the Formula Student project, I have
worked with 3 companies. I decided to work with all 3 companies in Pune, since Pune is now
a major engineering hub and it would help me work with the best companies in the field.
1. Seinumero, Pune, India– I lead a team to design and manufacture a differential casing
and tripod bearing case for an open differential by reverse engineering an OEM
differential. I used CMM to plot the original casing's dimensions which was originally
made out of mild steel and re designed it in Aluminium, using Solidworks 3D modelling
software to make it much more compact, lightweight and bring down the cost of
fabrication by at least 35%. From the data we had about the competition, failure of both
these components contributed to 60% of the teams in the competition not qualifying.
Our design approach resulted in these components performing above par and placing us
10th
out of 65, overall in the competition.
2. Proto-D Engineering, Pune, India - I was involved in manufacturing of fixtures for chassis
tubes using a 3 axis Laser cutter. A part of my Formula Student project, as the
Powertrain System Manager, I was also responsible in manufacturing of wheel hubs and
uprights for our car which included designing and analyzing the hubs using Ansys
Structure Simulation software and also coding the VMC and CNC machines to machine it.
At Proto-D Engineering, I was exposed to the latest design and manufacturing methods
in the automotive industry.
3. Ashtech Tooling and Stamping, Pune,India – Using the fixtures made in the previous
project, this project involved machining of chassis tubes using a 6 axis laser cutter by
generating a 3-D profile. Later on, the machined samples were verified for dimensions
using 3D scanning and a ROMER Arm CMM Machine against the digital models.
 My final Year Undergraduate project under Prof. Richa Agrawal (M. Tech Design) was titled as
'Computational Fluid Dynamics(CFD) Analysis of an Air Intake and Design of Exhaust System for a
Formula Student automobile to maximize the motor performance of the vehicle'. The intake and
the exhaust were designed as per 2014 FSAE Rulebook guidelines. All the air intake and the
exhaust components like the air box, exhaust pipes, resonators, mufflers etc. were designed on
Solidworks 3D modelling software. The competition guidelines had restrictions such as use of a
20mm restrictor which limits the amount of airflow to the engine and also engine sound
limitations of 110 dbA. My task was to design an airbox and the restrictor in such a way as to
maximize the airflow towards the engine and an exhaust system which works in resonance with
the intake system to provide maximum power output as well as satisfying the required sound

2. Srijith Umakanth – MS – Mechanical Engineering – Fall 2016
restrictions. The intake geometries were designed using Helmholtz theory and Pressure Wave
Ram theory and then iterated using CFD simulations in Ansys Fluent and Ansys CFX platforms.
The exhaust was designed following ASHRAE Technical committee 2.6, Sound and Vibration
Control guidelines and concept of Transparency index. The finalized intake components were
manufactured using 3D printing technology and exhaust was manufactured in house. The
manufactured components were validated with the help of sensors and Advanced Data
Acquisition systems mounted on the car. With the designed intake and exhaust I was able to
churn out 41Nm of torque even in the restricted environment as compared to the 44Nm in a
natural aspirated stock version of our Royal Enfield 576cc single cylinder engine.