ANANYA RATH

email:ananyarath23@gmail.com

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE
I would like to pursue an M.S. and a subsequent Ph. D. in the field of Civil Engineering at your
esteemed university. I have always been interested in solving new, challenging problems, hence my
decision to pursue a career in research. My research interest is the study of the mechanics of
viscoelastic materials. During my term as an undergraduate student in IIT Madras, I have gained a
good understanding of the principles used in this field. I have been interested in taking up teaching
as a profession since the start of my curriculum at IIT Madras and hence, my decision to pursue an
M.S. and a Ph. D. in this field.
The fields of Mathematics and Science have always interested me and I decided to continue my
education in the field of Engineering. A combination of a strong conceptual understanding of the
subjects and intellect, I was among the top 1% of the 300,000 students who appeared for the Joint
Entrance Examination (JEE) and was selected to be a part of the Bachelor of Technology
(B. Tech.), Civil Engineering programme of IIT Madras. I am currently ranked second in the class of 40
undergraduate students with an overall CGPA of 8.92 and a major CGPA of 9.5. I have carried out
several projects as a part of my undergraduate programme that helped me realise my interest in the
field of rheology of viscoelastic materials.
To begin with, I developed an interest in the field of theoretical mechanics with the introduction of
the course Mechanics of Materials in the third semester of the B.Tech Programme. The subject
highly interested me. The subject briefly introduced the concept of stress analysis in elastic
materials. The Transportation Engineering-I introduced the stress analysis of asphalt and concrete
pavements. The various theories used in the stress analysis such as the three-layer Burmister theory
and the two-layer theory for asphalt pavements and the Westergaards theory ( slab on Winkler
Foundation) for concrete pavements, helped me develop an understanding of the constitutive
relations for asphalt and concrete pavements. This course got me interested in the stress analysis of
viscoelastic materials.
I thus, took the Mechanics of Viscoelastic Materials course in the sixth semester and achieved an A
grade (9/10). This course helped me develop an understanding of the time-dependent behaviour of
viscoelastic materials and the constitutive relations for such materials. I also understood the use of
various mechanical models such as the Maxwell model, the Kelvin-Voigt model and the Burgers

model to model the behaviour of such materials. The concepts of stress-relaxation and creep in such
materials highly interested me and I am interested in a more detailed study of the mechanics of such
materials. The emphasis of this course was in introducing a wide variety of constitutive models and
to understand stress analysis in more detail, I took the Elastic and Plastic Stress Analysis course to
understand the principles involved in the non-linear analysis of materials. The course introduced the
concept of solving boundary value problems such as inflation and torsion of an annular cylinder
using the Neo-Hookean and Blatz-Ko models to conduct a stress analysis. I have also developed an
understanding of the failure theories including the Tresca and the Von-Mises criteria for the failure
of steel.
During the summer of 2011, I was selected for an internship in Total Bitumen in Jodhpur, Rajasthan.
During my stay as an intern in the plant, I understood the process of manufacture of modified
asphalt and emulsions. I conducted experiments to study the difference in the rheological behaviour
of asphalt due to addition of polymers using the rotational viscometer. Apart from this, I also
developed an understanding of the network formation in modified asphalt and the influence of the
digestion period on this network formation during its manufacture. In order to show the influence of
the digestion period on the rheological behaviour of asphalt, I conducted experiments on samples of
modified asphalt manufactured with different digestion periods and found the results to be
consistent with the expected results.
I am currently doing a project which involves the study of the aging phenomenon of asphalt under
Dr J. Murali Krishnan (Associate Professor, Transportation Division, Department of Civil Engineering).
Aging is an internal structural change in a material that occurs due to loading or environmental
conditions. Stress relaxation in viscoelastic materials can occur due to both the inherent viscoelastic
nature and the effect of aging on the material. To analyse the mechanism of stress relaxation of such
materials, I chose the problem of torsion of an aging asphalt cylinder. I have understood aging in
asphalt as being of two types- reversible and irreversible. My project is to model the irreversible
aging of asphalt. Asphalt is modelled as a Burgers fluid model. Using MATLAB, I developed a code to
show the change in the behaviour of asphalt due to the influence of aging. Further, during the
course of the next semester, I intend to model the transition of short-term aged asphalt to long-term
aged asphalt, using the principles that I applied for the torsion of an aging asphalt cylinder. I have
planned to study the chemical kinetics of the aging of asphalt and the consequent changes occurring
in the molecular structure of asphalt during the winter-break and the next semester. This study
could be used to determine the load-carrying capacity of pavements as they undergo a transition
from the short-term aged condition to the long-term aged condition.

Apart from academics, I have also been active in sports and have been a part of the Institute
Basketball Team that won the gold medal at the Inter-IIT Sports Festival for two years in a row (2008
and 2009). I have also shouldered responsibility in the technical festival of IIT Madras (Shaastra) in
2010. I coordinated and conducted the Smart Materials Workshop for 40 students, with two other
classmates during Shaastra. I have also been an active participant in the Civil Engineering Festival
held at IIT Madras every year. I helped in making LITRACON (light transmitting concrete block) by use
of optical fibres in concrete. In spite of the intense academic curriculum, I have been able to
coordinate between my academics and extra-curricular activities. I was part of the team that won
the third prize at the national level in the Institute for Steel Development and Growth (INSDAG) Steel
Structural Design Competition for Civil Engineers held in Kolkata in August 2011. I was also part of
the team that conceptualised a super-corridor between Kakinada and Visakhapatnam. This supercorridor was a three-tier system consisting of a system of road, railways and pipelines between the
two cities. The geometric design of the road was done using MX ROADS and the design was
submitted at the Bentley International Design Competition for Students in the year 2011.
Texas A&M, with its unique blend of eminent faculty, resources and a reputation for highly
innovative work is the kind of place that inspires me. I am particularly interested in the work carried
out by the department in the area of asphalt technology and pavement design. I sincerely believe
that my competence and dedication will help me achieve great heights. I solicit an opportunity to
learn and contribute to my area of interest, by means of a fellowship in your esteemed university.