Meet Vishal Ramnath, Junior Lecturer in Mechanical & Industrial Engineering, who recently graduated with an MEng degree from the University of Pretoria. His dissertation is entitled "Mathematical modelling of nanofluid thermophysical properties using compulas".
It was fairly normal with two parents and two sisters in Pietermaritzburg where I was a middle child and received a standard government public school upbringing supplemented by trips to the old Natal Society Library for books on dinosaurs and the inventions of the ancient Greeks and Romans.
My dad did not have the opportunity to go to university and was a businessman who ran his own factory. He was a self-taught inventor who developed machines which inspired and prompted my passion in engineering.
I did not unfortunately have the opportunity of a bursary and the financial means to pursue postgraduate studies when I was younger and had to immediately start work in the local industry after I graduated with my BSc Eng degree. As a result it was important for me to complete a master’s degree to prove to myself that I had the intellectual ability and stamina to engage in and complete postgraduate studies.
I did so with the full support of my former chair of department, Prof Moses Strydom, who was also at one time from industry and who first recruited me to academia at Unisa and helped me settle in, and thereafter with the support of my next chair of department Prof Wei Hua Ho, who allowed me flexibility in the final stages when I was writing my research dissertation and had to juggle the lengthy commuting between Muckleneuk and Florida, and meeting Unisa lecturing deadlines. Family life moves forward and the generous vacation leave policy of Unisa, of which I am very appreciative, allowed me to reconnect with my family in PMB every few months when I needed a break.
My research was on the mathematical modelling of nanofluids using copulas. Nanofluids are basically classical engineering fluids like water or oil that are used in machines like heat exchangers that incorporates very small solids called nanoparticles. The inclusion of nanoparticles gives the normal fluid vastly superior thermal performance compared to normal engineering fluids.
However, there are almost 1 000 different possible ways to write down an equation for the nanofluid and it is not obvious which equation will give good results. My research developed a new mathematical approach in the field of engineering fluids to use some advanced numerical and statistical ideas to simultaneously incorporate the experimental data and accuracies into an equation without having to test each and every possible equation.
The end result is that a new technique was developed so that a practical nanofluid model can now be used by engineers operating heat exchangers in industries such as the manufacturing and aerospace sectors.
I will be continuing my postgraduate engineering doctoral studies later in 2019 into nanofluids by refining and developing some potential new mathematical and engineering ideas on a part-time basis at the University of Pretoria. Separately from this at Unisa I will be starting some preliminary and exploratory R&D on engineering uncertainty quantification problems by utilising the new high performance computing (HPC) supercomputing cluster when it is fully commissioned and becomes available later in the year.
I am involved in the Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering ASTRA project, which is a community engagement project for local schools that focuses on some renewable energy aspects.
My understanding of such is that this is a university that simultaneously prepares students from Africa for both benchmarking and competing with international students from overseas countries while also at the same time addressing local problems and challenges by educating and shaping students to help solve problems, and develop new and novel insights in their communities, workplaces and lives for the overall benefit of themselves and the people they care about. I add a minor level of value to this by helping the individual students I teach to achieve success in their studies so that they can achieve their fuller potential, and on a broader institutional level through R&D excellence that benchmarks and showcases the potential of work from an African university for shaping the future.
Perseverance and hard work can overcome the obstacles that seem insurmountable.
* Interview by Nelsiwe Nkambule, Assistant Communication and Marketing Specialist, College of Science, Engineering and Technology
Publish date: 2019-03-30 00:00:00.0