Kalan Ferguson

Kalan Ferguson

I work on heat transfer, structural fatigue and aircraft design: finding where a design reaches its limit, and showing why.

Mechanical Engineering (Honours), aerospace minor, Queensland University of Technology. Seeking 2026/27 summer internships and undergraduate engineering roles in aerospace, defence, energy and advanced manufacturing. Australian citizen, NV1 eligible.

Selected workResumeContact

Contour map of case temperature across a GPU die under a 16-jet cold plate, cool blue at the edges and an orange hotspot in the centre outlined in red where it exceeds the case-temperature limit
Illustrative hotspot map under a 16-jet cold plate, from my research proposal on liquid cooling for AI racks.

Selected work

Three case studies, with the numbers that matter

Research proposal, EGH404 Research in Engineering Practice, 2026

Where single-phase cooling runs out

Single-phase liquid cooling is validated to 52 kW per rack. Next-generation AI racks need 180 to 220 kW. I proposed a three-scale experiment to measure where single-phase stops being enough, and whether two-phase cooling extends the limit.

Gap
No study compares both modes on one boundary above package scale
Method
270 controlled runs, an 8-branch rack-slice, then a live rack
Preview
Single-phase limit of 1.13 kW per GPU at the worst case, on synthetic data

Read the proposal

EGB316 Design of Machine Elements, individual, 2026

Weld fatigue design audit

A fatigue audit of the welded rear hanger on a 750 kg trailer, from load path to ANSYS validation. Hand calculation and FEA both predict infinite life, and I traced the 2.2 times gap between them to three causes.

Fatigue FoS
6.33 by hand, 2.86 in ANSYS
Mesh
Converged at 41.5 MPa with a 0.1 mm weld-toe mesh
Finding
The 5 mm weld is about 2.5 times larger than a safety factor of 2 requires

Read the analysis

QUT Aerospace Society, aerostructures team

Twin-boom autonomous UAV

Every major number in the wing was derived from a constraint. Hand-launch speed sets cruise, cruise sets Reynolds number, and the span limit sets aspect ratio.

Wing
650 × 130 mm, aspect ratio 5.0, NACA 4412
Weight
About 529 g against a 750 g ceiling
Cruise
16 m/s at a Reynolds number of 142,000

Read the design study

More projects

Writing

All writing

In progress
  • Anduril and the software-defined defence prime
  • AI's physical ceiling: power, heat and the grid

About

I am a third-year Mechanical Engineering (Honours) student at QUT with an aerospace minor. I work from first principles: I break a system into its load paths, failure modes and energy flows, and check the answer by hand before I trust FEA or CAD.

My interests run along two lines. One is Australian sovereign defence capability and the engineering behind platforms like the MQ-28A Ghost Bat. The other is the physical limits now shaping AI infrastructure: power density, cooling and grid capacity. Both come down to the same physics of heat, flow and structure.

Outside coursework I worked on the aerostructures team for a QUT Aerospace Society UAV, taking it from a blank sheet to a design-and-sizing milestone finalised in CAD.

Degree
Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering (Honours), aerospace minor. Expected December 2027.
Results
Major GPA 6.0 / 7, cumulative 5.7 / 7. Executive Dean's Commendation for Academic Excellence, 2025.
Clearance
Australian citizen, eligible for NV1 clearance on nomination.
Tools
ANSYS Mechanical, SolidWorks, MATLAB, Python.
Available
2026/27 summer internships and undergraduate roles. Based in Brisbane.