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Test Drive

By Benjamin Wesley
This article was printed in Abroad View fall 2004

BMW’s Forschungs und Innovations Zentrum (FIZ) is every mechanical engineer’s paradise. It is BMW’s primary research and development center, where all the company’s work in materials science, information technology, alternative fuels, product design, placement and marketing is done under one roof. Well, maybe not one roof, but under several roofs interspersed within the Bavarian capital and German metropolis of Munich. And guess what? I had been given the opportunity to work there.

Sure, I had no clue about the subject matter. My department was something called “Thermal Systems.” It seems that interns at German companies are treated much like German master’s degree candidates, who are not given a detailed description of their projects until their start dates and then have only six months to solve the problem and write their theses.

Having just arrived, my mentor was already heartily describing the relationship between the rotations per minute of an automobile engine, torque and horsepower and how they were read and evaluated by the dynamometer. I was thinking to myself, “What’s a dynamometer?” And to make matters worse, he was speaking in “Denglish”—the funny mishmash of Deutsch (German) and English that is often heard on German streets.

Within three minutes I was lost. After that I would intermittently say “Ja” and nod my head as if I understood. By the end of our 45-minute conversation I knew only two things: first, that I would be operating the dynamometer and, second, that I would need to test the new 5-Series model on the instrument. But all I cared about was that I would be physically working on cars for five and a half months.
Germans waste no time putting their interns to work. In contrast to many American companies, German companies expect their interns not only to work but also to be productive and contribute to the company. I had spent one summer at an American automobile maker near Detroit. There I had done what every American engineering student dreads but rarely manages to escape: Data Management. No testing. No hands-on. In fact, I worked at an office building 45 minutes away from the company’s production and research facilities. One of my colleagues felt so sorry for me that he arranged for me to take a field trip to the plant just so I could at least see a production line before I left.

My first few days at the FIZ were a refreshing experience. My job had a simple objective but was extremely rewarding. I fitted vehicles with temperature sensors that fed continuous readings to a controller. The controller then fed the readings to a PC computer, which I operated. The point was to find out if the any of the car’s parts reached unacceptably high temperatures during vehicle testing. That’s where the dynamometer was helpful.

The dynamometer is the instrument upon which one places the vehicle to perform stationary testing of an automobile at various speeds. Expert BMW technicians showed me the best ways to set up the test equipment. The dynamometer operators showed me the ins and outs of the testing facility and taught me the protocol of a vehicle test—at which speeds to operate, at which gear and for how long.
I learned to love the camaraderie between German colleagues. The Bavarian work tradition mandates that at exactly 9:30 a.m. everyone must stop working and begin “Brotzeit,” literally, bread time. This is when workers take 15 minutes to eat breakfast together and discuss current events. There is no discussion of work. I once tried to ask a mechanic about a repair for one of my test vehicles. He gave me a cold stare. Immediately, I realized the sacredness of the Brotzeit. I came back twenty minutes afterward and he promptly assisted me.

By the end of the summer I had finished analyzing the results of my test. In a number of cases I found that critically high temperatures had been reached on several parts. The designers and I then worked closely to determine if more thermally-resistant alternative materials should be considered as replacements or whether the existing parts could withstand the new high temperatures. The best part was when I accompanied my boss to meetings, where he used my test results in his official reports.

As a result of my success on the job, I was given other responsibilities. My department does pioneering work in the field of hydrogen fuel technology. Because liquid hydrogen must be maintained at an extremely low temperature (below -200ºC) and is combustible at around room temperature, there was a wide variety of temperature-related issues that needed to be solved. My final task was to determine whether the super-cooled hydrogen could be used to cool refrigerant for the on-board air-conditioner on its way to the combustion chamber from the fuel tank. Although I ultimately found that this was not a viable option, I learned an immense amount about alternative fuel technology and refrigeration.

At the end of my internship I felt a real sense of accomplishment and excitement about my chosen profession. I know that because of this international experience, I had a distinct edge in getting my new job. This fall I will begin working for Texas Instruments, designing pressure sensors similar to the ones I used during my testing at BMW. Texas Instruments has international facilities in Germany, Mexico and China, so I will be able to continue working in an intercultural environment. AV