Teaching
Aerospace Materials Lab
This class is offered to the junior and senior aerospace engineering undergraduates at the UT Austin. It covers wide class of materials that include metal alloys, ceramics, and polymers. Students are trained on common testing methods and using the equipments used. Following video summarises one such test:
I’ve been a teaching assistant for this course for two and half years between Spring of 2023 and 2025. Following tables summarises the learnings from this experimental class:
| Material | Preprocessing | Testing Methods | Concepts | Instruments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Steel Alloys | Cold Working | Uniaxial Tensile Testing | Stiffness, Poissons Ratio, Stress-Strain Relationship and Regimes | Instron |
| Aluminium Alloys | Heat Treatments | Uniaxial Tensile Testing | Stress-strain relationship, Effects of various heat treatment | Instron |
| Ceramics | Three point bending | Stiffness Measurement, Probabilistic Model to account for Porosity | Instron | |
| Polymer (Polyethylene) | Uniaxial Tensile Testing, Stress Relaxation Test over various Temperature | Creep, Relaxation, Viscoelasticity, Hysteresis | Instron | |
| Aluminium Alloy | Fatigue Pre-crack | Mode-I Fracture | Fracture Toughness, Relation to plane-strain or plane-stress | Instron |
| ? | Notched | Charpy Impact Testing | Charpy Impact Test | |
| ? | Hardness Testing | Hardness, Different Scales | ||
| ? | Fatigue Testing | Fatigue | RR Moore |
The lab class usually starts with an brief overview of the theoretical background and testing methodology. This is followed by demonstration of material testing. The class proceeds in form of discussion. Question and answers are encouraged through the sessions.
High School Mathematics
During my secondary and high school, I was fortunate to have teachers who introduced mathematics in an interesting way. The riddles, finding better alternative solutions to same problems, staying on the problem, and building rigor in arguments are important traits. If not taught well it can turn someone who loves mathematics in school to hate it in undergraduate education as soon as they encounter the $\epsilon-\delta$ definition of limits, continuity, and derivatives. Thus, when an opportunity arose, I grabbed it to teach mathematics to high-school students. I was one of many teachers in the Nirmaan programme of my undergraduate institute.
Read more details about the Nirmaan Programme and follow them on either LinkedIn or Instagram.
