Annual Report 2007-2008

Engineering Sciences

The programme objectives of Engineering Sciences cover support to research efforts in a range of disciplines within engineering sciences such as Civil, Chemical, Electrical, Computer, Material, Mining & Mineral, Mechanical Engineering, Robotics and Automation. The individual research programmes may address one or more sectors namely, health, bio-medical, transportation, automotive, water resources management, structural engineering, building technologies, manufacturing and process industry related technologies etc. However, off late few proposals under this programme, do reflect the inter-disciplinary nature that research activities are now taking. In addition, few major proposals have been received for setting up of Engineering Research Centers in many academic Institutions.

During the year, support to both basic and applied research was continued. 78 new research efforts have been initiated/identified for support. The Committees regularly monitored the progress made in the ongoing projects. Several interesting and significant results were reported from these individual engineering science programmes, are given below:


Chemical Engineering

• The gamma ray tomography facility to analyze multi phase reactive flows has been established with necessary hardware and software to conduct three dimensional studies. This will be a unique facility of its kind in which BARC is collaborating with the intention to replicate the facility for their in-house use, later on. Actual experiments on bubble columns and gas liquid stirred tanks are expected to start soon.
• A State of art facility has been set up to study rheology/morphology and other properties of advanced polymeric materials on real time basis to understand microstructure evolution during processing. These studies would facilitate significant insight into intelligent processing, thereby reducing wastage of material and enhancing properties. M/s Reliance Industries Ltd. is a collaborator in this project and a specific system of their interest will be studied as part of the work.
• Work on establishing radio frequency plasma facilities is complete in three different locations to carry out studies on nano-particle arrays, thin films for biomedical applications and nano particles with dual property of magnetism and aberration for micro machining applications.
• The work carried out under one of the ongoing projects on the role of sub surface microstructures in the feet of biological species in increasing the adhesion by several orders of magnitude and reusability of over several cycles of applications has resulted in a paper entitled “Micro Fluidic Adhesion Induced by Sub Surface Microstructures” in Volume 318, October 2007 issue of “Science”. This knowledge can be used to design super glues and smart adhesives for a variety of applications
• Two patents on Complex Micro Nutrients Fertilizers are likely to be licensed shortly to an Indian Company, which has shown interest to commercialise the process. These formulations have been proven for better availability of nutrients to plants during field demonstrations and the process has been scaled up to bench level for invoking enough confidence of the potential manufacturers.
• In the area of modeling and optimization, a package of modern software tools has been created for process simulation & analysis. The package aids application development in process engineering with the help of conceptual framework of modern computational strategies like wavelet transforms, AI, ANN, GI, genetic programming, fuzzy logic and SVMs.
• A major project has been initiated with the underlying theme of fabrication and structuring using soft materials on small scales. This initiative will evolve a core group with significant expertise in the areas of patterning of structures, visco-elasticity of soft solids, polymer melts & clay suspension and molecular simulation. Extensive studies of carbon meso structure composites, adhesives and polymer films will be carried out. Few specific applications like lithium nitride batteries will also be attempted as a part of the
  work.
• A major project has been initiated in a broad area of micro fluidic systems for biomedical applications which involves synthesis of vesicles in micro fluidic channels, characterization of their biomechanicalproperties and interaction of vesicles for controlling the drug release at target sites. Lipid Vesicles are rapidly gaining importance in biomedical applications but have a short life due to degradation by chemica action and in-vivo clearance by the immune system. The present work aims to circumvent these drawbacks by synthesizing vesicles and encapsulating the drug in-situ at the point of clinical application using micro fluidic technology.

Electrical, Electronics and Computer Engineering

• Developed a middleware (Vishwa) for grid computing using benefits of structured and unstructured P2P systems to enable dynamic application dependability and re-configurability. Vishwa is available in public domain for download. A new method has been developed for object migration and load balancing. A scalable fault tolerant platform was developed for data management in P2P grids (Virat).
• Developed a digital current mode control method for dc-dc converters with inductor currents sampled only at the rate of the switching frequency. This innovation leads to the use of inexpensive ADC whose conversion rate is relatively low.
  
• Developed Block Floating Point based scheme for efficient implementation of LMS algorithm and extended to several variants with evaluation of steady state round off noise behaviour. A separate Block Floating Point treatment has evolved to realize gradient adaptive lattice and DSP implementation of all the proposed algorithms.
  
• Developed analytically tractable traffic model and demonstrated as a useful traffic-engineering tool for efficient traffic management. This has been put in public domain for the benefit of users
• Developed Novel solution techniques based on reinforcement learning, to overcome problems of large state space & unknown system model. Efficacy of algorithm demonstrated through simulation, with higher spatial reuse without compromising on computational complexity.
• Designed Algorithms for micro-aneurysm & exudates detection, implemented and tested on a dataset of 257 images from 200 patients. Use of curvature information identified as a single key feature to design a screening programme for diabetic retinopathy with minimum computational complexity.
  
• Developed formal methods for reasoning about formal specifications, guiding simulation for accelerating the coverage, assessing quality of a property suite and novel specification styles. Proposed methodologies overcome limitations of existing property verification techniques. The research related to the project has resulted in 5 Journal publications.
• Developed a series of efficient algorithms for finding pair wise intersections, computing enclosures, connectivity extraction and design rule checking in large VLSI layouts. Developed some basic theory in range-aggregate data structures in computational geometry and all algorithms implemented & tested on randomly generated data sets showing marked improvement over existing main memory algorithms.

Material, Mining & Mineral Engineering

• TiO2 films on window glass plates by sol gel dip coating process were developed at NPL, New Delhi. These films are scratch resistant and are not attacked by acid fumes and have long life almost equal to the glass. These films are found to reflect ~ 35% of IR part of solar spectrum, thereby prohibiting the external heat to enter the room which saves the cooling cost during summer season, the same property also reduces the heating cost in winter season. These film exhibit both super-hydrophilic and self-cleaning
  properties. Suitable dopants on sol-gel derived TiO2 film with SnO2 were also prepared which retain the properties of self-cleaning and hydrophilicity.
• Al2O3-ZrO2 micro composite containing equal volume fraction of Al2O3 and ZrO2 using two different sets of precursors combinations, viz., AlCl3 and ZrOCl2 (combination 1) and Al(NO3)3 and ZrOCl2(combination 2) were prepared successfully at NIT, Rourkela. Two different processing routes were adopted viz., combined gel-precipitation and precipitation. These composites results in high toughness (13.04MPavm), high strength (645 MPa), and high hardness (14.1GPa).
• Bulk amorphous and nano crystalline ferro-magnetic material of e71Nb3.7Cu1AI3Mn0.8Si13.5B7 at an optimal wheel speed of 32m/s were prepared at NML, Jamshedpur. These composite shows good magnetic properties. Bulk amorphous Fe72Si4B20Nb4 alloy in the form of rods was also prepared by Cu-mould casting. These alloy showed excellent soft magnetic properties with low coercivity and high mechanical hardness. These potential properties open the scope of the material as robust soft magnetic component.
• Crystalline cubic spinel ferrite with about 19-22 nm crystallite sizes of Ni-Cu-Zn ferrite powder have been synthesized at REC, Rourkela. Ferrite powders have been tape casted successfully and simple multilayer ferrite inductor has been fabricated.
• High quality La1-x CaxMnO3(x=0.33) reproducible thin film using low cost spray pyrolysis method were prepared successfully at IMS, Bhubaneswar. Under this project indigenously designed and fabricated low cost based spray pyrolysis thin film deposition set up in the laboratory with the facility like horizontal/vertical furnace substrate holder, rotation of substrate holder, fine spray grade nozzle and nebulizer were developed. Synthesize films successfully at higher temperature using quartz tube aerosol carrier instead of glass tube which is normally gets crack during spray beyond 5000C.
• Pigment and catalyst grade titania by an alternate titanium dioxide process were prepared at RRL, Bhubaneshwar. Further formation of nano metric anatase grade titania (20-30 nm) has been identified as an intermediate product in this process. This is the first report on formation of different grades of titania from plasma smelted titania rich slag (obtained from East coast Ilmenite of India) using the modified sulphate route.
• Multilayer Vanadium and Lead doped SrBi2 (Nb1-xVx)2O9 (0<x<.3), BaBi2(Nb1-xVx)2O9 (0<x<0.1) ferroelectric glass-ceramics and polar glass nano/ micro-composites were prepared by conventional sintering technique at IISc, Bangalore. These glasses were found to have good thermal stability and glass forming capability.
• Electrochemical super capacitor using conducting polymer polyaniline and polypyrrole as electrolytes with improved enhanced capacitance value, power and energy density were prepared at IICT, Hyderabad.
  

• Investigations on on-line tool condition monitoring in high-speed machining using acoustic emission technique were carried out using artificial neural network algorithm and acoustic emission technique. This resulted in estimation of online tool wear in HSM. This work would initiate the development of intelligent self adapting C machines of the future.
  
• Numerical modeling of railway tracks on compacted subgrade has been undertaken by IIT, Delhi. Triaxial testing has been carried out on the subgrade soil, and the ballast and sub-ballast samples simulating field conditions (Figure 2.12). Constitutive relationship of the subgrade soil has been evaluated under advanced modified Cam-clay model. The stiffness’s of various interfaces have been evaluated by conducting direct shear tests. A three-dimensional finite element analysis of track structure has been carried out using these material parameters. Tests have been performed on half-size, adequately instrumented model track structure to validate the finite element results, to help in better management of railway tracks.
  
  

  
  

  Figure 2.12: Triaxial test on ballast sample under progress
  

  Coal pulverisation is an important and expensive component of a thermal power plant. Based on a hypothesis that pulverization is a velocity controlled process it has been shown at IISc, Bangalore in the project that replacing the present iron based pulverising medium with light ceramic based medium, it is possible to save 17% of power in a pulverizing mill without sacrificing grinding efficiency and the medium life (Figure 2.13). This enhancement has been demonstrated in laboratory as well as in a 3m diameter pulverizing mill.
  

  
                            Figure 2.13: Coal Pulverisation Process
  
  

Cloud Data Obtained after Scanning	Working on Cloud Data Sets, Curve Processing	Final CAD Model

• Development of new heuristic for lot sizing and scheduling in production planning, inventory management through lot sizing an important issue for firms to be competitive. It helps the industry to meet the uncertainties of the future. Production is organized in lots in order to meet varying periodic demand under conditions of tight capacity. This project work explored the feasibility to use the GA for finding the optimum solution for the single stage multi item capacitated and discrete lot sizing and scheduling problems, which is used in medium size production planning.
• Stabilization of slopes by using piles is one of the techniques to solve slope instability problems. Conventionally, retaining structures are used as a controlling measure to support the slope. Quite often, retaining structures may fail to insure stability to slope due to deep-seated slips and some times their use is prohibited due to space limitations. In such situations, piled-slope stabilization technique has evolved as an efficient technique in the recent past to strengthen existing soil slopes as well as for constructing new rail/road embankments with steep slopes in urban areas. Effectiveness of this method lies in easy and fast installation of piles without disturbing equilibrium of the slope, its capability to transfer the lateral thrust of the sliding mass to deeper stable layer by developing the soil arching. Under the centrifuge model studies on stabilization of slopes with piles project at IIT Bombay, application of centrifuge modeling technique and digital image analysis for understanding stability and deformation behavior of slopes with and without piles is carried out (Figure 2.15). The major technical fallout of the present study is to ascertain the location and spacing of stabilizing piles within the slope. It is evolved the piles positioned at mid-height of a slope with spacing equals to 3 times diameter of pile imparts maximum stability. Outcome of these results can be applied to strengthening (i) existing rail/road embankments, (ii) construction of noise-barriers along expressways/national highways, (iii) stabilization of landslide prone areas in hilly soil slope terrains, (iv) strengthening landfill slopes with pile based suppressor walls, etc.
  

  
  

  Figure 2.15: View of a pile-stabilised slope at the end of the centrifuge test
  

  
  
  
  
• Under the project Design Options based on performance analysis of rural roads implemented at IIT, Roorkee forty-eight rural road sections were identified on the basis of terrain, traffic, soil subgrade and rainfall conditions in eight districts of Uttarakhand. Based on the experience the performance based maintenance management methodology for rural roads has been developed in this study using the extensive study data. Performance prediction models have also been developed. The optimal maintenance type and timing developed has been recommended for implementation by the concerned agencies. The deterioration models developed in this study may be adopted by the various researchers in the country while evaluating different maintenance strategies in life cycle cost analysis of various design alternatives. The maintenance priority index developed may be used by the concerned agencies while prioritizing the rural road projects for maintenance at network level. The calibration factors developed may be advantageously adopted while using HDM-4 (Highway Design and Maintenance Model) software for investment planning and as a technical tool while evaluating rural road projects. The performance based maintenance strategies and thickness design for rural roads developed in this study would be useful for National Rural Road Development Agency (NRRDA) and the Indian Roads Congress (IRC) while revising the IRC:SP:20-2002 Rural Roads Manual.
• The experimental investigation of the behavior of various rocks of India under triaxial conditions has been carried out using servo-controlled triaxial system at IIT, Delhi. Predictions of the behavior have been made using FLAC software and compared with experimentally observed results and found in general agreement with experimentally observed results. Various empirical relationships for brittle to ductile transition, relations between point load index (PLI) and uniaxial compressive strength (UCS), tensile strength and UCS, modulus of elasticity (E) and confining pressure, Poisson’s ratio (í) and confining pressure have been proposed and found to be very promising for practical engineering problems.
• To meet increasing demand in various fields of applications, modern robots are to be intelligent and autonomous. An autonomous robot should have an adaptive, robust and computationally tractable motion planner to tackle various situations in a dynamic environment, on-line. In the present study at IIT Kharagpur, fuzzy logic- and neural network-based motion planners have been developed for a twowheeled robot and their performances are compared among themselves and with that of the conventional potential field approach. Figure 2.16 shows the experimental set-up used in the present work.

  
  

  Figure 2.16: Experimental set-up of Fuzzy Logic and Neural Network based motion planners