For my practicum project, I interned for the US Navy at Pax River Naval Air Base. I worked for NAVAIR, which is devoted to providing materiel support for aeronaval aircraft and airborne weapon systems for the United States Navy. I worked specifically in the Turbofan/Turbojet Engine Design Branch under Alex Fleck. This branch focuses on the continued component improvement of every jet engine currently by the US Navy. I was assigned to a subteam that focused on the F-135 Engine (used in the F-35 aircraft) where we assed and facilitated new and continue changes to the F-135 Engine.
Over the course of the internship, I completed two main tasks: learning about the job position/ F-135 Engine and completing a degradation analysis. While those are the main takeaways, I completed an assortment of other tasks throughout a typical day at work. As the F-35 aircraft is operational by the Navy, Airforce and Army, my day consisted of 3-4 hour-long meetings. In these meetings, we discussed component improvement updates, general team updates, and overall communication of the three different sections of the US military. As days were typically 9 hours, that leaves 5 hours for other work to be completed. I normally spend 1 hour asking my team questions to further my understanding of the topic I was working on. The last 4 hours were spent working on a major project. For the first half of my internship, I read books and tried to learn as much as I could about jet engines. In the second half, I worked on compiling data for the degrader analysis.
Through the time working for the US Navy, I had to observe my peers to keep up with the growing expectations my team had for me. In meetings, I would often listen to what other team members had to say, as I would soon need to be able to give the same information. Throughout observing my team, a common trend in scientific design arose. Designs are never perfect right off the bat, and have defects that will appear later in the product's life cycle. That's the whole point of the team we work with, we have to improve designs to prevent failure. Our team would be faced with a component that broke and decide if it is worth fixing/ what is the best way to fix it. By working with the component improvement program, it has opened my eyes to the science that comes after design. As a mechanical engineering major, school has taught me the science behind design, but not what happens after. This practicum assignment has made me a complete engineer, letting me comprehend the science behind a product's full lifecycle.
This internship has made me realize my love for failure analysis, and I want to pursue it further. This opportunity allowed me to apply what I learned in college to real-world scenarios, but also taught me about a whole other world of engineering. Like previously mentioned, school didn’t teach me engineering after initial design, so until now, I didn’t realize it was an option. Now I want to go into a field relating to failure analysis, preventing products from potentially injuring users. I was able to further my understanding of failure analysis through my vibration class I took last semester. I am also pursuing a master's degree in vibration and controls to further my understanding of what causes failure. While I am furthering my understanding now, I wish I had come into this internship having already taken vibrations. Most of the first two weeks were teaching me material crucial to performing my job. By coming in with this information, I could have reduced the time to catch me up to speed and made more of an impact. All in all, I plan to continue pursuing jobs that relate to failure analysis in my future endeavors.
As any engineering problem is too big for one person, this internship was no different. I had to work with a team to split up assignments and complete tasks in a timely manner. To this end, we needed active communication to achieve our goals. We had meetings every day to discuss what needed to get done and constantly provided updates throughout the day. As an intern, I was the least experienced in my team. I would often get put on simple tasks that took time rather than knowledge. I have interned before, so I was familiar with this role, but as a college student, I want to participate more. Hopefully next summer, when I return to this internship, I will be able to have a more substantiation contribution to the team.
Overall, I enjoyed working as an SSEP intern. Everyone was so friendly, and the experience was extremely educational. However, whether I recommend this to future SGC students is up to the students. You are working for the military, and your contribution will most likely kill someone. If you have an ethical problem with that, then this probably isn’t the best fit. If this isn’t a concern, then it is a great opportunity to get real-world experience applying what you have learn in college. Plus, it leads to a job and pays for college. The choice of whether you should try this opportunity is up to you.