Benjamin Beaudry

Sr. Analysis Engineer at Tesla

Palo Alto, California, United States

About

CAE engineer specialized in multiphysics and multiphase analysis. Thermal/fluid/electrical/mechanical analysis, testing, and validation. Solidworks CSWA and Six Sigma Green Belt certified, Eagle Scout. Expert in numerical methods, 1D modeling with MATLAB, 3D modeling with Star-CCM+, ANSYS Fluent, OpenFOAM, and COMSOL. Hands on experience with thermal management solutions such as: fans, heatsinks, heatpipes, vapor chambers, thermal interface materials (grease, gap pads, phase change), and thermosiphons. Used for cooling optic modules, CPU's, high powered ASIC's, batteries, and high voltage conductors. Open source enthusiast, home tinkerer

Experience

  • Tesla (Palo Alto, California, United States)
    • Senior Analysis Engineer
      Aug 2025 - Present · 1 yr

    • CAE Engineer - Battery Modeling
      Jun 2023 - Aug 2025 · 2 yrs 3 mos

      Balancing performance, reliability and cost by building 1D and 3D models to simulate components in the vehicle like contractors, active fuses, passive fuses, busbars, current collectors, and battery cells. Electrical, thermal, structural analysis and testing of components. Utilizing Star-CCM+, MATLAB, Simulink, COMSOL, HPC, Python, Java. Working cross functionally with various teams to meet company product requirements. Pushing the state of the art to create new analysis workflows and standardization to achieve accurate simualtions that match reality.

  • Battery Engineering Intern at Tesla
    Jun 2021 - Apr 2022 · 11 mos

    Simulated thermal performance of battery packs. Cut cost, improved performance, and improved manufacturability of electric vehicles • Used MATLAB and STAR CCM+ to simulate Multiphysics problems, including heat transfer, fluid flow, and electrical. • Scripted in java to automate STAR CCM+ simulations, sweeps, and data post processing. • Reworked old MATLAB code into a new class, optimized code performance from O(n log n) to O(log n), created new methods / workflows for novel simulations and data post processing. • Used a state based modeling approach to model the vehicle and create firmware that runs in the physical vehicle. • Performed multi function optimization studies, cut 1kg of mass in a single study.

  • Rochester Institute of Technology (Rochester, New York, United States)
    • Formula SAE
      Aug 2020 - May 2021 · 10 mos

      Powertrain Team: At my university's FSAE team, I improved the lap time by 4% (1500s to 1440s) from the 2019 to 2021 vehicle battery pack performance by optimizing the battery thermal management system. The previous generation (2019) battery pack would have ended the lap at 80 degC, 20 degC over the limit, and was developed without the use of a CFD model. I took the challenge to self-learn Ansys IcePak and built a detailed CFD model of the battery pack and thermal management system. Since CFD was new to the team, I wrote a 50-page document on model setup, including details of how translate fans curves and choice of turbulence models, for future reference. Using the CFD model, I identified that the fans could be positioned better to improve pressure drop (and thus increase flow rate by 50%) and found areas of low flow where baffles could be used to redirect flow. The final model showed the desired reduction in maximum cell temperature, down to 60 degC, without any cost, mass or packaging tradeoff. Composite Team: • Assisted with composite manufacturing to deliver a finished product at the end of the year. • Manufactured structural and aerodynamic components of the race car from composite materials such as carbon fiber and fiberglass. • Learned about various resins and layup techniques to construct components with the appropriate properties for their use case.

    • Tutor
      Aug 2020 - Dec 2020 · 5 mos

      Tutor for MCET-320, Dynamics, created one on one individualized lectures, and accompanying problem sets. Part of the HEOP tutoring program, aimed at supporting diversity and inclusion in higher education. Impulse, momentum, kinetics, kinematics, vibrations. Fall 2020.

    • Grading Assistant
      Aug 2019 - Dec 2020 · 1 yr 5 mos

      Graded MCET-210, Non-Metallic Materials, homework with comments for the 40 students. Collaborated with the Professor for grading their polymer research project. Plastic injection molding, composite manufacturing, polymer chemistry. Fall 2019, Fall 2020.

  • Thermal Testing Engineer at Arista Networks
    Jan 2020 - Jul 2020 · 7 mos

    Testing, validation, and simulation of thermal management solutions for high power networking switches. • Provided data driven product suggestions for thermal and mechanical design during team meetings. • Conducted wind tunnel testing to simulate forced convection and to determine airflow impedance for switch components and full systems. • Simulated heatsinks from testing in CFD for verification and to aid in overall system thermal analysis. • Used fundamental heat transfer equations to verify CFD preheat on the heatsinks due to an array of components upstream. • Wrote Excel VBA script to automate data transfer and post processing of thermal tests.