Parallel Systems is a Series B startup aiming to transform North America’s trucking industry to rail. They are currently developing a production-ready vehicle while working their way through a pilot program for their first completed prototypes. During my most recent term at Parallel I owned:

A retrofit design for braking components that saw failures during random vibration testing. I needed to quickly develop a solution for upcoming vehicle testing at the prototype level. This included: 

• Characterization of vibration environment 

• Initial sizing calculations and first principles approximations 

• Linear and Nonlinear Analysis of structure, including advanced contacts 

• Processing of results and comparison using approximation methods developed in-house 

• Assembly instructions 

• Prototype build

Initial bumper design for the company’s production-ready vehicle in development. This included: 

• Suitability analysis of designs in place on prototype vehicles 

• Concept generation – adaptation to new vehicle platform and architecture 

• Sizing calculations based on selection of loading requirements 

• Development of “two-stage” system with sensitive, low-magnitude stage and high impact stage 

• Compliance analysis  

• Dynamic response analysis for platooning events, damper selection  

Note that this work term was cut short due to company insolvency. Like the rest of my co-ops, I cannot share images of my work due to disclosure agreements that are in place.