Motivation Letter

Motivation for choosing this MSc Programme

In a recent flutter envelope expansion flight test of an aircraft, Test Pilot was gradually increasing the
speed of aircraft as per flight test procedure with no major observation. However, as soon as the aircraft
entered in transonic regime, wings and horizontal tail of the aircraft started vibrating at relatively higher
vibration levels. This made the pilot uncomfortable who, in turn, expressed an apprehension about this
alarming situation to be an onset of flutter condition. Although real-time flutter analysis and ground
studies showed sufficient margins at this flight condition, being lead flight test engineer, I still gave call
to abort the flight test on pilot’s request keeping in view the safety of pilot and aircraft.
Investigation about the rise in vibration levels revealed that instead of flutter, the aircraft exhibited Limit
Cycle Oscillations (LCO) - a well-known phenomenon occurring near transonic regime. Typically, these
oscillations are highly nonlinear in nature and cannot be predicted during unsteady aerodynamic
analysis. This is due to the absence of some nonlinearities in flutter calculation which indicates a gap
in our analysis techniques. Therefore, in order to overcome this deficiency, I am motivated to pursue
MSc Aerospace Engineering at TU Delft, which also aligns with my previous work experience and my
interest.
Since childhood, I had a thirst for knowledge and aspired to be among the best in class. I obtained a
bachelor's degree in Aerospace Engineering from Institute of Space Technology (IST), Islamabad,
Pakistan and graduated with a First class and among top 5 students in my class with a CGPA of
3.63/4.00. I believe competition brings something extra out of me and IST is known for being
competitive. The education I received at IST helped me to hone my analysis and research skills,
prioritize and manage the competing demands on my time, work independently as well as part of a
team. During my undergraduate studies, I was able to develop a strong basis of subjects like Aerospace
Structures, Mechanics of Material, Structural Dynamics and Mathematics. My Final Year Project was
to estimate fatigue life of Compact Tension Specimen and the computational results were compared
and validated with practical demonstration and I was awarded “A” grade.
Endowed with inherent research capabilities and inquisitive disposition, I joined a research organization
where I pursued my professional career in an intriguing fashion. Since 2014, my intellectual skills have
thrived in a versatile fashion at Aeronautical Research Centre (ARC). Here, conducive environment for
research enabled me to acquire expertise in Unsteady Aerodynamic Analysis, Aeroelasticity and Flutter
Predictions. Aeroelastic analysis, being a cardinal requirement in Aeromechanical Qualification, is
widely used to predict safe flutter free flight envelope in subsonic, transonic and supersonic regimes.
For that purpose, extensive Ground Vibration Testing (GVT), flutter predictions and subsequently flight
testing aided to validate the computed results, exposed me to dive into a new world of nonlinear
aeroelasticity.
There are certain areas in aeroelasticity which are still unexplored resulting in safety compromise of
aircraft. During our routine aeroelastic analysis, nonlinearities like effect of large amplitude
aerodynamics, bilinear stiffness, friction in riveted joint and free-play in control surface actuation are
not included. With the inclusion of these type of nonlinearities, accurate aircraft behavior as well as
Limit Cycle Oscillations condition may be predicted prior to actual flight. Nonlinear aeroelasticity
problems and its physics kept me excited and I felt a desire to grow more intellectually and excel myself
in this field to international standards.
Why TU Delft?
While searching for solution and advisable methods to elucidate the problem of inclusion of
nonlinearities, I came across the name of TU Delft which is known for its education and industrial ties
supported by the expert faculty and state-of-the-art research facilities with strong international
recognition. Besides being one of the Europe’s top universities with QS ranking of 61, it has a diverse
culture having high ratio of international students.
My motivation is further buttressed by the presence of Professor Dr. ir. R. De Breuker working in
Design and Safety of Structures and benefitting students with their sound knowledge of Aerospace
structure particularly linear and nonlinear aeroelasticity. In addition to that, two doctorates of TU Delft
made great contributions in our organization by implementing advanced concepts of flutter analysis in
time domain instead of frequency domain and reduction of number of aircraft configurations using mass
decrement method and parametric flutter analysis. Their remarkable achievements were one of my
biggest motivation for pursuing my Master’s at the esteemed university.
Furthermore, building upon my experiences, I have a strong desire to develop myself as a world-class
engineer with specialization in the field of Aerospace Structures to develop reliable and efficient
methods to couple aerodynamics, inertial and structural dynamics characteristics of an aerospace
structure. In TU Delft, MSc Aerospace engineering offers a specialized track known as Aerospace
Structures and Materials (ASM) which is compatible with my area of interest, especially the Design
and Safety of Structure field. This track is designed for the students to enrich them with knowledge and
practical skills to confront the challenges of developing next-generation solutions for complex structure
problems.
As a prospective graduate student I am excited about the courses being offered such as “Fundamentals
of Aeroelasticity”, “Non-Linear Modeling” and “Applied Aircraft Aeroelasticity”. All these courses along
with many others are in line with my field of expertise and will help me appreciate the core concepts of
aeroelasticity in more detail. They will also help me to develop primary competencies for my proposed
master thesis in the field of nonlinear aeroelasticity.
I believe that admission to Masters Programme in Aerospace engineering will be the most logical
extension of my academic pursuits and a major step towards achieving my professional objectives.
Cognitive competencies acquired through Masters in Aerospace particularly in Aerospace Structures
and Materials track will diversify the working methodology and techniques at my organization.

BSc Final Thesis

The scope of my final project was Fatigue analysis of aluminum alloy Compact Tension Specimen
under variable amplitude loading and comparison of computational and experimental results.
In order to enhance the technical and theoretical skill in the field of fracture mechanics this research
was performed as fatigue failure and is a problem of great importance in the aviation industry. The main
objectives were to learn the detailed methods to calculate fatigue life, industrial importance of project
and to gain confidence in our numerical solution.
A basic fatigue test specimen called “Compact Test Specimen” was chosen for analysis and testing.
The specimen was made of the same material (Al Alloy 7075) being used in an aircraft. Eleven test
samples were prepared from a private vendor. Samples were prepared as per ASTM Standard E399.
The same specimen was subjected to stress analysis in ANSYS, crack growth analysis in AFGROW
under constant and variable amplitude loading and fatigue life was estimated. The results of all three
simulations were validated using experimentation. For this purpose, the specimen was subjected to
dynamic load frame. In the first phase, fracture toughness test was performed. In the second and third
phase, constant amplitude cyclic loading variable amplitude loading was applied to the specimen
respectively and crack growth rate curve was formed. In the fourth phase, variable amplitude loading
was applied. The results of all simulations were then verified. Absolute and relative errors were
measured.
Hypothetical Thesis
For my research, I am planning to explore the advanced aeroelastic phenomenon known as nonlinear
aeroelasticity. Previously, several procedures have been proposed by many investigators for
calculating the transient response of an aeroelastic system that includes nonlinearities either in the
structures or in the aerodynamics. Based on all these methods, it is inferred that Direct Simulation
Approach (DSA) suits best for estimating Limit Cycle Oscillations and can include distributed
nonlinearities like large-amplitude aerodynamics, friction in riveted joints etc., in addition to
concentrated nonlinearities such as free-play in control surface actuation. The nonlinear system can be
divided into several subdomains using DSA and within each subdomain, the system, whose transient
response can be estimated by a direct time integration procedure, is assumed to be linear. The only
downside of DSA is that the quantitative measures of the stability features of the system cannot be
directly assessed without an appropriate post-processing procedure.
In my thesis, a generalized direct simulation approach for both open and closed-loop nonlinear
aeroelastic systems will be applied on a complex aircraft configuration. This approach will be based on
a scheme that divides the nonlinear systems into sub-linear systems which leads to a set of piecewise
discrete time-domain state-space equations. In doing so, nonlinearity in structures, control system, and
unsteady aerodynamics can be included altogether. Moreover, the discrete gust or pilot input
commands will be specified as the external disturbance to excite the nonlinear system. The transient
response will then be computed based on an interpolation procedure to obtain the state-space
equations at each time step. Once the time-domain solution of the generalized coordinates is obtained,
the transient response of any parameters of the aeroelastic system can be computed.