Dear Reader,

I wish you a wonderful weekend and looking forward to another week. I hope you had a good week and was as productive as is healthily possible. Welcome to this week's newsletter where I will be sharing from a current coding exercise that I am working on.

Here are the outline for the perspectives today:

1. Technical Reflections: Creating random distribution of particles
2. Behind the Scenes at CM Videos: My most popular video
3. Quotes of the week: Why you do what you do?

Technical Reflections

Creating random distribution of particles

I have been spending part of this week on generating randomly distributed particles within a defined representative volume element. This sort of work feeds directly into study of particulate composites and void morphology assessment of different materials. This implementation was carried out inside MATLAB. The above is applicable for spherical and ellipsoidal particle shapes and the RVE can be a cubic or cuboidal virtual domain of the users choice.

In reflecting on this today, I am starting with the questions: "What does it take to create such a numerically generated random particle distributions?" Here are some considerations you have to make if you want to generate such examples as shown above.

1. Monte Carlo methods is important: It is impossible to generate such random distributed particles without use of the Monte Carlo methods. The approach used here is the Random Sequential Adsorption (RSA) approach. This uses computer-based randomness to generate centre coordinates of particles.
2. Jamming limit is a problem: The use of RSA approach unfortunately suffers from a jamming limit which for such 3D systems as above, this is set at about 30%. The jamming limit is a spatial realization state for particles where no new particles are admitted within the chosen RVE. It means there is a jamming of the particle addition hence causing the model generation to get stuck. It is a problem you have to solve if you want to create such system as above.
3. Think of multiparticle sizes: True representation of particulate systems will often have multiple particle diameters. This is essential for this sort of work. Creating monophasic systems are easier as you will simply track the deposition of particles of same geometries. For multi-particle-size systems, the principle is the same but you must have a handle that tracks particle sizes, positions and spatial separation between them.
4. No particle overlap is allowed: A priority of this sort of numerical exercise is making sure that there is no overlap between the particles, as this is not a physical reality. So, part of the generating algorithm is an overlap precluding feature.
5. Translation to FEA scheme: For one to be able to take these numerically generated domain into a finite element analysis (FEA) scheme, you must have a way of translating the model into a format that FEA solvers can read. I usually work with ABAQUS, and if you want to control ABAQUS externally, you can use a Python script to do so. So, a next step from the above MATLAB-generated model is to write a translation script that takes the output from here, in this case MATLAB, and write/generate a Python code that will make it useable within ABAQUS.

The above are the exercises that I have been working on lately. I have a video where I discuss these mechanics in more details especially for a 2D system, so if you have not seen it, then you may like to watch the video below. Do let me know, in a reply to this newsletter, how these information might be useful to you.

Behind the Scenes at CM Videos

My most popular video

I made this video about 18 months ago and it continues to be the most popular video on the YouTube Channel. It is a 50-minute video, which I believe is my longest video. It covers everything about Representative Volume Element modellign of unidirectional composites from model creation to post-processing of the simulation results. Right from the time it was published, viewers took a liking for it and it continues to do very well to date.

Looking at the channel, you can see that the video has been watched 17, 450 times, attaching 121 comments and 303 likes. These are analytics that YouTube makes publicly available. At the backend, there are a lot more information about the video.

First, it has more than 15,000 views above my average views on my videos. It has attracted a total of 96,000 minutes watch time for the channel. Most impressively, it has attraced 296 subscribers to the channel.

I am most proud of the video because it is drawn from a research area where I am actually an expert in and a lot of my work has been done in this area. It truly represents what I consider the research niche that I occupy and that it is doing well really pleases me.

Quote of the Week

Why you do what you do?

I read the Entrepreneur's Rollercoaster by Darren Hardy about a year ago and recall it particularly impacting me. I continue to refer back to some of the principles Darren shared in the book, especially as I try to succeed in my career, Youtube and personal life.

There is always a common thread to most individual's self-reflection of their place in this world. It is drawn from the ultimate desire to answer these questions: Why am I here? What am I doing here? Am I really making a difference in this world? If I am not here, would anyone miss me? These questions address the indwelling desire of everyone for relevance.

A typical answer to these questions often tend to be around "What and individual does" We often find fulfillment in what we are doing for from that we explore our relevance to the world we live. It is true, but also fraught within this existential relevance is the desire of loving what we do. It is often said that the millenial generation have this crisis of love for the mundanities of their work and where they do not find such love at its pre-eminnence they leave the job seeking that elusive high of a love for a job that might not ever be filled.

This is why the wisdom of Darren Hardy in the above quote of the week is worth listening to. Desiring to love 95% of the time what you do is an illusion. Every job has got boring dimensions. Instead of thinking about loving what you do, reframe the question into loving why you do it. It is the search for the why behind your work that you will find also an answer to that indwelling question of why am I here in this world.

Imagine my work here on YouTube as a content creator. It is a hobby and can be draining of my time and energy. I have to make videos, edit them, publish them and answer questions on them. These take time. I have a full-time job and a young family and a wife. If I want to love the video-making endeavours of a content creator, then it might never be actually possible to do so. What drives me is why I do it. It is about the many of you that are behind the computer screen, watching the videos, finding solutions to your questions and thereby using the skills and intellect God has given me to impact the world - most of whom I will never meet.

That is why the video I reflected on above brings joy to my heart because that simple 50-minute content has been watched over 17,000 times in 18 months. It has attracted 96,000 minutes of watch time and so on. It has blessed many even though there is no metric to quantify the way it has helped many. It is in this that I find the Why for making YouTube videos.

I will encourage you to likewise find the Why behind whatever you do. In there, is the ultimate satisfaction that you will ever experience and I wish you the best as you continue to persevere doing what you do because of why you do it.

Thank you Reader for reading another newsletter from me. I do hope you have been blessed by some of the things I shared here.

Please let me know in a reply email if any aspect of it spoke directly to you and of anyway I can continue to support you.

Do have a lovely weekend and we will catch up again next week.

Bye bye.