Abstract:

Translating novel nanoscale manufacturing concepts from research to commercially viable technologies has proven to be very challenging. This is due to the complexity of these systems and the lack of system-level models that are essential for efficient design and control of reliable manufacturing processes. Such nanomanufacturing development efforts typically involve prolonged iterative experimental investigations prior to successful deployment, see, for example, ref. [1]. This presentation will discuss ongoing research related to several nanomanufacturing systems being investigated at the NASCENT Center. In each case, the presentation will discuss precision sub-systems that enable the process technology, in-situ sensing, and control approaches used to achieve reliable process behavior.

Common challenges across these nanomanufacturing systems include: (i) lack of reliable and validated system-level models; (ii) multi-scale physics and chemistry coupled with parameter uncertainty; and (iii) incomplete in-situ sensing that creates gaps in system understanding. This talk will discuss the use of in-situ metrology and evolutionary computational algorithms to estimate system models and to create optimal control techniques that enable reliable manufacturing processes. Exemplar manufacturing systems that will be discussed include: (i) advanced process control in nanoimprint lithography steppers to achieve sub-3nm overlay; (ii) precision sub-systems and metrology in the development of continuous roll-to-roll nanoimprint lithography; (iii) an order of magnitude enhancement in volume resolution (down to about 300 femtoliters) in high-speed multi-nozzle piezo inkjet systems; and (iv) precision sub-systems and metrology in the development sub-100nm deep silicon electrochemical etching.

S.V. Sreenivasan, “Nanoimprint lithography steppers for volume fabrication of leading-edge semiconductor integrated circuits,” Microsystems & Nanoengineering, Nature Publishing Group, Vol. 3, Article number: 17075 (2017).

Bio-sketch:

Prof. S.V. Sreenivasan’s research focuses on creating scalable nanofabrication technologies that enable novel devices in electronics, displays, and healthcare sectors. He currently serves as the director of the NSF funded NASCENT Engineering Research Center. He has received several awards for his work including the Technology Pioneer Award from the World Economic Forum, the ASME Leonardo da Vinci Award, the ASME William T. Ennor Award, and the ASME Machine Design Award. He was named a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors in 2017. Dr. Sreenivasan founded Molecular Imprints Inc. (MII), a nanopatterning spin-out from UT-Austin that has resulted in commercial products in the semiconductor and display industries. He currently serves as the Chief Technologist of Canon Nanotechnologies, Inc., a company formed as a result of the acquisition of the semiconductor business of MII by Canon Corporation in 2014. The display division of MII was acquired in 2015 by Magic Leap, Inc., a leading augmented/mixed reality company.
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Abstract:

Manufacturing of metal components is essential to every major industry, and involves complex supply chains, consumes significant natural resources, and in some cases still uses ancient techniques. Conversely, additive manufacturing (AM) promises to, ultimately, digitize the formation of objects, consolidate supply chains, and redistribute value across the product life cycle. I will provide an overview of AM techniques for metals and will highlight recent work from my research group at MIT as well as from the startup company Desktop Metal, including discrete element simulation and X-ray metrology of powder spreading; a new concept for drop-on-demand metal printing; and an extrusion-based process that enables metal 3D printing in ambient followed by high-temperature sintering. These efforts emphasize expertise in materials, computation, and automation, which are collectively critical to enabling metal AM at scale. Yet, from industry, we have learned that in some cases the greatest barriers to wider adoption of AM are limited knowledge of its technical foundations and the difficulty of quantifying its value proposition. Motivated by this, I will also share experiences from the development of professionally oriented courses focused on AM, and the launch of a consortium aiming to strengthen ties between MIT and industry in additive and digital manufacturing.

Bio-sketch:

John Hart is Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Director of the Laboratory for Manufacturing and Productivity, and Director of the Center for Additive and Digital Advanced Production Technologies at MIT. John’s research group at MIT, the Mechanosynthesis Group, aims to accelerate the science and technology of production via advancements in additive manufacturing, nanostructured materials, and precision machine design. In 2017 and 2018, respectively, he received the MIT Ruth and Joel Spira Award for Distinguished Teaching in Mechanical Engineering and the MIT Keenan Award for Innovation in Undergraduate Education. John has co-authored >175 journal publications, is a co-inventor on >50 pending or issued patents and is a co-founder of startup companies Desktop Metal and VulcanForms, and a Board Member of Carpenter Technology Corporation.
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Abstract:

Neural disorders and old age limit the ability of humans to perform activities of daily living. Robotics can be used to probe the human neuromuscular system and create new pathways to characterize, relearn, or restore functional movements. Dr. Agrawal’s group at Columbia University Robotics and Rehabilitation (ROAR) Laboratory has designed innovative technologies and robots for this purpose. These technologies have been tested on subjects in a variety of studies to understand human cognitive and neuro-muscular response. Human experiments have targeted patients with stroke, cerebral palsy, Parkinson’s disease, ALS, Vestibular disorders, elderly subjects, and others. The talk will provide an overview of some of these technologies and scientific studies performed with them.

The most common, which is also the simplest, method used for obstacle identification is Arrival Time Imaging (ATI), also called Kirchhoff Migration. It is claimed that about 80% of SEG identification problems are solved using ATI. At the other end of the spectrum, there is Full Waveform Inversion (FWI), usually with the aid of an efficient adjoint-type scheme. Computational methods based on Time-Reversal (TR) are also effective for such problems.

In this talk, we present various methods to solve time-dependent wave-based obstacle identification problems in acoustics, SEG, and structural damage evaluation. In addition, we compare the performance of various methods.

Bio-sketch:

Sunil K. Agrawal received a Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University in 1990. He is currently a Professor and Director of Robotics and Rehabilitation (ROAR) Laboratory at Columbia University, located both in engineering and medical campuses of Columbia University. Dr. Agrawal has published more than 500 journal and conference papers, three books, and 15 U.S. patents. He is a Fellow of the ASME and AIMBE. His honors include an NSF Presidential Faculty Fellowship from the White House in 1994, a Bessel Prize from Germany in 2003, and a Humboldt US Senior Scientist Award in 2007. He is a recipient of the 2016 Machine Design Award from ASME for “seminal contributions to the design of robotic exoskeletons for gait training of stroke patients” and the 2016 Mechanisms and Robotics Award from the ASME for “cumulative contributions and being an international leading figure in mechanical design and robotics”. He is a recipient of several Best Paper awards in ASME and IEEE sponsored robotics conferences. He has also held international visiting positions that include the Technical University of Stuttgart, Hanyang University in Korea, the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland, the Biorobotics Institute of SSSA in Pisa, Peking University in China. He has successfully directed 30 Ph.D. student theses and currently supervises the research of 10 Ph.D. students at the ROAR laboratory. He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the journal “Wearable Technologies” from Cambridge University Press. He is the Conference Chair for IEEE BioRob2020 to be hosted in New York City.
All interested are welcome to join via the zoom link.

Abstract:

Obstacle identification problems are an important class of inverse problems, where the goal is to find the location, size, and shape of a local "object" (which can be a cavity, a region made of a material different from the background material, a geometric irregularity in the boundary, etc.) in an otherwise given medium, based on some measurements of the relevant field. A sub-class of problems in this category is based on time-dependent waves. Here, a given time-dependent wave source is introduced in the medium, and the response to this source is measured at certain points in space and time. Based on these measurements, some computational method is used to identify the obstacle. Such problems occur (and are important), for example, in biomedical engineering, Non-Destructing Testing (NDT) of structures, damage evaluation, underwater acoustics, and solid earth geophysics (SEG).

The most common, which is also the simplest, method used for obstacle identification is Arrival Time Imaging (ATI), also called Kirchhoff Migration. It is claimed that about 80% of SEG identification problems are solved using ATI. At the other end of the spectrum, there is Full Waveform Inversion (FWI), usually with the aid of an efficient adjoint-type scheme. Computational methods based on Time-Reversal (TR) are also effective for such problems.

In this talk, we present various methods to solve time-dependent wave-based obstacle identification problems in acoustics, SEG, and structural damage evaluation. In addition, we compare the performance of various methods.

Bio-sketch:

Dan Givoli is a Professor at the Department of Aerospace Engineering, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. He holds the Lawrence and Marie Feldman Chair in Engineering at the Technion and is a fellow of the International Association for Computational Mechanics (IACM). He was the former president and one of the three founders of the Israel Association for Computational Methods in Mechanics (IACMM), which is affiliated with ECOOMAS and with IACM. Dan Givoli is the associate editor of two journals: Wave Motion and Journal of Computational Acoustics. He is also a member of the Editorial Board of seven other journals, including Int. J. Numerical Methods in Engineering (IJNME), Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering (CMAME), Solid and Structural Mechanics Committee (ECCSM) of ECCOMAS. He served as an elected member of the IACM General Council for 16 years. Dan Givoli completed his Ph.D. degree at Stanford University in 1988. He has won several Excellent Teaching awards at the Technion, held Visiting Professor positions at four other universities: Tel Aviv U., RPI, NPS, and TU Delft. He has published over 140 papers in scientific journals, including four highly cited review papers, and many more papers in conference proceedings and edited books.
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Abstract:

Modern economies and societies are highly dependent on energy, and its use is increasing at a fast rate. Providing for these needs in a sustainable way can only be done by using renewable energy resources. However, in order to replace fossil fuels, the alternatives need to address the user needs, particularly availability and dispatchability. Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) has the potential to contribute a large share of the world’s energy requirements, taking advantage of the potentially high efficiency that can be attained in combination with storage capability. Presently, however, CSP’s contribution to the global energy mix is marginal and increasing at a very low pace. The proliferation of other, lower-cost power generation technologies is proceeding at a much larger scale, despite their inability to provide 24/7 year-round supply and dispatchability.

In a recent study, we proposed a methodology for optimizing the selection process of an energy solution for a wide range of applications to better address customer goals and needs. The method enables a rigorous comparison between alternative technologies and system configurations, and an example presented in this paper for a self-sufficient 24/7 year-round power generation, identifies a specific modular CSP configuration – possibly combined with other technologies – as a most advantageous solution.

Bio-sketch:

Prof. Jacob Karni received his BS in civil engineering and his MS and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Minnesota (1979, 1982, 1985). He was an Assistant Professor at SUNY in Stony Brook, NY (1984-1989), and joined the faculty of the Weizmann Institute in 1989. Prof. Karni’s research focuses on energy conversion processes, primarily for solar energy and clean fuel alternatives. His work in solar energy includes the development of new methods for concentration, absorption, conversion, transmission, and storage of solar energy, and the implementation of these methods in industrial systems. His research has produced several novel solar receivers capable of working at very high temperatures with highly concentrated sunlight while supplying heat to various high-temperature applications. His research has helped make solar-thermal cycle configurations more efficient. He has also created a novel concentrated photovoltaic configuration. He has demonstrated a new method for enhanced high-temperature electrolysis for the production of syngas (synthetic gases) from carbon dioxide and water. His goal is to create solar system configurations for a 24/7, year-round supply of electricity and clean, synthetic fuel. A commercialization program based on Prof. Karni's findings is presently underway.
All interested are welcome to join via the zoom link.

Abstract:

The unceasing growth in computational power and the development of new software tools and numerical algorithms are opening up exciting areas of research, discovery & translation in mechanics and biomedical engineering. Consider the mammalian heart, which has been sculpted by millions of years of evolution into a flow pump par excellence. During the typical lifetime of a human, the heart will beat over three billion times and pump enough blood to fill over sixty Olympic-sized swimming pools. Each of these billions of cardiac cycles is itself a manifestation of a complex and elegant interplay between several distinct physical domains including electrophysiology, muscle mechanics, hemodynamics, flow-induced valves dynamics, acoustics, and biochemistry. Computational models provide the ability to explore such multi-physics problems with unprecedented fidelity and precision. In my talk, I will describe several projects that demonstrate the application of powerful computational tools to problems ranging from chemo-fluidics of clot formation to fluid-structure interaction in prosthetic heart valves. The talk will culminate with a brief discussion on a new project where we are using computational aeroacoustics to analyze wing-tone based communication in mosquitoes.

Bio-sketch:

Rajat Mittal is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) with a secondary appointment in the School of Medicine. He received the B. Tech. degree from the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur in 1989, and the Ph.D. degree in Applied Mechanics from The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in 1995. His research interests include fluid mechanics, computing, biomedical engineering, biofluids, and flow control. He is the recipient of the 1996 Francois Frenkiel Award from the Division of Fluid Dynamics of the American Physical Society, and the 2006 Lewis Moody Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the American Physical Society, and an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He is an associate editor of the Journal of Computational Physics, Frontiers of Computational Physiology and Medicine, and the Journal of Experimental Biology.
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Abstract:

We study the linear stability of a vertical interface separating two fluid columns of different densities under the influence of gravity. The interface plane is parallel to the direction of gravity, corresponding to an accelerating Kelvin-Helmholtz configuration. This configuration was investigated recently at Caltech by Gat et al. (2017), who performed direct numerical simulation (DNS) of this flow. Here, we are interested in a theoretical understanding of the early phases of evolution, where a small-amplitude perturbation analysis can be carried out. In the first limit, we consider immiscible flow with surface tension and obtain a closed-form solution of the time evolution of the interface amplitude. The solution is non-modal and expressible as a function of the parabolic cylinder function. Secondly, we consider the viscous (miscible) case. Initially, we assume quasi-steady-state (QSSA) of the base flow and pose the problem as an eigenvalue problem. Subsequently, we carry out adjoint-based optimization of the most amplified eigenmode. This results in an initial condition that leads to the maximum growth of disturbances at a finite time. Results indicate that the perturbation energy of wave modes with small wavenumbers may experience substantial transient growth prior to decaying asymptotically in time. It is also found that the maximum growth rate is about one order of magnitude higher than that of the non-optimized case. The sensitivity of perturbation growth with respect to the initial time, density, and viscosity ratios will be discussed.

Bio-sketch:

Carlos Pantano received his Bachelor's degree in Industrial Engineering with a specialization in Electrical Engineering from the University of Sevilla in Spain. He received a Masters in Applied Mathematics from Ecole Centrale Paris in France and a Masters and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California San Diego. He was a Senior Postdoctoral Engineering from 2000 to 2001 at the Office National d'Etudes et de Recherches Aerospatiales in France and then joined the California Institute of Technology as a senior post-doctoral associate and later as a senior research scientist until 2006. He was a faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 2006 until 2018. Currently, he holds the rank of Professor in Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Southern California. Professor Pantano received the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in 2006. He is currently an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and a member of the American Physical Society (APS), Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), and the Combustion Institute. He serves in the editorial boards of Combustion Theory and Modelling, AIAA Journal, and is an associate editor of the Journal of Fluid Mechanics.
All interested are welcome to join via the zoom link.

Abstract:

I will introduce our research portfolio including combustion, biofuels, CCS, and fuel production. I will discuss in more detail our recent work on the development of materials, reactors, and systems for clean energy including carbon capture, hydrogen production, and CO2 reuse. Oxy-combustion is an efficient power plant technology with carbon capture. Our recent work addresses how to extend the fundamental knowledge base of air combustion to oxy-combustion, including scaling of critical phenomena. Efficient air separation is needed to support oxy-combustion, and we will show how using metal oxides/pervoskites enables the integration of air separation and combustion. As decarbonization of the energy system expands, alternative fuels/energy carriers such as hydrogen will be widely used, and “CO2 reuse” could contribute to their formulation. We have demonstrated how to use similar techniques for water splitting, CO2 reduction as well as the conversion of natural gas to chemicals.

Bio-sketch:

Ahmed F. Ghoniem is the Ronald C. Crane Professor of Mechanical Engineering. He is the principal investigator of the Center of Excellence in Energy and director of the Center for Energy and Propulsion Research at MIT. His research covers clean energy and combustion with a focus on CO2 capture, renewable energy and alternative fuels, and computational engineering. He has supervised more than 130 M.Sc., Ph.D., and post-doctoral students, published more than 500 refereed articles, lectured extensively around the World, and consulted for the aerospace, automotive, and energy industry. He is a Fellow of ASME and APS, and the Combustion Institute and associate fellow of AIAA. Among his awards are the KAUST Investigator Award, the ASME James Harry Potter Gold Medal, and the AIAA Propellant and Combustion Award.
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Abstract:

The design of soft, smart materials is at the onset of many developments in polymer physics, chemical physics, biophysics, and materials science research. Here, polymers are an important class of soft matter whose properties are dictated by large fluctuations. Because of this reason soft systems are ideal candidates for the flexible design of advanced materials.
At the same time it is very difficult to study these materials within the conventional experimental, theoretical and/or computational setups.
In this talk, the complementary molecular simulation and experimental investigations will be presented with an aim to establish a microscopic understanding of some soft materials.In particular, two distinct cases will be discussed: The first case is related to the switchable responsiveness of (bio-)polymer solvation. The second case deals with the tuning of morphology, mechanics and its links to the thermal transport of solid polymers and molecular (CNT) forests.
[1] D. Mukherji, C. M. Marques, and K. Kremer, Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics 11, 271 (2020)
[2] D. Mukherji, C. M. Marques, and K. Kremer, Nature Comm. 5, 4882 (2014)
[3] D. Mukherji, C. M. Marques, T. Stuehn, and K. Kremer, Nature Comm. 8, 1374 (2017)
[4] Y. Zhao, M. K. Singh, K. Kremer, R. Cortes-Huerto, and D. Mukherji, Macromolecules 53, 2101 (2020)
[5] D. Bruns, T. E. de Oliveira, J. Rottler, and D. Mukherji, Macromolecules 52, 5510 (2019)
[6] C. Ruscher, J. Rottler, C. E. Boot, M. J. MacLachlan, and D. Mukherji, Physical Review Materials 3, 125604 (2019)
[7] A. Bhardwaj, A. S. Phani, A. Nojeh, and D. Mukherji, arXiv 2005.10685 (2020)

Bio-sketch:

Dr. Debashish Mukherji's early education is from the Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi. He completed his doctoral degree in Physics from The University of Western Ontario, Canada, in 2008. He was a post-doctoral fellow at the Army Research Laboratory-Drexel Materials Center of Excellence in the United States during 2008-2010. He was also a PDF and then Project Coordinator at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Germany from 2010-2018. Currently, he is a Senior Scientist at the newly founded Quantum Matter Institute at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.
His research interests include multiscale simulation in soft matter and materials science, structure-property relations of polymers, mechanical and thermal properties of advanced functional materials, and (bio-)macromolecular solvation thermodynamics.
All interested are welcome to join via the zoom link.

Abstract:

Multi-scale methods have been an important aspect in the field of engineering. Spatial multi-scale methods are used extensively for the determination of quantities of interest for heterogeneous continua, especially for alloys, porous media, composites and such others. As far as temporal multi-scale methods are concerned, they are used to simulate fatigue behaviour by avoiding cycle-by-cycle simulations. Both the cases are predicated on the fact that classical mono-scale methods require too fine FE mesh or too many time steps that can be computationally impossible, especially for non-linear material behaviour. The current work presents homogenisation technique based on asymptotic expansion for coupled elasto-viscoplastic-damage for heterogeneous medium, and for coupled thermo-elasto-viscoplastic-damage for combined cycle fatigue (CCF) loading. CCF loading basically involves high frequency low amplitude fluctuations (micro-cycles) embedded in low frequency high amplitude cycles (macro-cycles). A multi-scale technique has been used, which is based on separating the scale of interest (space/time) into a macro-scale and a micro-scale. The micro-scale represent the fast evolution in time (can be considered as micro-cycles) or the microscopic unit-cells in space. The macro-scale represent the slow evolution in time or the macroscopic structure in space. Based on asymptotic expansion and classical theory of numerical homogenisation, the problem eventually is separated into a macroscopic problem which involves the resolution of the homogenised quantities of interest, and a microscopic problem to evaluate their residual counterparts. Such a framework avoid cycle-by-cycle simulation of micro-cycles and they are calculated only at the macroscopic time points. For the spatial case, homogenisation technique avoids simulations of all repetitive unit-cells and they are calculated only at the macroscopic Gauss points.

Bio-sketch:

Dr. Mainak Bhattacharyya is currently working as a post-doctoral researcher at ENS Paris-Saclay, France. He received his B. Tech in Mechanical Engineering from Jadavpur University in 2011. Thereafter, he received his Masters in Applied Mechanics in IIT Madras, India. In 2013, he joined GKN Aerospace India located in Bangalore, India as a post graduate engineer. In 2014 he moved to Hannover, Germany to pursue his doctoral studies which culminated in a joint doctoral project work between Leibniz University Hannover, Germany and University Paris-Saclay, France. He defended is thesis in 2018, receiving a Doctor of Engineering from the Faculty of Civil Engineering, Leibniz University Hannover, Germany and a Doctor in Solid Mechanics from University Paris-Saclay. His first post-doc was at the National Institute of Applied Science of Lyon, France, and his second post doc was at ENS Paris-Saclay, University Paris-Saclay, France from 2019. His current research interests are in the field of continuum damage, reduced order modelling, multi-scale methods.

Abstract:

This seminar will discuss a quick method to draw inlet and outlet velocity diagrams for axial-flow compressors and turbines directly using their key performance parameters: the flow coefficient, the blade loading coefficient, and the degree of reaction or simply reaction. In the conceptual and preliminary aerodynamic designs of these turbomachines, designers will find the method extremely helpful in graphically determining all parameters of blade inlet and outlet velocity triangles along a streamline of constant radius and constant blade velocity. Exact equations to compute these parameters will also be presented.

Bio-sketch:

Dr. Bijay Sultanian has international experience in gas turbine aerothermodynamics, heat transfer (airfoil internal and film cooling), secondary air systems, and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). Dr. Sultanian is Founder & Managing Member of Takaniki Communications, LLC. During his 30+ years in the gas turbine industry, Dr. Sultanian has worked in and led technical teams at a number of organizations, including Allison Gas Turbines (now Rolls-Royce), GE Aircraft Engines (now GE Aviation), GE Power Generation (now GE Power), and Siemens Energy (now Siemens Power & Gas). As an adjunct professor, he taught graduate courses on turbomachinery and intermediate fluid mechanics at the University of Central Florida for ten years. During 1971-81, he made landmark contributions toward the design and development of India’s first liquid rocket engine for the surface-to-air missile Prithvi and the first numerical heat transfer model of steel ingots for optimal operations of soaking pits in India’s steel plants. Dr. Sultanian is a Life Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, a registered Professional Engineer in the State of Ohio, and an Emeritus Member of Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. He is the author of Fluid Mechanics: An Intermediate Approach, Gas Turbines: Internal Flow Systems Modeling, and Logan’s Turbomachinery: Flowpath Design and Performance Fundamentals, Third Edition. He received BTech in mechanical engineering from the IIT Kanpur in 1971. Thereafter he obtained MSME from the IIT Madras; PhD in mechanical engineering from the Arizona State University; and MBA from the Lally School of Management and Technology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy.

Abstract:

Over the past decade, digital microfluidics has emerged as a promising fluid handling technology. It involves the generation and manipulation of discrete volumes of liquid inside microdevices, including micro and mini-channels and junctions. The digital microfluidics platform offers advantages of small sample size, reagent volume, speed of response, and high sensitivity due to higher precision and selectivity of the process. Beside this, miniaturization also allows increased automation and parallelization, which opens the way to screening and systematic testing of biological fluids. The main objective of the present work is to the development of a low-cost closed EWOD based digital microfluidics (DMF) platform for the analysis of droplet motion and deformation subjected to an external electric field. EWOD is a promising technique for manipulation of droplets in DMF due to its portability, high automation, high sensitivity, flexibility, reprogrammability, and simple device fabrication. It exploits changes in the wetting behavior of a conducting/polarized droplet placed on a dielectric surface, modified by the application of an electric field across the dielectric below the droplet. In this technology, nanoliter to microliter size droplets of samples and reagents are moved, split, merged, and mixed. In this work, the electronic interfaces are designed and fabricated to control a variety of fundamental droplet operations. The circuit design includes a high voltage control unit (0-300VDC). Bottom electrode patterns are fabricated using Printed Circuit Board (PCB) technology to make it easily accessible and less expensive. The use of Polypropylene (PP) as a dielectric as well as hydrophobic material in the EWOD device is not only introduces a simpler approach for the fabrication of the device but also makes it less costly. The basic fluidics operation intended on this system includes droplet motion and droplet merging. The work will help to introduce the EWOD system to existing LOC applications and provide a platform for the development of new research ideas.

Bio-sketch:

Dr. Vandana Jain is an Institute Post-Doctoral Fellow in the department of Mechanical Engineering at IIT Kanpur. She works in the area of microfluidic and EWOD based droplet system. In her research so far, she has proposed a low-cost solution in EWOD system designing, which can be useful in various biomedical applications. Her recent work aims to investigate the effect of the electric field in droplet deformation and transportation. She received her Ph.D. in the Center for VLSI and Nanotechnology, VNIT, Nagpur (2018), and M.Tech in Opto −Electronics. She is a member of IEEE.

Abstract:

The size optimization of electronic devices requires new approaches to the study of heat and mass transfer at microscale. In particular, the advancement in high performance heat exchangers, vapor chambers and heat pipes with microscale passages stimulates also development of a new fundamental knowledge of the processes with phase change. More refined experimental approaches are needed in order to probe interfacial conditions during the phase change. The talk deals with the temperature jump and Knudsen layer effects, where the continuum equations are no longer valid and the kinetic approaches should be used. The measurements were carried out using a microthermocouple with characteristic size of 2–3 μm. Temperature jumps were recorded at the interface, which increases with increasing heat flux density and the modes with both a positive and a negative jumps, as well as with the absence of a temperature jump, were recorded for the first time. The experiments are well described qualitatively with kinetic theory and Onsager-Casimir relations.

About the speaker:

Elizaveta Gatapova is a Senior Researcher at Kutateladze Institute of Thermophysics in Novosibirsk, Russia. She received her Ph.D. from Kutateladze Institute of Thermophysics in 2005 on the topic of application of shear-driven liquid films to cooling technology. Her current research broadly focuses on thermal management of electronics. She is interested in the fundamentals of the following: evaporation and heat transfer in microsystems, non-equilibrium effects at the liquid-vapor interface, wettability of nanostructured surfaces, contact line dynamics and rupture of thin liquid films. She has 6 patents and authored more than 60 publications. Her investigations were supported by the President of the Russian Federation in 2007, 2009 and 2012. Dr Gatapova is a recipient of INTAS (EU) and BELSPO (Belgium) Fellowships, several awards for young scientist and Academina award for women in science from Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences and INTEL. She is PI of several national and cooperative projects. She is expert of the European Commission research and innovation programs and several Russian funds.

Abstract:

Regenerated cellulose fibers are produced by dissolving wood pulp, followed by regenerating it into fiber form. These bio-derived fibers are widely used in industry. Industrially, two processes are used to prepare such fibers. The most widely practised is the Viscose process, that uses environmentally hazardous solvents such as carbon disulphide. The more recent Lyocell process eliminates the use of carbon disulphide and is water based. There are differences in the properties of fibers produced using these processes. Therefore, the microstructure generated during the regeneration process greatly influences the properties. My talk will focus on developing an understanding of structure-property relations in semicrystalline fibers in general, and regenerated cellulose in particular. In the first part, I will describe a minimal model that describes the mechanical response of semicrystalline polymer fibers. We demonstrate that polymer fibers, including natural silk and synthetic fibers exhibit universal viscoelastic response. A simple phenomenological model accurately describes this data and provides insights into the microstructural origins of the fiber response. This model invokes only crystal-amorphous coexistence and no other features of the semicrystalline microstructure. Yet, it can successfully model the mechanical response of a wide variety of polymer fibers. In the second part of the talk, I will describe the application of this model to regenerated cellulose fibers prepared using Viscose and Lyocell processes. I will also describe a method to characterize the microvoids in Lyocell and Viscose fibers.

About the speaker:

Guruswamy Kumaraswamy is a Professor of Chemical Engineering at IIT-Bombay, Mumbai since October 2019. He received a BTech in Chemical Engineering from IITB in 1994, followed by an MS (1996) and PhD (2000) in Chemical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology. He spent a year as a VW Postdoctoral Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Colloids and Interfaces. From 2001-2019, he was a scientist in the Polymer Science and Engineering Division at the CSIR-National Chemical Laboratory in Pune. Guru’s work focuses on controlling structure and investigating structure-property relations in soft matter systems. These systems range from polymers to surfactants and lipids and colloids. He collaborates extensively with industry and has worked with companies in India and abroad in the area of polymers, healthcare, personal care, waste valorization, etc. Recognitions for his work include the CSIR Young Scientist Award, the NCL Scientist of the Year Award and election to the Fellowship of the American Physical Society and the INAE. Guru is also passionate about science outreach to school students and in the last ten years, he has been associated with a volunteer group called the Exciting Science Group.

Abstract:

Free convective heat transfer within enclosures is a heavily researched area due to its natural occurrence in many real-world applications such as double-glazed windows, solar energy flat-plate collectors, nuclear reactors, and building enclosures. In the present study, heat transfer measurements and flow visualization are carried out for high-Rayleigh-number thermal convection in horizontal and tilted rectangular enclosures. Firstly, the effect of sidewall conductance heat loss on Nusselt number is examined. This thermal conductance through the sidewalls can significantly alter the Nusselt number (Nu) – Rayleigh number (Ra) correlation for horizontal enclosures (or, Rayleigh-Bénard convection), which is traditionally modeled by assuming a linear temperature profile along the sidewalls. Experiments (using three horizontal cubical enclosures, each made of different sidewall materials) revealed a higher difference between sidewall-uncorrected and sidewall-corrected Nusselt numbers than that obtained using a traditional model. A semi-analytical model and an empirical model were proposed to help future researchers predict and correct for this issue. Additionally, the experimental results were utilized to extrapolate and estimate Nusselt numbers for an ideal zero-thermal-conductivity sidewalls case. The second set of experiments is carried out to determine correlating equations for Nusselt number in terms of the studied variables for the horizontal and tilted enclosures. For the horizontal enclosure problem, sidewall-corrected Nusselt numbers were found to closely follow the classical 1/3rd scaling relation, which is different from the often reported 2/7th scaling relation for same range of Rayleigh numbers. For tilted enclosure, experiments revealed two noteworthy observations: (i) Nusselt number decreased monotonically with increase in tilting angle and (ii) for any tilting angle and Rayleigh number, Nusselt number followed a decreasing trend with increase in aspect ratio, which gradually amplified as tilting angle increased. The z-type shadowgraph flow visualization experiments, employed to characterize buoyant flow behavior at various angles of inclination, confirm the observed heat transfer trends.

About the speaker:

Dr. Umesh Madanan is a recent Ph.D. graduate in Mechanical Engineering (2019) from University of Minnesota, where he experimentally studied high-Rayleigh-number thermal convection in enclosures under the guidance of Dr. Richard J. Goldstein. He obtained his Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering (2012) from Indian Institute of Technology Madras and Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering with honors from University of Calicut (2007). In the intermediate years between his academic pursuits, he also spent a few years gaining industrial experience. He worked at General Electric Power and Water, Bengaluru (2012-14) as an Edison Engineer. He also worked as an Assistant Manager in the Product Development division at Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd., Nashik between the years 2007 and 2009. His current research interests include experimental heat transfer, free convective heat transfer, porous-media heat transfer, and two-phase flows.

Abstract:

In this seminar, first, a general higher-order theory for open and closed curved rods and tubes using a novel curvilinear cylindrical coordinate system for the general hyperelastic material model will be presented. The impetus for this study, in contrast to the classical Cosserat rod theories, comes from the need to study bulging and other deformation of tubes (such as arterial walls). To analyze such problems, a novel generalized curvilinear cylindrical coordinate system is introduced in the reference configuration of the rod. This coordinate system is based on a new generalized hybrid frame that contains the well-known orthonormal moving frames of Frenet and Bishop as special cases. Such a coordinate system provides a geometric mapping system to map very complex geometries of the curved tubes with a reference curve (including any general closed curves) having continuous tangent and hence, can be used for analyzing any general rod or pipe-like 3-D structures with variable cross-section (e.g., artery or vein). The displacement field of the cross-section of the structure is approximated by general basis functions in the polar coordinates in the normal plane, which enables this rod theory to analyzethe response to any general loading condition applied to the curved structure. The governing equation is obtained using the virtual work principle for a general material response and presented in terms of generalized displacement variables and generalized moments over the cross-section of the 3-D structure. This results in a system of ordinary differential equations for quantities that are integrated across the cross-section (as is to be expected for any rod theory), which is solved using the finite element method. Furthermore, I will briefly present the general higher-order shell theory for hyperelastic material using Cartan’s moving frame This shell theory is capable of analyzing large deformation of arbitrarily curved thin or thick shell structures. In both the rod and shell theories, Cartan’s moving frame is used in contrast to the commonly used natural covariant frame, which makes the formulations and their numerical models computationally very efficient. Various numerical examples will be presented, illustrating both theories. Further, I will present my future research plan and teaching interests, followed by conclusions.

About the speaker:

Dr. Archana Arbind is a post-doctoral research associate in the department of mechanical engineering at Texas A&M University, College Station, USA. She works in the area of computational and applied mechanics. In her research so far, she has proposed various higher-order theories for beam, plates, rod, and shell in classical (nonlinear material) and Cosserat (rotation gradient theory) continuum. Her recent work aims to develop an efficient software tool to solve problems in bio-mechanics and soft material applications. She has presented her recent works in rod and shell theories in the World Congress in Computational Mechanics, 2018 and US National Congress in Computational Mechanics, 2019, respectively, with travel grant support from the conferences. She is also the recipient of Aruna and J. N. Reddy Distinguished Fellow in Computational Mechanics, from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Texas A&M University. She holds MS (civil engineering) and Ph.D. (mechanical engineering) degrees from Texas A&M University, College Station, USA and B. Tech. degree from IIT Guwahati, India.

Abstract:

Vibration modes are orthogonal to the vibration field. Similarly, sound radiation modes are orthogonal to the sound radiation field. Therefore, attenuating the amplitude of sound radiation modes can give guarantee of reduction of sound radiation. This method of attenuating sound is called “Active Structural Acoustic Control (ASAC)”. However, this procedure has two biggest challenges, that is, “designing of specific actuators” and “finding optimal error quantity to be attenuated”. In this talk, I will speak about these two challenges in detail and implementation of ASAC on sandwich structures. Also, I will touch upon little bit on my current work at ABB.

About the speaker:

Kiran Chandra Sahu is working as a Scientist in ABB Power Grids Sweden. He did his PhD and Postdoctoral studies from Aalto University (Finland) and NTNU (Norway), respectively. He finished his undergraduate and master’s studies in Mechanical Engineering from University College of Engineering Burla and IIT Guwahati, respectively. Immediately after master’s study, he went to Finland with a Marie Curie fellowship to work as a Research Scientist at Technical Research Centre of Finland (VTT). During this stint, he visited various European institutes such as KTH (Stockholm), KU Leuven (Belgium), CNAM (Paris) and Centro Ricerche Fiat (Italy) etc.

Abstract:

Networks are ubiquitous and often at the heart of fundamental research in science and engineering, from the Internet, to social networks, bio-chemical reaction networks, transportation networks, power networks, and pharmacology networks that analyze chemical and clinical properties of drug-like molecules. In this talk, I will present some recently developed methods on analyzing such complex network systems, particularly from the point of view of optimization and control theory. In the first part of the talk, I will describe novel fixed-time convergent algorithms for convex optimization and its application to distributed optimization, and variational inequality problems. Many practical applications, such as, networked robotics, sensor networks, economic dispatch in power systems, often undergo frequent and severe changes in operating conditions, and thus require fast solutions irrespective of the initial conditions. Tools from fixed-time Lyapunov theory are leveraged for achieving global fixed-time convergence guarantees. In the second part of the talk, I will look into designing control algorithms that scale efficiently from single agent to multiple agents. Communication agnostic control framework for microgrid systems will be of interest. Dynamical similarity among multiple agents (power converters) is exploited to model the entire microgrid as an equivalent single converter system. Moreover, various performance objectives, such as, voltage regulation and robust stability of the overall microgrid system can be analyzed in terms of the performance objectives of the single converter system.

About the speaker:

Mayank Baranwal is a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He obtained his Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering in 2011 from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and MS in Mechanical Science and Engineering in 2014, MS in Mathematics in 2015 and PhD in Mechanical Science and engineering in 2018, all from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research interests are in modeling, optimization, control and inference in network systems with applications to distributed optimization, reduction of biochemical networks, transportation networks and control of microgrids.

Abstract:

The balance of material momentum, also known as impulse or pseudo momentum, is a concept in continuum mechanics whose utility is not always apparent. We will discuss the significance of this balance law for purely mechanical systems governed by an action, and its relation to the balance of physical momentum and energy in the bulk and at propagating interfaces. We will explore the implications of this concept on problems involving rods subjected to partial constraints.

About the speaker:

Harmeet Singh is working as a Post-doc Fellow at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne Since Feb 2019. He completed his PhD from Virginia Tech University in Dec 2018 from the department of Engineering Mechanics. He did his M. Tech in Structural Engineering from IIT Kharagpur in 2012. Post this he worked in Airbus India for a couple of years. His research interests are in classical mechanics, geometry, dynamics of thin bodies, and elasticity.

Abstract:

Online design contests are conducted by organizations to gather a large number of ideas quickly. However, few systems exist to support online teams participating in design contests. Additionally, organizations find it difficult to process thousands of ideas efficiently. In this talk, I will talk about using optimization and machine learning methods to enable distributed teams of people to work together on design problems. Specifically, we will discuss three problems faced by organizations in gathering and processing ideas from distributed teams: 1) How does one form teams to evaluate design ideas? 2) How does one reliably measure the creativity of ideas? and 3) How does one filter high quality and diverse ideas out of hundreds of submissions? I will discuss how our matching, ranking, and novelty estimation algorithms help address these problems. The scientific and mathematical work done to answer these questions lay the foundations for representation, learning, and optimization of discrete items in Engineering Design. I will also briefly talk about research directions on AI-driven design for my lab at MIT.

About the speaker:

Faez Ahmed is a Post-doc Fellow at Northwestern University. Faez works at the intersection of optimization, machine learning, and engineering design. He completed his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maryland and did his undergraduate at IIT Kanpur. Prior to his Ph.D., he worked as a Reliability Engineer for Rio Tinto in Western Australia. He was a Future Faculty Fellow at the University of Maryland and recipient of the Kulkarni Fellowship. He is a member of the ACM Distinguished Speakers Committee and has ongoing collaborations with other non-profits, to educate the local community about computing and data science.

Abstract:

Water is essential to sustain human life, plants and the animal kingdom. As for human life, water is increasingly becoming a precious commodity for a variety of reasons. The scarcity of fresh water affects human life much more than anyone could ever have imagined. Water scarcity currently affects over 40% of the human population in the entire world, with an estimated 783 million people having no access to clean water. Alarming results of a study indicate that over 4 billion people live with severe water scarcity for at least one month every year; some of the severely affected regions of the world include advanced countries of the world as well
Technologies for obtaining water from conventional water bodies such as lakes, rivers and the oceans exist in the modern world, and is often supplemented by processes such as desalination and the use of recycled water. Despite these technologies, water distribution systems in the world are incapable of providing fresh water to satisfy the needs of rising human population. The changing global rainfall patterns, excessive drought, climate changes, man-made wastage of water due to poor planning and implementation schemes woefully contribute toward water scarcity. Water as a commodity is thus increasingly becoming a strategic resource, and its scarcity motivates the need to identify and develop technologies for alternate sources of water to feed and sustain life on this planet. In this background, droplet condensation of atmospheric water vapour – known as fog-harvesting is significant, and provides a source for generating water.
The seminar will introduce fog harvesting as a source for the production of water, and its development in few formats as available currently in the world. In tandem, a passive method initiated and proposed by IIT Kanpur is presented which will form the basis for research collaboration between IIT Kanpur and Curtin University, Australia.

About the speaker:

Dr. Ramesh Narayanaswamy is a Visiting Faculty in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, IIT Kanpur. He is currently Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the School of Civil and Mechanical Engineering, Curtin University in Perth, Australia. His research interests are in the area of Heat Transfer.

Abstract:

This talk gives an Editor’s perspective on journal publishing. The talk will briefly introduce the goals of publishing followed by a detailed elucidation of manuscript preparation, highlighting along the way common pitfalls in a submission. The talk will also briefly cover author responsibilities and ethics followed by a discussion on the peer review process. The talk will end with key takeaways and some final tips.

About the speaker:

Dr. C. Balaji is currently a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at IIT Madras. He has over 25 years of experience in teaching and research. He has authored over 180 International Journal Publications and has supervised 29 PhD, 13 M.S and over 60 M.Tech thesis so far. He is a Swarnajayanthi fellow, Humboldt fellow and is also an elected fellow of INAE. He specializes in heat transfer, inverse problems, numerical weather prediction and data assimilation. He has authored 7 books and is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Thermal Sciences published by Elsevier.

Abstract:

Gas hydrate, is by far, the largest repository of methane existing on the planet. They are formed under low temperature and high-pressure conditions prevailing in the ocean floor or permafrost. The proposed methods for extracting methane include depressurization, thermal stimulation and chemical injection. These methods would typically involve setting up the well bores and other process equipment at the reservoir bed. Following which, the extraction procedure is carried out through the standalone or combination of any of the aforementioned techniques. The basic idea here is to destabilize the reservoir physical state and let the hydrate dissociate. This essentially disturbs the reservoir stability in terms of balance between reservoir pore pressures, overburden-under burden and tectonic stresses. The modelling of the stability aspects of the hydrate reservoirs is therefore significant. Poorly compacted or faulted reservoirs may undergo geomechanical failures. The modelling requires a detailed characterization of the sediment strength and the other physical properties such as stiffness and Poisson ratio followed by the determination of effective stress distribution in the given area. Hence, there exists a profound need to carefully study the geomechanical response of reservoirs under various production scenarios, which would certainly help in locating the potential failure zones and determining the safe-limit of the operation parameters.

About the speaker:

Dr Rahul Yadav obtained his PhD from IIT Madras in the year 2018 with a specialization in Radiation Heat Transfer and Optimization. In IIT Kanpur, he is associated with Gas Hydrate Research Group and their activities. He is interested in geomechanical features of the Indian reservoirs during the production process from numerical modelling and optimization point of view.

Abstract:

Soft tissues are complex materials whose functioning is governed by the micro-structure and composition of their constituents. Hence any change in the structure and properties in response to external stimuli like mechanical loading, and chemical reactions (oxidation and glycation) affects the functioning of the tissues, resulting in various pathological conditions. So, it is necessary to understand the change in the mechanical behavior of tissue, when it is exposed to different chemical environments. In the first part we develop structurally motivated phenomenological models within a thermodynamic framework to relate the chemical kinetics of oxidation to the change in the mechanical response of aorta in a systematic fashion

In the second part, we present the constitutive theory which incorporates the energy limiter to enable failure description of hyper-elastic solids. Traditional hyper-elastic constitutive models are developed to describe the mechanical response of intact material. So, these models satisfy the material stability requirement. Strong ellipticity condition, Baker-Ericksen inequalities, polyconvexity are different forms of material stability requirement. During earthquakes, rubber bearings used for seismic isolation of structures undergo large shear deformations due to horizontal motion of the ground and compression due to weight of structure and possible traffic. In this work, we predict the onset of cracks in rubber bearings under combined shear and compression via the loss of strong ellipticity of the constitutive model.

About the speaker:

Dr. P. Mythravaruni was a postdoctoral fellow with Prof. Konstantin Volokh at faculty of Civil and Environmental engineering, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Israel. She obtained her PhD in Mechanical Engineering, Machine design section from IIT Madras under the supervision of Prof.Parag Ravindran. She pursued her M.Tech under the supervision of Prof.Sumit Basu at IIT Kanpur. Her research areas of interest include Continuum Mechanics and Rheology of Complex Materials.

Abstract:

Acoustic wave propagation in a duct is governed by the Helmholtz equation, which is derived from the linearized fluctuating forms of the mass, momentum and energy balance equations. For 1-D domains, the Helmholtz equation is a second-order ordinary differential equation (ODE), while the fluctuating balance equations are all first-order ODEs. As a result, one needs two boundary conditions for the spatial pressure fluctuation pˆ(x) in order to solve the Helmholtz equation, while only one boundary condition each is needed for ρˆ, uˆ and pˆ in case of the fluctuating balance equations. Accordingly, this study was motivated by two principal objectives. The first was to develop the exact Neumann (or derivative) boundary condition at the inlet to a quasi 1D duct needed to solve the Helmholtz equation. Such an exact boundary condition would ensure that the spatial pressure fluctuations pˆ(x) obtained by solving the Helmholtz equation are identical to the pˆ(x) obtained through the solution of the fluctuating balance equations. The second principal objective was to determine the exact relationship between the density and pressure fluctuations, ρˆ and pˆ respectively, so that the ρˆ(x) calculated using the Helmholtz-equation pˆ(x) is again identical to the ρˆ(x) obtained by solving the fluctuating balance equations. The exact ρˆ-pˆ relation is also compared with the “classical” relation, namely ρˆ = ˆp/c¯ 2, enabling us to evaluate the accuracy of the latter. The Neumann boundary conditions and the ρˆ-pˆ relations were developed for five cases with axially uniform and non-uniform duct cross-sectional areas, as well as homogeneous and inhomogeneous mean flow properties such as the velocity, temperature, density and pressure. It is seen that the ρˆ = ˆp/c¯ 2 relation is valid only for the cases with uniform cross-sectional area and homogeneous mean properties. For the cases with uniform cross-section, inhomogeneous mean properties (with zero or uniform mean flow), the “classical” ρˆ relation suffers from significant errors both in amplitude and phase.

About the speaker:

Dr. Sarma L. Rani is a tenured Associate Professor in the MAE Department at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. His research focuses on the computational and theoretical investigations of fundamental questions in three principal areas: (1) turbulent flows laden with disperse spherical and complex-shaped particles, (2) acoustic wave propagation and combustion instabilities in premixed combustion systems, and (3) development of low-dissipation, high-order shock-capturing numerical schemes for compressible flows. He has graduated 5 Ph.D. and 4 Masters students. He is the recipient of the 2016 College of Engineering Outstanding Junior Faculty Award, as well as the 2017 UAH College of Engineering Outstanding Faculty Award.

Abstract:

Electricity generation via thermal route using solar energy is a clean and promising way which has vast potential in India. Optimum layouts of collectors in solar concentrators' fields yielding minimum cost of electricity are need of the hour. The work focuses on development of cost optimum solutions for line focusing solar concentrators' fields- Parabolic Trough Collector (PTC), Linear Fresnel Reflector (LFR) and Compact Linear Fresnel Reflector (CLFR). Software tool for analyzing the performance of the solar fields with different designs (involving length, width, spacing and number of collectors, receiver height, latitude, longitude and declination of earth) is developed as an end product which will benefit researchers, industries and government in their research work, business, energy solutions, environment and policies.

About the speaker:

Dr. Vashi Mant Sharma is an INSPIRE Faculty Fellow in the department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur since Jan 2017. He received his Master's and PhD in 2009 and 2014 from IIT Bombay. Post his PhD; he was a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Ministry of New & Renewable Energy’s Project from 2015 to 2016. His areas of interest are: Concentrating Solar Thermal, Optics of Concentrators, Thermal Energy Storage, and Renewable Energy.

Abstract:

Abstract: Additive manufacturing (AM) or 3D printing is maturing rapidly as a viable solution of make optimized parts for “real engineering” applications. What started as an amateurish persuasion has now evolved into a worldwide phenomenon that is touching industries from aerospace to industrial equipment to automotive to life science to energy & process, and others. The freedom of design that is achievable using AM process is un parallel in terms of reducing structural weight, reducing material cost, generating complex shapes and connections and introducing directional properties in a component. However, understanding of AM process and utilizing process parameters to optimize a design comes with many challenges. Currently, one of the emphasize is to use physics based realistic simulation to replicate the AM process numerically and relate process parameters to the concept of functional generative design that relates design with manufacturing process. Current work, through a typical build example, will discuss the following solutions on a digital platform: Generative Design, Process Planning, Process Simulation, Post-processing.

About the speaker:Dr. Arindam Chakraborty is a Vice President of Advanced Engineering at Virtual Integrated Analytics Solutions, USA. Dr. Chakraborty received his Ph.D.in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Iowa doing research in probabilistic fracture mechanics. He has over 12 years of combined academia and industry experience in solid mechanics and design, non-linear FEA, fatigue and fracture mechanics, reliability analysis, composite structures. Starting with Nuclear, he has working industries such as Oil & Gas, Aerospace, Life Science, and Hi-Tech. He is currently managing all simulation services at VIAS including business strategy and partnership development, technical hands-on with advanced FEA. He provides training in FFS, Fatigue and Fracture Mechanics, FEA, Scripting, Probabilistic Analysis. He is also involved with industry collaboration, technology development, regulatory compliance, business strategy development. Dr. Chakraborty is engaged with Pressure Vessels and Piping conference committees, chairs conference sessions, involved with ASME & API code committees and has published more than 25 journal and conference papers.

Abstract:

Abstract: Inflatable structures are preferable in several space and terrestrial applications and tunable devices. They are light, can be packed/stowed and deployed quickly, and easily tunable. In particular, an inflatable toroidal geometry has a number of applications. The finite inflation and stability of a toroidal membrane, inflated from a flat geometry, is discussed. The uninflated geometry consists of two identical equatorially bonded flat annular membranes which results a closed toroidal structure upon inflation. Two different hyperelastic material models, namely, Mooney-Rivlin model and Gent model, are used to describe the isotropic incompressible membrane material with a relaxed strain energy density function. The inflation problem involves both geometric and material nonlinearities. Wrinkling is observed along the outer equator of the torus at low inflation pressures. A pressure limit (snap-through) is found to exist which can be linked with the material and geometric parameters of the torus through an empirical relationship involving two universal constants. Based on the energy release rate calculations at the equatorial joints, the possibility of joint peeling is investigated. Inflatable toroidal membranes can be used as the outer rim of inflatable antennas, tunable lens, or inflatable reflectors. The stability of such structures depends on the stability of the inflated toroidal membranes subjected to radial forces at the interaction boundary from the inner members. The response of the inflated membrane against radial in-line force distribution along the inner equator is studied under two different forcing conditions, namely, constant pressure forcing and forcing with constant amount of enclosed gas. The first type of loading leads to wrinkling instability, whereas the second one results a pull-in instability of the torus beyond a critical force value. Though the symmetric geometry (both axisymmetry and existence of a plane of symmetry) of the inflatable structures is most common, but under certain conditions, symmetry may not exist due to loss of stability of the symmetric solution. The study of geometric symmetry breaking of the toroidal membrane is presented using perturbation technique. Beyond a critical level of pressurization, the torus undergoes a spontaneous symmetry breaking through a super-critical pitchfork bifurcation, which is later restored back by a reverse sub-critical pitchfork bifurcation. The corresponding asymmetric shapes and the symmetry breaking zones are marked. The contact problem of an inflated torus with rigid flat plates are of practical interest in modelling air springs or vibration absorbers, where the inflated membrane acts as a non-linear spring whose stiffness can be tuned by changing the air pressure of the closed membrane. The contact might be of different types such as frictionless, frictional, and adhesive contact. The frictionless contact problem of the inflated torus pressed between two flat rigid plates is analyzed. The nonuniform stretching of the membrane is reported in the contact zone unlike the frictionless contact problem for the spherical and cylindrical geometry. The effect of temperature variation on the inflation pressure and inflated geometry of the toroidal hyperelastic membrane is discussed.

About the speaker:Dr. Soham Roychoudhary is an Assistant Professor in the School of Mechanical Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar. He received his M. Tech and PhD in 2014 and 2019 from IIT Kharagpur. Post his PhD, he was a DST Inspire Faculty Fellow in the Mechanical Engg. Department, IIT Kanpur from April to July 2019. His areas of interest are: Inflatable Membrane Structures, Nonlinear Elasticity, Structural Stability, Continuum Mechanics.

Abstract:

Abstract: Marine and hydro-kinetic (MHK) energy hold promise to become significant contributor towards sustainable energy generation. Despite the promise, commercialization of MHK energy technologies is still in the development stage. While many simplified models for MHK site resource-assessment exist, more research can enable efficient energy extraction from identified MHK sites. A marine energy company named Verdant Power Inc. was granted first US federal license to install up to 30 axial hydrokinetic turbines in the East River in New York City under what came to be known as Roosevelt Island Tidal Energy (RITE) project. In this seminar, I will discuss the research done for the real-life tidal energy project, the RITE project, using high-fidelity numerical simulations.

A laboratory-scale wake analysis was first done for three turbines in a TriFrame configuration where the turbines were mounted together at the apexes of a triangular frame. Large-eddy simulation (LES) was employed to simulate turbine-turbine wake interactions in the TriFrame. The wakes of the TriFrame turbines is compared with that of an isolated single turbine wake in order to further illustrate how the TriFrame configuration affects the wake characteristics in an array. Next, a 30-turbine array was simulated in the New York City’s East River with natural bathymetry at field scale. To this end, optimized data-structures and efficient modules were developed for a local mesh-refinement based LES framework. The new flow solver, coupled with a sharp-interface immersed boundary method, enabled multi-resolution 3D simulations on locally refined grids at relatively lower computational cost. The results are analyzed in terms of the wake recovery and overall wake dynamics in the array.

About the speaker:Dr. Sourabh Chowdhary is doing postdoctoral research for Argonne National Laboratory. He received B.Tech.-M.Tech. dual degree from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur and his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from University of Minnesota. His research interests include computational fluid dynamics, large-scale simulations, environmental flows, biological flows and high-performance computing. His current research focusing on the development of a high-performance scientific code called “FLASH” will enable exa-scale simulations. Saurabh is passionate about use of computational science as a predictive tool to solve modern-day scientific and engineering problems.

Abstract:

Abstract: Continuum hypothesis based properties; for example, elastic moduli of a material/structure at small length scales can be found using molecular mechanics or dynamics. While doing so one makes a few key assumptions and develops what are called as equivalent continuum structures (ECSs). Accuracy of the derived continuum quantities for a given structure thus depends strongly on its ECS. In this talk I will first present development of ECS for single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) based on MM3 potential employing classical theories of linear vibrations and show an instances when the developed ECS fails. Subsequently, results from two methods leading to conflicting values of critical buckling strain in SWCNTs under compression and torsion will be presented. Lastly, I will present some recent results on instability in a carbon nanocone when it is pulled out from a stack.

Abstract:

Proposed in the year 1965 by two English statisticians, the Nelder-Mead simplex direct search method was suitably placed to cater to the growing interest of computer solution of the highly nonlinear optimization problems. The method is based on a simple idea according to which a geometrical shape 'adapts itself to the local landscape' while searching for the minimum of a given function. Because of its simplicity, the method gained immense popularity among the researchers/practitioners of almost every possible field of science and engineering, so much so that it has become one of the most cited works in the history of optimization algorithms. However, the original method has some serious flaws and limitations. In this talk, we will come across some of these limitations and will also discuss the modifications suggested to overcome these limitations.

About the speaker:

Dr Vivek Kumar Mehta got his Bachelor's degree in Engg from Bhilai Institute of Technology Durg in 2003, M.Tech. degree from IIT Kanpur in 2005 and Ph.D. degree from IIT Kanpur in 2013. His Master's thesis was on optimal design of parallel manipulators and doctoral thesis on multi-objective optimization. His research interests are Optimization, Robotics and Science Education. Besides his research papers, he has authored and translated several popular science articles and social/humanitarian articles in Hindi. During 2013-14 and since 2016, he has been a faculty member in Tezpur Central University, Assam. Dr. Mehta was a Fellow of Eklavya, Bhopal from April 2015 to September 2016.

Abstract:

Composite materials are seeing increasing uses in several structural components. However, prediction capabilities of composite properties and performance are not yet matured. With the advent of modern experimental facilities and high performance computational capabilities, it is possible to enhance and develop computational tools accounting for the properties at microscale (fiber, fibermatrix interface). These capabilities can reduce the cost of testing for certification and enable virtual testing of composites with synergetic utility of experimental data. In this talk, multiscale characterization and modeling to predict macroscale behavior of carbon fiber reinforced laminates will be presented. The methodology accounts for the experimentally measured properties of matrix and fiber-matrix interface at microscale and prediction at macroscale behavior. Apart from classical fiber reinforced composites, bioinspired/architectured composites are being developed to achieve enhanced performance that can exceed the performance limits of their constituents or can achieve otherwise competing properties (e.g. stiffness and damping). With state of the art manufacturing techniques (e.g. 3D printing), such micro-architectured composites can be fabricated. Design and characterization of a novel micro-architectured composite will be presented. This composite is designed based on hexagonal symmetry of the building blocks to provide in-plane isotropic behavior and simultaneously high stiffness and damping.

About the speaker:

Sandip Haldar is postdoctoral researcher at the University of Central Florida, Orlando. Sandip worked at the University of Toronto, Canada and at the IMDEA Materials Institute, Madrid, Spain as a Research Associate following PhD from University of Maryland, College Park, USA. He obtained MSc (Engg) from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and BE in Mechanical Engineering from Bengal Engineering and Science University, Shibpur. His areas of research include characterization and modeling of composite materials including fiber reinforced composite, sandwich structures and designing novel composites e.g. bioinspired, architectured composites that can potentially exceed the existing performance limit of the engineering materials. Currently, he works on the mechanics of multi-layered Thermal Barrier Coatings (TBCs) and stress sensing polymer nanocomposites.

Abstract:

Soft and highly strain hardening metals like Ni, Al, Ta and stainless steels, are notoriously difficult to cut, earning them the moniker “gummy”. This difficulty is well-known for its commercial implications, yet its origins have remained largely speculative. This talk presents high-speed in situ investigations of this problem in two parts. In the first, we unveil the occurrence of a highly unsteady plastic flow mode, termed sinuous flow, as the cause of this difficulty. Sinuous flow arises due to a surface plastic buckling instability and is characterized by repeated material folding, large local strains (>10) and energy dissipation. The nature of this flow, its dependence on material properties, and manifestation across metals are directly observed. In the second part, we demonstrate how plastic flow can be perturbed using mechanochemistry. A suitable chemical medium applied to the metal surface causes a local ductile-to-brittle transition by coupling plastic instabilities with interface energetics. Consequently, chip formation now occurs either via a periodic fracture instability or smooth laminar flow, with near absence of defects on the cut surface and significantly lower energy dissipation (<50%). The transition in flow is also reflected in the morphologies of the resulting metal chips. Two such controllable mechanochemical effects will be discussed – one material-independent and another tailored to specific metal systems. The benign nature of the chemical media involved presents exciting opportunities for fundamentally enhancing cutting and deformation processing of metals in industrial settings.

About the speaker:

Koushik Viswanathan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore. Prior to joining the institute in 2018, he worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the Center for Materials Processing and Tribology at Purdue University. He obtained his PhD and MS degrees from Purdue University in 2015 and 2014, respectively. His research interests include manufacturing science, experimental mechanics, metrology and applied mathematics.

Abstract:

Microscopic quantum mechanical interactions among heat carriers called phonons govern the macroscopic thermal properties of semiconducting and electrically insulating crystalline solids, which find applications in thermal management of electronics, thermal barrier coatings and thermoelectric modules. In this talk, I will describe my recent work on how our newly developed first-principles computational framework to predict these microscopic interactions among phonons unveils a new paradigm for heat conduction in several of these materials. As an example, I will describe a curious case of heat conduction in boron arsenide (BAs), where the lowest order interactions involving three phonons are unusually weak and higher-order scattering among four phonons affects the thermal conductivity significantly, in stark contrast with several other semiconductors such as silicon and diamond [1]. I will show that this competition between three and four phonon scattering can be exquisitely tuned with the application of hydrostatic pressure, resulting in an unusual non-monotonic pressure dependence of the thermal conductivity in BAs unlike in most other materials [2]. I will also briefly describe my prior experimental effort to probe the scattering of phonons at atomically rough surfaces of a nanoscale silicon film, where they showed extreme sensitivity to the changes in surface roughness of just a few atomic planes [3]. Finally, I will motivate my current work and future research directions of consolidating these experimental and computational advances to probe the interactions of phonons with other forms of energy carriers such as electrons in semiconductors and metals, at high temperatures and extreme environmental conditions. [1] Fei Tian, Bai Song, Xi Chen, Navaneetha K. Ravichandran et al., Science 361 (6402), 582-585, 2018 [2] Navaneetha K. Ravichandran & David Broido, Nature Communications 10 (827), 2019 [3] Navaneetha K. Ravichandran, Hang Zhang & Austin Minnich, Physical Review X 8 (4), 041004, 2018

About the speaker:

Dr. Ravichandran obtained his Dual Degree (B. Tech and M. Tech) in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. He obtained his Masters in Space Engineering and PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Caltech, working with Prof. Austin Minnich. For his PhD, he worked on experimentally investigating phonon boundary scattering in thin silicon membranes using the transient grating experiment. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Boston College. More: https://navaneethravichandran.gitlab.io/navaneetha-k-ravichandran/

Abstract:

In contrast to classical solid-solid contact, liquid-solid contact is governed by the contact line, where a contact angle can form and undergo hysteresis. Liquid-solid contact therefore requires additional contact algorithms that capture the contact state at the contact line. Altogether four contact algorithms are required in order to describe the general contact behavior between solids and liquids: frictionless surface contact, frictional surface contact, frictionless line contact and frictional line contact. For the latter, a new predictor-corrector algorithm is presented that enforces the contact conditions at the contact line and thus distinguish between the states of advancing, pinning and receding contact lines. The algorithms are discretized within a monolithic finite element formulation. Several numerical examples are presented focusing on rolling and sliding droplets. For quasi-static droplets, the interior medium follows a hydro-static pressure relation that does not require discretization. For dynamic droplets, the interior fluid flow is accounted for through the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations.

About the speaker:

Roger A. Sauer is an associate professor at the graduate school AICES at RWTH Aachen University working in the field of theoretical and computational mechanics. He is a civil engineering graduate from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (2002) and holds a PhD in mechanics from the University of California at Berkeley (2006). The research group of Dr. Sauer develops multifield theories and corresponding computational methods for the robust, efficient, and accurate simulation of interface phenomena, such as contact problems, shell formulations and fluid-structure interaction.

Abstract:

Multi phase (Two or more phases) flows are quite common in the process industry. In fact many process equipment are designed on the basis of Mixing or to create Separation. Use of computational tools and CFD is very well established in Aerospace and Automotive Industry. Process Industry have been late adopters of such technology due to inherent complex nature of the fluid flow. In this talk, I plan to showcase modeling challenges associated with designing and analyzing some industrial equipment and processes.

About the speaker:

Ashish completed his masters in Mechanical Engineering (with specialization in Fluid Mech and Thermal Sciences) from IIT Kanpur in the year 2000. His professional career started with ANSYS-FLUENT in support & consulting role. In 2007, Ashish co-founded Tridiagonal Solutions. Over last ten years, Tridiagonal has grown substantially to team of more than 100 engineers. With offices in India and US and its own products for process industry, Tridiagonal has become a brand of choice for Flow Modeling Services and Solutions. Ashish has trained and groomed more than 200 engineers in the fluids sector. His latest passion includes creation of application specific tools and deployment of open source technologies to democratize CFD.

Abstract:

The pursuit of mimicking Natural systems has been a tireless effort with many successes but a daunting task ahead. A new perspective to engineer the very evident branched/fractal-like shapes spanning multiple scales and intricate web of microfluidic channel will be presented. These structures are established to be more effective in the literature for mass and heat transport applications and promise many more. Control over Saffman-Taylor instability which otherwise randomly rearranges viscous fluid in a ’lifted Hele- Shaw cell’ is exercised for the same. The proposed fluid shaping control employs anisotropies on cell plates, to shape a stretched fluid film into a network of ordered multiscale tree-like patterns and well defined webs/meshes mimicking various biological systems. The proposed control produces in a robust and repeated fashion, structures which otherwise are completely non-characteristic to this process. Moreover spontaneous manufacturing of families of wide variety of structures can be done over micro and very large scale in a period of few seconds. Thus the proposed method establishes a solid foundation to a new pathway for engineering mulitscale structures for several scientific applications including fish gill mimicking, solar electrodes, organ-on-chip, capillary pumping, and so on. Apart from this, the talk will give brief overview of other activities going on in our Suman Mashruwala Advanced Microengineering laboratory.

About the speaker:

Prasanna’s current research focuses on the area of polymer and ceramics 3D micro-printing, control of fluid instabilities for Spontaneous Multiscale Manufacturing (SMM), dynamics and control of ultra flexible mechanism systems for applications in micro-printing, micro-fluidics, medical robotics, products, and devices. He has received his PhD at Rice University, Texas in 2001, MTech at IIT Bombay in 1996 all in mechanical engineering. He was pioneer in setting up non-VLSI based 3D digital microfabrication and characterisation facility in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at IIT Bombay. He has been researching the area of 3D microfabrication technology for more than 16 years and has successfully developed in-house technologies of Microstereolithography, Bulk lithography (BL), Spontaneous Multi-scale Manufacturing (SMM) using fluid instabilities which have resulted in several publications and patents. Technologies developed in Prasanna's laboratory are transferred to and in use with ISRO (Slosh characterisation), OFB (Safe and Arm Device), a few companies (micromilling, 3D microprinting). Among other he is recipient of Robert Lawny Patten award at Rice University, Best faculty award at ME IITB, Issac fellowship, and FEI foundation award 2019 for a technology licensed to Strategi Automation.

Abstract:

Modern computing infrastructures hold high promise for scientific computing, enabling high resolution simulations which were not possible with previous generation of computers. Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR) is a technique which allows specific regions of interest in the domain to be resolved locally. In this talk, I will present capabilities of an AMR based multi-physics code, FLASH. FLASH is a high-performance application code developed at University of Chicago and capable of solving many different types of problems. In the next generation of FLASH, we are adopting AMReX library to enable octree based block-structured AMR. We are also working with Tokyo Institute of Technology researchers to enable architecture-specific code optimizations in FLASH. I will also present results from an applied study demonstrating the usefulness of AMR in the field of tidal energy. An AMR-LES (large-eddy simulation) based framework is used to model the flow in a section of the East River of New York City with detailed river bathymetry and inset hydrokinetic turbines. Use of AMR allowed the simulation to be conducted at field-scale in a real-life marine environment reproducing the rich the site-specific flow dynamics. The results are analyzed in terms of the wake recovery and overall wake dynamics in the turbine array. This simulation helped the field-engineers at Verdant Power in developing the turbine-array layout for the Roosevelt Island Tidal Energy (RITE) project.

About the speaker:

Saurabh is a postdoctoral researcher at Argonne National Laboratory and University of Chicago. He received B.Tech. and M.Tech. from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur and his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from University of Minnesota in 2017. His research interests include computational fluid dynamics, large-scale simulations, high-performance computing, wind and hydrokinetic energy, biological flows and fluid dynamics in nature. His current research at Argonne focuses on development and use of a high-performance scientific code “FLASH”. Saurabh is passionate about use of computational science as a predictive tool to solve modern-day scientific and engineering problems.

Abstract:

Soft tissue damage is the primary outcome of injuries and musculoskeletal diseases, caused due to permanent deformation or rupture of the complex soft tissue structure. To date, the mechanics of soft tissue damage is poorly understood due to ethical and biosafety issues associated with mechanical testing of live human tissues, and low bio-fidelity (i.e., ability to simulate the mechanical properties of soft tissues) of surrogates such as animal skin, gels and silicones. This key gap in literature inhibits the development and testing of medical intervention techniques for effective soft tissue damage prevention. In this presentation, I will summarize the development and characterization of highly bio-fidelic soft tissue surrogates and review my prior works on the study of soft tissue damage at the structure and organ levels. An integrated model for testing of soft tissue damage interventions using the highly bio-fidelic surrogates is then proposed, targeting two major medical issues: Plantar Fasciitis and Hernia. I will discuss my current and future research plans, and conclude with the societal impact and collaboration opportunities with the local industry, students, and faculty at IIT Kanpur.

About the speaker:

Dr. Arnab Chanda is a Postdoctoral Research Scholar in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pittsburgh, USA. He holds a PhD in Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics from the University of Alabama, USA, and is also the founder of BIOFIT Technologies LLC. Arnab is interested in understanding the mechanics of soft tissue damage and their interaction with medical intervention (MI) technologies. To date, Arnab’s research has led to 1 Grant Funding, 7 US Patent Applications, 21 First-Author journal publications, and 7 conference papers. Arnab aims to continue his efforts in improving MI technologies for better patient outcomes, through research, teaching, and technology transfer.

Abstract:

Magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) broadly refers to the interaction of electrically conducting fluid flows with magnetic fields. Such phenomena are highly non-linear can often be observed both in nature and in the industry. Naturally they can be observed, for example, in stars, sun and planetary cores. In the industry, they find applications in metallurgy, materials processing and in tokamaks intended for clean energy generation through nuclear fusion. In this talk, I will present some of my research results in two important problems in MHD: a) Turbulent Hartmann duct flows at moderate magnetic Reynolds numbers, and b) Relativistic runaway electron dynamics in tokamak plasmas. The first topic is motivated both by fundamental scientific interest as well as application in liquid metal flow field measurement using Lorentz force velocimetry (LFV). The second topic concerns one of the major showstoppers in our path towards building a nuclear fusion power plant. The talk intends not to provide too many sets of results, but to rather provide a small cross-section of results that provides a big picture of my research activities.

About the speaker:

B.Tech in Mechanical engineering, Pondicherry University; M.Tech in Thermal Science and Engineering, IIT Kharagpur; Worked as an Aero & Heat Transfer Engineer for more than 4.5 yrs at GE Bangalore; PhD in Mechanical Engineering, TU Ilmenau (Ilmenau university of Technology), Germany; Continued as a postdoc at TU Ilmenau for some time. Currently working as a postdoc at Max-Planck-Institute for Plasma Physics, Garching, Germany. Research interests: Turbulence, CFD, Magnetohydrodynamics, Large scale instabilities in tokamak plasmas.

Abstract:

Proposed use of a novel server-actuated flow-boiling approach for heat removal at $B!H(BChip $B"*(B Server $B"*(B Rack $B"*(B Data Center$B!I(B levels - together with new thermal system designs incorporating a dedicated power supply approach for data centers - is shown to enable, respectively, high cooling rates for next generation chips and significant waste heat recovery (as electricity). Since large number of data centers continue to appear at increasingly large power consumption (~ 1 - 10 MWe) levels, the proposed waste heat recovery approaches have significant societal value. For dedicated power supply, one option is to utilize miniaturized Combined Cycle Power Plants (mini-CCPP) that combine mini/micro-turbines (MGTs) and Organic Rankine Cycles (ORCs). The hot air exhaust from a commercially available MGT is used as a heat-source for the ORC. It should be noted that relevant Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) technologies are now commercially available. For data centers requiring less than 1 MWe power, there are other economically competitive power-supply options - such as use of lithium-ion battery stacks that are recharged by power generation from ORC and solar panels. This talk highlights a new approach (supported by results from new experiments) to flow boiling. The reported experiments employ a specific layering of micromeshes and diffusion bonding based inexpensive approach to micro structuring of the boiling-surface (leading to 40 - 60 % improvements in heat-flux over plane unstructured copper-surface). This approach is then augmented by our new approach that actively energizes the meshed boiling-surface. This energization is by introduction of suitable shear mode acoustic waves (of controllable amplitude and frequencies) and associated shear stresses in the micro-layers of the nucleating bubbles. For this acoustic energization, electronically controlled Piezoelectric-transducers are used - and at this time - we report additional 20-30% improvements. Even better performances are possible.

About the speaker:

Prof. Amitabh Narain (Ph. D., University of Minnesota, 1983) is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Michigan Technological University, USA; a Fellow of the ASME; an Associate Editor of the Journal of Heat Transfer; and Chair of ASME$B!G(Bs Heat Transfer Division K8 Committee on Theory and Fundamental Research. His current research areas deal with state-of-the-art experimental and computational techniques for phase-change (flow boiling and flow condensation) as well as single-phase flows. At system level these works relate to energy technologies such as thermal management and power generation applications - with emphasis on electronic and data center cooling.

Abstract:

Advancement of multiscale Multiphysics solution in the field of medical imaging, radiation and environmental safety invites mesoscopic mathematical tool for solving macroscopic fluid dynamics problems generally described by partial differential equations. The Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM) suits that purpose. The idea of the LBM is to construct a simplified discrete dynamics at mesoscopic scales by implementing particles distributions on a lattice to simulate macroscopic behaviours. Literature study on several research papers suggest that LBM is a promising tool to image processing. Cerebral aneurysm is one of the most serious diseases forming part of the stroke. Aneurysm is an abnormal bulging outward of an artery. Because of certain histopathologic and hemodynamic factors, aneurysms most commonly occur in arteries that supply blood to the brain. Computed tomography angiography (CTA) plays an essential role in the diagnosis, treatment evaluation, and monitoring of cerebral aneurysms. The segmentation of giant aneurysms of the brain from CTA imaging remains a challenge. In this talk, an innovative segmentation methodology based on the combined use of the LBM and the level set method will be highlighted. Radiation safety and environmental safety can be enhanced by implementing the advanced numerical modeling (mesoscopic modeling). In this context, numerical modeling of fluid flow problem through porous media such as groundwater modeling, solute transport problem and Boltzmann Transport Equation for reactor physics simulation including uncertainty quantification will be demonstrated using LBM. Uncertainty quantification will be presented using Fuzzy set theory and Monte Carlo Simulations. Presentation will conclude by highlighting the newly developed Fuzzy LBM, which has been implemented to solve uncertainty quantification of advection diffusion reaction equation to study the migration of radionuclide through geological repository.

About the speaker:

Dr. Debabrata Datta, is a scientist in the field of radiological and nuclear science, Head, Radiological Physics & Advisory Division of Health-Safety & Environment Group, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre and Professor (Physical & Mathematical Sciences), Homi Bhabha National Institute (Deemed University), India. He has contributed in various fields of Nuclear Industry such as radiation shielding, dosimetry, criticality safety and dose database management systems. He has a good experience in handling nuclear and radiological emergency. He has more than 25 years of experience in the field of mathematical and numerical modeling, statistical data analysis, reliability and uncertainty analysis and software development. His academic excellences are: Master Degree in Nuclear Physics, Master Degree in Philosophy (Nuclear Physics) and PhD (Comp. Science). He is the associate editor of Many International Journals. He is the recipient of Eminent Scientist Award, “Millenium Plaques of Honor” from Indian Science Congress Association, in 2010. His proficiency is on software development using Machine Learning & Soft Computing technique. He is recognized internationally as one of the reviewer of IEEE and Elsevier Journals. He is an associate editor of International Journal EXPERT System (Willey Publications, Scholar one), Information Science, Environmental Modeling and Software, IJMSS and many others. Life member of many International and National Organizations. He has more than 150 publications in peer reviewed International Journals, Book Chapters, International and National Conferences to his credit. He has guided 20 M. Tech Students and 7 PhD. Students in both Engineering and Science Disciplines. His research interests are numerical modeling, statistical analysis, data mining, optimization, multi criteria decision making, algorithm development, machine learning & artificial intelligence.

Abstract:

High Heat Dissipating Two-phase Evaporative Cooling Systems for Microelectronics

About the speaker:

Prof. Oleg A Kabov graduated from the Tomsk Polytechnic State University, Russia in 1978 and received the doctoral degree from the Institute of Thermophysics, Siberian Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences in 1987. In 1999, he also received the degree of Doctor of Sciences in Physics and Mathematics (Habilitation) from the same institute. Presently, he is the Head of the Laboratory involved in activities related to Thermo-physics of Phase-Change Phenomena at the Kutateladze Institute of Thermo-physics, Novosibirsk, Siberia, Russia. For fifteen years (1997-2012), Prof. Kabov served as a scientific staff of the University of Libre de Bruxelles and managed the 'Two-Phase Systems Group' of the Microgravity Research Center at the university. He participated in a range of sophisticated experiments related to interfacial phenomena and phase-change, on board sounding rockets, on microgravity parabolic flight campaigns and on the International Space Station. Prof. Kabov has over 200 publications to his credit in refereed international journals and has 15 patents. He is also the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal 'Interfacial Phenomena and Heat Transfer'.

Abstract:

Nanomechanical sensors have demonstrated their tremendous potential in miniaturizing Mass Spectrometry which has applications in the area of biosensing and characterization. This has been made possible due to extreme miniaturization resulting in exquisite sensitivity (mass sensitivity of the order of 10-24g in controlled environment) and universal sensing surface. Among the various nanomechanical sensing techniques, nanophotonic optomechanical sensing technology (NOMS) is the most promising technique due to its exquisite displacement sensitivity. In this regard, my talk would initially focus on my recent research in the area of NOMS sensors and their integration with Gas Chromatography system, wherein I demonstrated exquisite concentration and mass sensitivity using the NOMS sensors while preserving its universality while sensing a mixture of analytes. The second topic I would be focussing on is my research findings on the effect of pressure damping on the mass sensitivity wherein I have demonstrated that as the ambient pressure increases, the mass sensitivity improves and that mass sensitivity is independent of the quality factor of the resonator. This is contrary to the conventional knowledge and helps in taking a major step towards portability. Finally I would be describing my efforts to improve the sensitivity and adsorption capacities of the mechanical resonator by reducing its mass and increasing the surface area using a simple porous etch procedure. Following the discussion of my current research, I shall expand upon my future research plans towards developing novel sensor architecture involving microchannel embedded nanomechanical resonator, liquid chromatographic column on a chip and nanophotonic cavity for liquid phase biosensing as it is the most relevant medium for biosensing. The overall goal of my research is to develop a sensing platform suitable for holistic sensing and characterization of biomolecules. Such a platform has applications in the area of data driven diagnostics and the emerging field of metabolomics based Precision Medicine.

About the speaker:

Dr. Anandram Venkatasubramanian graduated with his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology. His dissertation thesis was in the area of study of molecular sieve materials such as metal organic frameworks and metal oxide nanotubes for carbon capture applications and their integration with piezoresistive microcantilever sensors for gas detection applications. His postdoctoral research concentrates on development of nanophotonic optomechanical gas sensors for biosensing applications wherein he has developed mass sensors with sensitivity upto 10-20 g and integrated them with concentration sensors with sensitivity up to few ppbs. In this seminar, he would be talking to us about his current research as well as his future research plans towards developing a portable universal sensing platform for biosensing applications.

Abstract:

Soft materials are very popular in everyday use because of ease in processing. Polymers are processed to different complex shapes from the molten state. Polymer melts display rich viscoelastic behavior in the typical length and time scales. The processing of polymer melts become difficult with increase in molecular weight (Mw) because of increase in viscosity. The long polymer chains in a melt have to move in a specific way due to the topological constraints called "entanglements" imposed by neighbouring chains. This happens because of the fact that the in a polymeric systems each monomers are connected to their neighbouring monomers and can not crossover each other. Increase in number of entanglements with increase in Mw leads to increase in viscosity. The physics of polymer melts is one of the most exciting and challenging topics of modern soft matter science. In this context, it is very interesting to study the rheological behavior of high molecular weight polymer melts (usually dominated by large number of entanglements present) in the absence of any (or large number of) entanglements. I shall present complementary experimental and simulation approaches to study the development of entanglements in a fully disentangled melt of collapsed polymer chains and changes in viscosity, moduli and glass-transition temperature during the process.

About the speaker:

Dr. Singh is currently working as a postdoctoral researcher in Prof. Kurt Kremer’s group at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Mainz. His current research work involves studying rheology of nonequilibrium polymer melts. He has done PhD under Prof. Nicholas D. Spencer at the Department of Materials, ETH Zurich, Switzerland. Prof. Martin Kroger in the Polymer Physics group in the Department of Materials, ETH Zurich was his co-supervisor. Dr. Singh defended his PhD thesis "Simulation and Experimental studies of Polymer Brushes under Shear” in Jan 2016. His PhD work involved colloidal probe-based AFM experiments and molecular dynamics simulation studies on surface grafted polymer brushes and gels in a solvent under shear. He finished his Master of Engineering (ME) degree from the Materials Engineering Department of Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in 2011. He studied for a Bachelor of Engineering (BE) at Mechanical Engineering Department of Indian Institute of Engineering, Science and Technology, Shibpur (formerly BE College or BESU Shibpur), West Bengal, India and graduated in 2009. The principal areas of his research are tribology and rheology—mostly with polymers. He has an interdisciplinary background with education in Mechanical and Materials Engineering and research experience in both computer simulations and experiments.

Abstract:

Machine learning is a type of artificial intelligence that enables a computer to learn without being explicitly programmed. A subset of machine learning known as deep learning has evolved as one of the most compelling and cutting-edge topics of research and has demonstrated quantum leaps in accuracy in the areas of image & speech recognition and therefore are gaining popularity in the areas of bio-medical, climate and earth science research. My current research applies deep learning algorithms to study the interaction between atmospheric matter and solar radiation in general circulation models (GCMs). GCMs, predict the three-dimensional aspect of climate by numerically solving the conservation equations of mass, momentum, energy, water vapor and parameterizing the physical processes in the atmosphere such as heat fluxes due to solar radiation, evaporation, precipitation etc. The parameterization of physical processes especially radioactive heat fluxes in the atmosphere is crucial for accurate simulations of climate and weather in GCMs. These parameterizations for radiative heat fluxes in GCMs are complicated, enormous and require a tremendous amount of computational time, even with the fastest super-computers. The idea is to replace these enormous and complicated parameterizations by a simple deep learning algorithm which can compute the radiative fluxes accurately in a cost-effective manner. I have developed a deep learning algorithm which is able to calculate these radiative heat fluxes with an overall accuracy of 90% - 95% and 8-10 faster than the original parameterization. This significant speed up, without compromising the accuracy in computing the radiative fluxes using deep learning acts as a platform to explore the application of artificial intelligence for problems in fluid mechanics, turbulence and atmospheric & oceanic flows.

About the speaker:

Anikesh Pal is a Distinguished Postdoctoral Associate in Computational Climate Science at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA. His current research focuses on the application of Artificial Intelligence to develop innovative methods to simulate problems in fluid mechanics, turbulence, geophysical flows, and climate modeling. He received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, San Diego. During his doctoral research, he worked on the dynamics of stratified flow past a sphere using body inclusive numerical models. This research revealed novel details on the flow physics, and the internal wave field in near to intermediate wake of a sphere under the influence of stratification. Anikesh Pal completed his Master's degree from IIT Kanpur and was a former member of the CFD lab.

Abstract:

Biomechanics and Mechanobiology are modern interdisciplinary research fields of Engineering and Science wherein the mechanics of the biological world is explored. In a generalised sense, biomechanics deals with the application of principles of mechanics to understand the physiology of living systems while mechanobiology focuses on studying the influences of mechanical environment on biological processes. With the advancements of computational power, it is now possible to understand the complex biomechanical behaviours of normal and pathological human joints through numerical simulations or in silico evaluations. Consequently, this has resulted in computational biomechanics and mechanobiology as an emerging research domain. This talk covers the state-of-the-art techniques of computational biomechanics and mechanobiology, in particular, biomedical image processing, musculoskeletal modelling and finite element (FE) analysis along with their applications in bone and joint mechanics. The talk is divided into two parts. Part one of the talk encompasses how does numerical simulation help to gain an insight into the influences of implant surface texture designs on the peri-prosthetic osseointegration. Starting from a patient-specific CT scan data, the talk elaborates the process of developing an FE model of human bone and joint. Thereafter, the talk presents a numerical framework to investigate the osseointegration of the implant. Part two of the talk covers how do computational techniques help in understanding the influence of fetal movements on prenatal bone and joint development. In this part, the talk proposes a novel numerical framework, combining musculoskeletal modelling with FE analysis, to investigate the mechanical stimuli induced by fetal movements in the murine embryonic hindlimb at different stages of development.

About the speaker:

Dr Kaushik Mukherjee is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow in the Department of Bioengineering, Imperial College London, UK. His research is in the area of Developmental Biomechanics. In particular, he is investigating the influences of abnormal gait in the development of postnatal joint abnormalities using a mechanobiological simulation of growth and morphogenesis. Prior to this fellowship, Dr Mukherjee was a postdoctoral Research Associate at the Developmental Biomechanics Group, Imperial College London. Dr Mukherjee investigated the influence of movements on prenatal joint development using computational models. Dr Mukherjee completed his undergraduate (B.Tech) in Mechanical Engineering from West Bengal University of Technology (India) in 2010. Thereafter, he joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur (India) as a Joint M.Tech-Ph.D. student. He completed his master's degree (M.Tech) in 2012 with a specialisation in Mechanical Systems Design and continued his doctoral research in the field of Orthopaedic Biomechanics and Implant Design. He completed his doctoral degree in June 2017. His research interests are Orthopaedic Biomechanics, Implant Design, Computational Mechanobiology and Developmental Biomechanics.

Abstract:

Ever restricting government regulation to curb fuel emission and demand of high fuel efficiency due to diminishing stock of fossil fuel are some of the vital reasons compelling automobile industries to reduce car body weight with application of newer materials or combination of materials. Therefore, advanced high strength steels (AHSS) and its tailor welded blanks are increasingly used by the automobile industries. In the fast part of the presentation, the influence of dissimilar material and non-homogenous weld zone properties on the forming behavior in Tailor Welded Blanks (TWB), potential of dual phase TWBs in complex auto body applications, mathematical framework to convert strain based forming limit diagram (FLD) to stress based FLD for failure prediction in multistep forming will be highlighted. However, finite element (FE) simulations for accurate prediction of formability of sheet metals is very crucial for industries, prior to implementation of newer auto body design for efficient utilization of materials and resources. Therefore, in the second part of the presentation the implementation of evolution of anisotropic yield function in the Marciniak-Kuckzinki (MK) model and in the FE simulation for improvement of prediction accuracy of sheet metal formability will be discussed. In the third part, the robust simulation approach for solving complex thermo-mechanical problems induced by the quenching (i.e., external water cooling), internally generated heat due to phase transformations, and heat transfers between core and surface will be demonstrated. Finally, the plan for advancing the research in sheet metal forming area along with laser welding, cladding or other thermomechanical processes involving phase transformation will be presented.

About the speaker:

Dr. Kaushik Bandyopadhyay is currently working as Research Professor in the Korea University, Seoul, South Korea. He received his PhD degree from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur on Formability analysis of laser welded dual phase steel sheets for auto-body applications in 2015. Prior to his research professor position, he worked at NIT Warangal as an ad-hoc faculty. His research interests are Sheet metal forming, Constitutive modelling, Failure analysis, Laser material processing etc. In recent years, he is also working on Modelling of phase transformation kinetics in steel subjected to TempCore process. He has published 12 articles in various international journals such as International journal of solids and structure, International journal of mechanical sciences, Materials and design, Material science and engineering A, Journal of material processing and technology etc. He authored two book chapters. He has presented an invited talk in International conference on plasticity, damage, and fracture (ICPDF2018, San Juan).

Abstract:

Thermoacoustic instability has been a major concern for gas turbine combustors employed in power generation and aviation engines in the last few decades. In this talk I will discuss research aspects concerning thermoacoustic instability in gas turbine combustors which are presently of immediate relevance to the industry, and which have also been part of my previous research activities. Specifically, I will focus on flame dynamics under the influence of multi-dimensional acoustic fields and the nonlinear and stochastic dynamics of thermoacoustic instability.

About the speaker:

Dr. Saurabh is a Research Scientist at the TU Berlin, Germany. He has a PhD in Engineering Physics from the TU Berlin (2017). He graduated from the Dept. of Aerospace Eng., IIT Madras with a dual degree in 2010. His research experience spans topics concerning combustion noise, thermoacoustic instabilities, premixed flame dynamics, and passive acoustic dampers.

Abstract:

Electrocaloric effect in ferroelectric materials is observed due to the domain switching behaviour at micro-scale. Under the applied electric field, domains will orient along the direction of the applied filed. This reduces the randomness or uncertainty in the orientation of the unit cell. If the applied field is rapid enough to be considered as an isentropic process, the decrease in orientation or configurational entropy is compensated with the increase in the energetic entropy. This leads to the increase in temperature. Similarly, rapid removal of electrical field decreases the energetic entropy and hence the temperature of the ferroelectric material. This change in temperature of the material due to change in electric field is known as electrocaloric effect (ECE) and the change in temperature during the process is known as adiabatic temperature change. Characterisation study on ferroelectric materials for this property becomes important as this material can be used as solid state refrigerants for this particular behaviour. Direct Measurement of the adiabatic temperature change has some practical difficulties. Hence, using Maxwell relation, an indirect experimental method is used to calculate the temperature change. In this seminar, an indirect method commonly followed to measure the electrocaloric effect will be introduced and its result which leads to the physically non-viable conclusion of negative adiabatic temperature change will be addressed. Following that, an alternate method will be proposed which can overcome this issue.

About the speaker:

After his B.E in Mechanical Engineering from Dr. Sivanthi Aditanar college of Engineering, Dr. Maniprakash Subramanian went to IITM to do his M.Tech in the department of Applied Mechanics (Solid Mechanics), IITM. Later, he joined in TATA Motors Ltd as a Development Manager. After working there for two years, he went to the Institute of Mechanics, TU Dortmund, Germany to pursue his PhD in the phenomenological modelling of ferroelectric materials. Later, he came back to IITM as an Institute postdoc in the Department of Applied Mechanics and worked there for two years. Currently, he is working as an Assistant Professor at the school of Mechanical Engineering, SASTRA University, Thanjavur

Abstract:

An accurate characterisation of transportation and industrial noise is vital for the control of environmental noise pollution, a known public health issue, and also for defence applications. Similarly, diagnosing material damage is critical for air vehicle safety, assessing damage in bones and organs as well as civil infrastructure. Diagnostic time-reversal (TR) imaging, an inverse method, can profoundly improve the resolution of these singularities in fluid and solid media by focusing waves along the same trajectory as that taken during emission. In this talk, I will present an overview of my work on the application of TR imaging for localising aeroacoustic sources based on numerical (finite-difference based) solution of linearized Euler equations (LEE). A mapping of aeroacoustic sources promises to yield a better insight in the understanding of the pertinent flow-induced noise mechanisms. First, using test-cases of idealized source located in mean flow, advancements in implementing TR simulation over a two-dimensional domain are presented. This includes development of novel damping techniques which improves the capacity of TR to unambiguously localize sources and produce super-resolution. Following this, the TR algorithms are implemented using experimental data acquired in a wind-tunnel to three canonical problems, namely, low Mach number flow over a cylinder, and an airfoil as well as rod-airfoil interaction. While the TR method is shown to characterize the dipole nature as well as yield an accurate localization of the Aeolian tone source, it suffers from the well-known limitation of minimum half-wavelength resolution. To overcome this, a multi-stage point-time-reversal sponge-layer (PTRSL) technique is proposed which is shown to produce a point-like enhanced super-resolution of the Aeolian tone source, though it does not improve the localization accuracy. Next, the test-case of a rod-airfoil interaction noise is considered wherein the effect of self-scattering (by modelling the airfoil) on source location and resolution is analysed. Finally, the TR method is used to localize noise sources generated by flow over an airfoil whereby it is shown that without modelling self-scattering during simulations, the dipole location was found to be in the trailing-edge (TE) wake. When the self-scattering was taken into account, the scattered source exhibited a cardioid directivity, however, large side-lobes located in the wake, presents difficulty in readily identifying its true location, particularly, at low- and high-frequency range. To remove this ambiguity, an iterative PTRSL damping technique is proposed which is centred at an optimal location (along the chord) obtained through iterations. The implementation of iterative PTRSL damping yields the scattered source location between the mid-chord and TE region, thereby improving the localization accuracy, particularly in the low-frequency broadband and high-frequency secondary tones. Towards end of my talk, I will touch upon my research vision comprising of application of array processing techniques to localize aeroacoustic noise sources generated by more complex test-cases as well as some research ideas in duct/muffler acoustics.

About the speaker:

AKHILESH MIMANI is an Assistant Professor at School of Engineering and Applied Science, Ahmedabad University since June 2018. Akhilesh received his PhD (2012) in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He has completed research associate positions at The University of Adelaide (2016), University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney (2017) and University of Technology Sydney (2018) before joining Ahmedabad University. Other than Time-Reversal and Beamforming array processing techniques, his research interests are in the field of Muffler and Duct acoustics, experimental and computational aeroacoustics and application of finite element analysis to acoustic wave propagation problems. Akhilesh’s work has been published in reputed journals and conference proceedings, and has an upcoming Springer monograph on automotive muffler design. He has received funding from the (Australian) industry, in addition to a few travel grants. Additional details are attached.

Abstract:

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is concerned with the numerical solution of the equations governing fluid flow, heat transfer and multi-species transport in fundamental and industrial problems. In the past 50 years, the subject of CFD has grown significantly in several directions, aided primarily by the growth in computing power. Today, a large variety of problems are being addressed with billions (or hundred of millions) of discrete points, which has grown from a few thousand used in the 1970s. This has provided unprecedented resolution, speed and data visualization capabilities which were not available five decades earlier. Thus the limits of fidelity in the simulations have been significantly extended. Direct and Large-eddy simulations of turbulent flows, though computationally more expensive are now possible at high resolution. Petascale and Exascale computers will further pave the way to perform well-resolved single and multiphase flow simulations using both CPU and GPU parallel processors. However, accurate simulations of fluid flows (except for a few problems) are still difficult because of several complexities, including: a) high Reynolds number; b)chemical reactions; multiphase flows and associated flow regime identification, etc. In addition, knowledge of accurate boundary and initial conditions for industrial flows remains uncertain. Thus, CFD cannot be considered to be an exact predictive tool for the near term, but serves as a good estimation technique. These constraints limit the growth of CFD to be an exact science. I will present examples of both aspects from work performed in my group.

About the speaker:

Prof. Pratap Vanka is a Research Professor and Professor Emeritus in the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. He graduated from Banaras Hindu University with a Bsc(Engg) (Hons) in 1968, and an M. Tech. from IIT-K in 1970. He obtained his Ph.D with the legendary Prof. D. B. Spalding at Imperial College in 1975 after working at Tata Consulting Engineers for two years. From 1979-1989 he worked at Argonne National Laboratory, prior to moving to University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is currently Professor Emeritus, but continues to teach and supervise graduate students. He is a Life Fellow of ASME and Fellow of APS. He has won several teaching and research awards, and has published more than 160 technical journal/conference papers. He is currently visiting IIT-H as a VAJRA professor from MHRD.

Abstract:

The FRacture ANalysis Code 3D (FRANC3D) program is designed to simulate 3D crack growth in engineering structures where the component geometry, local loading conditions, and the evolutionary crack geometry can be arbitrarily complex. It is designed to be used as a companion to general purpose Finite Element (FE) solvers. FRANC3D · Allows the use of existing finite element models · Provides more accurate forecast of component life expectancies · Precision and depth can be added to the results by incorporating · Fretting nucleation module can be used to compute the number of load cycles to crack nucleation and initial crack location for fretting applications · 3-D fracture modeling into engineering analysis · Reduce cost; Fully automatic crack growth process · Provides a more efficient method for designing engineering components In this webinar, we will provide an overview of the Franc3D Capabilities, including · Crack Growth Prediction, Path of the rack growth · SIF Computation for all modes · Computation of SIF by using M-Integral

About the speaker:

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Abstract:

The present study focuses on experimental investigation of spray from an airblast injector in the presence of crossflow; and attempts to gain insight that can further lead to the development of fuel injection system for gas turbine combustors. Spray in crossflow is a phenomenon of recent interest and appears to have better potential than the traditional jet in crossflow injection. The first part of this study focusses on jet in crossflow. Jet trajectory and effect of nozzle geometry on jet breakup are investigated. Proper Orthogonal Decomposition analysis is also used to gain further understanding of the breakup process. Surface waves on liquid jets are characterized and a theoretical framework is developed to predict the wavelength of these waves. In the second part of this investigation, structure, trajectory and droplet size distribution for spray in crossflow are studied. Effect of operating parameters on spray structure is studied in detail. Different spray regimes are observed, and a regime map is proposed based on detailed characterization of spray behavior. A brief discussion is also included about the recent research on Hydrogen explosions in vented enclosures. A new phenomenological model based on spherical flame propagation is developed which is found to be in good agreement with the experimental data.

About the speaker:

Anubhav completed his B.Tech. in Mechanical Engineering from NIT, Jalandhar in 2007. His major project was on Flame-jet impingement on flat plate. During B. Tech., he did internship at CFD Laboratory, IIT Kanpur. He also underwent industrial training at Tata Motors, Jamshedpur, and Diesel Locomotive Works, Varanasi. After completing B. Tech., he got employed in Ashok Leyland, where he worked as a Deputy Manager in engine assembly and vehicle assembly plant at Hosur and Chennai. He left Ashok Leyland in 2009 to join IISc, to pursue PhD in Mechanical Engineering. His PhD research was focused on designing novel injection strategies for compact combustors. After completing PhD, in 2015, he got recruited in GE-Aviation as a Lead Engineer. There he worked on design of next-generation combustors, and issues related to thermo-acoustic instability in gas turbine engines. He left GE to join University of Warwick, UK for a post-doctoral position in 2017, where his research is focused on vented explosions of Hydrogen and methods to mitigate them.

Abstract:

Classical and quantum systems driven by a high frequency field are generally called periodically driven systems. The dynamics of a single particle driven by time-periodic forces can be solved for using various well established techniques like Hamiltonian averaging theory. However, a study of the statistical mechanics of a collection of particles in such systems requires obtaining a solution for the particle distribution function, instead of the trajectories of each single particle. If the system is collisionless, the distribution function is given as a solution of the Liouville or Vlasov equation, and in the presence of collisions, the Fokker-Planck equation is generally used. Interestingly, he solutions of the Vlasov equation, for systems with external periodic driving, are aperiodic for most initial conditions [Physics of Plasmas 25, 042302 (2018)]. However, solutions of the Fokker- Planck equation for such systems seem to be periodic asymptotically for most initial conditions [Physics of Plasmas 17,054501 (2010)]. This drastic change in the nature of solutions as we go from the collisionless to collisional situation is currently not well understood, but can have important implications for our understanding of RF heating commonly observed in such systems (eg. Paul traps). Another setting in which these periodically driven systems are of immense importance is a particle moving within a dynamical billiard with one of the boundaries connected to a spring. This is useful not only in understanding mathematical properties of dynamical systems in general, but also in modeling of plasma interaction with high frequency RF fields (eg. Fermi acceleration). An important question here is whether the partial energies of the various components of the system equilibrate. Altering the traditional ergodic assumption, we have recently shown that nonergodicity in one of the subsystems leads to equilibration of energies of the whole system [PNAS USA 114, E10514 (2017)].

About the speaker:

Dr. Kushal Shah is an Associate Professor in the EECS Department, IISER Bhopal. He earned his BTech and PhD from IIT Madras in 2005 and 2009, respectively. He was a Post-doc at Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel from 2009-10. He served as a faculty at JNU (N. Delhi) from 2010-12, and then at IIT Delhi from 2012-17. He moved to IISER Bhopal in 2017 due to rising pollution in Delhi.

Abstract:

Stochastic computational fluid dynamics (CFD) are elegant approaches for solving continuum turbulent flow problems. Their great attraction is that they provide inherently closed formulations for non-linear, small scale processes such as chemical reactions and discrete particle dynamics. Although stochastic approaches have traditionally been considered to be computationally expensive, it is possible to alleviate this by complementing them with low-dimensional manifold and dynamic binning methods. This seminar will present recent stochastic CFD research from the University of Sydney with applications in combustion, soot and nanoscale materials synthesis, and two-phase flows.

About the speaker:

Associate Professor Matthew Cleary is an academic in the School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering (AMME) at the University of Sydney where he leads the modelling research conducted by the Clean Combustion Research Group, teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses in thermofluids and is the Director of Research. He has bachelors degrees in both Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture and obtained his PhD in 2005 from the University of Sydney. Cleary has held previous positions at Imperial College London, the University of Queensland and a visiting position at Princeton University. Cleary is best known for his work on developing the multiple mapping conditioning / large eddy simulation (MMC-LES) model for turbulent reacting flows, which has revolutionised the use of stochastic particle methods through sparse (and therefore very low cost) Monte Carlo solutions. Cleary instigated and continues to lead a major opensource combustion code development collaboration, known as mmcFoam, between researchers at eight universities in Australia, India, Germany and China.

Abstract:

The seminar will focus on explaining the detection, sizing, and localization of damages such as closed transverse crack, delamination, and disbond, present in thin plates, using nonlinear response of Lamb waves. The experiments and numerical simulations carried out in this regard will be discussed during the seminar. The damages mentioned above are also called as breathing damages as they breathe, i.e., open and close as the wave passes across them. The contact nonlinearity prevails in breathing damages and typically produces higher harmonics in the Lamb wave response at a relatively lower excitation frequency. The seminar will also cover the issues that need to be addressed in order to use this method to assess the health of complicated structures in real-time.

About the speaker:

Dr. Nitesh P. Yelve is presently ‘Dean (PG Studies)’ of Fr. C. Rodrigues Institute of Technology, Vashi, Navi Mumbai and also holding the post ‘Associate Professor’ in the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the same Institute. He received his M.Tech. degree in Mechanical Engineering from VJTI, Mumbai and received his Ph.D. from the Department of Aerospace Engineering of IIT Bombay. He also pursued the Postdoctoral Fellowship at City University of Hong Kong in 2017. He has more than 16 years of teaching and research experience. The areas of his research interest are structural health monitoring using ultrasonic guided waves and vibration methods, active vibration control, structural dynamics, and composite materials. He has guided many undergraduate and post-graduate students for their projects and currently guiding a Ph.D. student. He has presented 46 papers in National and International Conferences in India and abroad, published 23 papers in International Journals, and also filed a patent. He is Member of Aeronautical Society of India, Astronautical Society of India, ASME, IEEE, Condition Monitoring Society of India, Institute of Smart Structures and Systems, and ISTE. He is also holding the post of Executive Committee Member in Mumbai Branch of the Aeronautical Society of India.

Abstract:

Understanding the fundamental mechanisms of magnetohydrodynamic multiphase and multiscale transport phenomena is of vital importance in the design of advanced scientific and technological applications, namely, continuous casting flow control mold, flow augmentation in micropumps, magnetophoresis, separation of biological and chemical moieties, magnetohydrodynamic flow control, smart sensors, micro/nano‐electromechanical devices/sensors, to name a few. Towards achieving this goal, the present work attempts to study the effect of superimposed magnetic field in multiphase and multiscale transport characteristics through the development of analytical and computational models, which are perfected with experimental investigations and exact analytical solutions. For a multiphase system concerning binary alloy solidification, the linear stability analysis (LSA) results indicate that the magnetohydrodynamic effect imparts a stabilizing influence during both stationary and oscillatory convections. In comparison to that of stationary convective mode, the oscillatory mode appears to be critically susceptible at higher values of the Stefan number and concentration ratio. Increasing magnetic strength shows reduction in the wavenumber and in the number of rolls formed in the mushy layer. In multiscale paradigm, the combined electroosmotic and pressure‐driven transport through narrow confinements have been firstly analyzed with an effect of spatially varying non–uniform magnetic field. It has been found that a confluence of the steric interactions with the degree of wall charging may result in heat transfer enhancement, and overall reduction in entropy generation of the system under appropriate conditions. It is also inferred that incorporating non–uniformity in distribution of the applied magnetic field translates the system to be dominated by the heat transfer irreversibility. A semi‐analytical investigation has been undertaken considering implications of magnetohydrodynamic forces and interfacial slip on the heat transfer characteristics of streaming potential mediated flow in narrow fluidic confinements. An augmentation in the streaming potential field as attributable to the wall slip activated enhanced electromagnetohydrodynamic transport of the ionic species within the EDL has been found. Furthermore, the implications of Stern layer conductivity and magnetohydrodynamic influence on system irreversibility have been shown through entropy generation analysis.

About the speaker:

Sandip Sarkar graduated in Mechanical Engineering from IIEST Shibpur, India. Thereafter, he did his M.Tech. in Mechanical Engineering from IITK in May 2008. In early 2017, he completed his PhD in Mechanical Engineering with Fluids and Thermal Science specialization from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. His thesis work primarily focused on LSA, micro-scale flow, heat transfer, and entropy generation analysis. He has published 31 research papers in various international journasl of repute and has presented 7 papers at various international conferences. He has overall 8 years of industrial research experience in the R&D Division of Tata Steel.

Abstract:

In the last few decades, the use of carbon fibre reinforced polymer composites as structural materials has dramatically increased in aviation, transportation, construction and many other related applications. This is due to their remarkable structural and functional advantage over traditional metals such as low weight, high strength to stiffness ratio, customisable elastic properties, better fatigue endurance etc. Structures are manufactured by stacking a number plies with different fibre orientations on top of each other to form a laminate, followed by consolidation and thermal cure in an autoclave. Despite achieving superior in-plane properties, upon mechanical loading, composites typically tend to fail along the weaker inter-ply boundaries, also known as ‘delamination’. Additional failure mechanisms include intra-ply matrix cracking, fibre compressive failure or ‘kinking’ etc. These mechanisms seldom occur in isolation but interact among themselves during failure leading to a complex overall load carrying behaviour. This invalidates simple safety-factor based design guidelines and necessitates application of three dimensional progressive failure criteria implemented in finite element models for accurate prediction of structural load carrying capacity. This talk will explore failure emanating from a very common manufacturing induced defect in laminates, known as ‘wrinkle’ or out-of-plane fibre waviness, both from an experimental and numerical perspective. Several advanced three dimensional progressive damage modelling methods in composites, developed within in the University of Bristol, will be discussed and their ability to accurately reproduce the complex progressive and interactive nature of failure under various loading cases will be demonstrated.

About the speaker:

Dr Supratik Mukhopadhyay obtained B.E in Production Engineering from Jadavpur University, Kolkata in 2009. The same year, he was also awarded the University gold medal for standing first in order of merit in the department. Following this, he continued with an M.Tech programme in the specialization of Manufacturing Science and Engineering in the Mechanical Engineering Department of Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, where he obtained the Institute silver medal for academic excellence. Subsequently, he went to UK on a Dorothy Hodgkin Postgraduate Scholarship to pursue a PhD in Aerospace Engineering in the University of Bristol on a Rolls-Royce sponsored project. His research was on experimental and computational investigation of failure from manufacturing induced defects in composite laminates used for aircraft engine applications under static and cyclic loads. As part of that, he developed and implemented several novel three dimensional progressive failure models for intra and inter-laminar damage as user defined material and element formulations for commercial finite element solvers in the explicit-dynamic framework. He also gained extensive experience in code development for large scale models running in cluster computing system. The models very accurately reproduced experimental observations for detailed laminate failure under various loading conditions. The outcome of this PhD resulted in several publications and won the prestigious ‘Kenneth-Harris James Prize’ by IMechE (Institute of Mechanical Engineers), UK and also the vice-chancellors commendation for one among the ten best outgoing PhDs in the academic year 2015-16. Since October 2015, he is a Post-Doctoral Research Associate in the R-R UTC (Rolls-Royce University Technology Centre), based in the same department, and working on several Rolls-Royce funded projects.

Abstract:

Microfuel cells are high potential alternative power sources compared to conventional batteries. In microfuel cell due to co-laminar flow, the convective mixing between anolyte and catholyte is avoided thus leading to a well-defined liquid-liquid interface. The lack of a physical membrane resolves many issues related to membrane conditioning and improves cell efficiency. Another important factor which can affect the efficiency of cell is its electrode architecture. Different designs such as flow-over design with planar electrodes and flow-through design with three-dimensional porous electrodes is possible. The impact of flow and electrode architecture on cell performance and fuel utilization will be discussed along with the efficacy of flow-through electrodes as compared to the established flow-over format.

About the speaker:

http://www.iitk.ac.in/me/data/bhuvana-t-CV.pdf

Abstract:

A robot can position and orient its end-effector or a tool arbitrarily in three-dimensional space if it has six independent actuators. However, from early days, robots with more than six actuated joints have been built and in biological systems more than the required number of actuated joints is very common. In such redundant systems, for a given position and orientation of the end-effector there exists infinitely many possible actuated joint variables and a fundamental problem is to obtain or choose one such solution set so that the desired position and orientation of the end-effector can be obtained. In this talk, various approaches to resolve redundancy, starting from a work done more than 30 years back to some recent results developed by the speaker and his students, will be presented. Examples of resolution of redundancy in serial and parallel robots, in a human arm and in an actuated endoscopic tool will be presented.

About the speaker:

Ashitava Ghosal is a Professor in Mechanical Engineering Department and the Centre for Product Design and Manufacturing at IISc, Bangalore. He obtained a B. Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur and a PhD from Stanford University, California. His broad research areas are kinematics, dynamics, control and design of robots and other computer controlled mechanical systems. He has authored a text book entitled “Robotics: Fundamental Concepts and Analysis” by Oxford University Press. He has 3 patents, around 70 archival journal papers and 75 papers in national and international conferences. He has guided 13 PhDs, 15 MSc (Engg) and more than 35 ME students. He is currently serving as an elected member of the executive committee of the International Federation for the Promotion of Mechanism and Machine Science (IFToMM) for the term 2016-19.

Abstract:

Energy is primarily transported by quasiparticle (QP) vibrations – collective excitation of electrons, electron spin (also known as magnons or spin waves) and atoms (also known as phonon). Recent advances in theoretical simulations and experimental resources have now made it possible to directly map these QPs at the atomic scale, providing opportunities to understand the underlying mechanisms governing the energy flow. In a perfect harmonic crystal, energy flow is infinite; however, in real materials, QPs are scattered by defects, impurities, boundaries, and via coupling to other QPs, thus impeding the flow. The QP vibrations and coupling also govern the phase transitions and the thermodynamic properties, i.e., entropy, internal energy, and free energy. This talk will discuss the underlying physics of the QP coupling, its impact on the energy transport in thermoelectric Mo3Sb7-xTex [1], multiferroic CuCrO2 [2], and ferroelectric (FE) phase transition in magnetoelectric YMnO3 [3]. We have performed comprehensive inelastic neutron scattering (INS) and inelastic x-ray scattering (IXS) measurements combined with first-principles density functional theory simulations. Our combined experimental and theoretical study quantifies the strength of electron-phonon coupling in Mo3Sb7-xTex, and spin-phonon coupling in CuCrO2, which dominates the scattering rates and govern the energy flow. Moreover, in YMnO3, our results directly reveal phonon instability driving the paraelectric to FE phase transition -- providing the first direct evidence of geometric improper ferroelectricity, and its coupling with the polar phonon inducing the permanent polarization below the FE phase transition. 1. D. Bansal et al. “Electron-phonon coupling and thermal transport in the thermoelectric compound Mo3Sb7-xTex.” Physical Review B, Vol. 92, 214301, 2015. 2. D. Bansal et al. “Lattice dynamics and thermal transport in multiferroic CuCrO2.” Physical Review B, Vol. 95, 054306, 2017. 3. D. Bansal et al. “Momentum-resolved observations of the phonon instability driving geometric improper ferroelectricity in yttrium manganite.” Nature Communications, Vol. 9, Article No. 15, 2018.

About the speaker:

Dr. Dipanshu Bansal is a postdoctoral researcher in the Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science department at Duke University. His current research is focused on the study of "Quasi-particle coupling in the transport of heat, charge and spin" using first-principles electronic, lattice, and spin dynamics simulations along with experimental neutron and x-ray scattering. Dr. Bansal obtained his bachelor degree from IIT Kanpur in 2010, M.S. and Ph.D. from SUNY at Buffalo in 2012 and 2015, respectively. His Ph.D. work involved the study of anharmonic behavior in thermoelectrics, superconductors, and negative thermal expansion materials. Dr. Bansal joined Oak Ridge National Laboratory in June 2015 as a postdoc and performed neutron and x-ray scattering experiments to investigate quasi-particle coupling in thermoelectrics and multiferroics.

Abstract:

In the last four decades several missions were planned and executed successfully to explore the planet Mars. An in depth knowledge of the Martian terrain was obtained with the help of spacecrafts landing on its surface and performing various scientific tasks. Though the planet has thin atmosphere compared to earth, atmospheric entry, descent and landing is highly challenging. Specially, the atmospheric entry, though lasts for only minutes, is a very crucial stage of the mission, as the spacecraft is subjected to severe aerodynamic forces and heating. The spacecraft enters the planet at speeds in excess of 6 km/s, at which aerodynamic heating is large enough to disintegrate the spacecraft, if not provided with proper thermal protection system (TPS). The design and development of TPS depends on the reliable data on aerodynamic heating. Although the computational fluid dynamic codes are fast emerging as a means to compute such data, experimentally measuring the data in ground test facilities is still a preferred means of obtaining the design data, which will also be useful for validating the numerical codes. The TPS commonly used for planetary entry spacecrafts are ablation cooling systems. Though they have been used successfully in all Mars missions, they are expensive and have certain drawbacks. This drove us to explore the feasibility of using alternate TPS. In this presentation, the experiments carried out in hypersonic test facilities for investigating mass transfer cooling technique, film and transpiration cooling techniques, shall be discussed in detail.

About the speaker:

Dr. Mohammed Ibrahim. S, Dept. of Aerospace Engineering, IITK

Abstract:

Automobile and aerospace industries are facing problems more and more on reducing the weight and manufacturing cost of a structure, but guaranteeing an equal level of comfort with satisfactory structural performance of components. To overcome these contradictory requirements traditional designs and materials must be revised. Therefore, this work presents a methodology to design, manufacture and characterise the properties of novel contoured-core sandwich structures to obtain strong, stiff and lightweight structures including air ventilation to reduce the danger of deterioration and humidity retraction. Two different contoured profiles, named flat-roof and spherical-roof contoured-cores, were designed to investigate structural response under quasi-static and dynamic loading conditions. Flat-roof and spherical-roof structures were made from a glass fibre reinforced plastic (GFRP) and a carbon fibre reinforced plastic (CFRP). The composite contoured cores were fabricated using a hot press moulding technique and then bonded to skins based on the same material, to produce a range of lightweight sandwich structures. Testing was initially focused on establishing the influence of the number of unit cells, thickness of the cell wall, width of the cell and the core filled with foam on their mechanical behaviour under quasi-static loading. The compression strength and modulus were shown to be dependent on the number of unit cells and the cell wall thickness. It has also been shown that the specific energy absorption capacity of the panel increases with increasing the cell wall thickness, with the spherical-roof cores outperforming their flat-roof counterparts. Moreover, the foam filling on the composite contoured-core systems improved the strength as well as specific energy-absorbing characteristics of the structures. Low velocity impact loading was subsequently performed on the sandwich structures and showed that the values of energy absorption were slightly higher than the tests conducted at quasi-static loading, as a result of the rate-sensitive effects on the damage resistance of the composite material. In addition, blast tests were undertaken to subject the core materials to a much higher strain-rate. Extensive crushing of the contoured cores was observed, suggesting that these structures are capable of absorbing a significant amount of energy under the extreme loading condition. Finally, the results of these tests were compared with previously-published data on a range of similar core structures. The energy absorbing characteristics of the current spherical-roof systems are shown to be superior to other core structures, such as aluminium and composite egg-box structures..

About the speaker:

Dr. Amit Haldar from the Shenzhen Fiber Novel Material, China

Abstract:

Our conventional understanding is that Bernoulli’s equation is only applicable to irrotational flows. In the first part of this talk we will generalise unsteady Bernoulli’s equation to flows with piecewise constant background vorticity. This generalisation is crucial for understanding the dynamics of a density interface sandwiched in a shear layer (i.e. a "sheared" density interface), as is the situation in many environmental shear flows, e.g. the lake thermocline, the air-sea interface, the ocean pycnocline. Using a numerical technique known as vortex method, we will show how the evolution of a single sheared density interface (as well as multiple interfaces) can be effectively modeled. Furthermore, it will be shown that vortex method accurately captures highly nonlinear features like the breaking of surface gravity waves, Holmboe waves and capillary-gravity waves. In the next half of the talk, we will focus on wave triads, especially Bragg resonance, which is basically the interaction between interfacial waves and bottom topography. It will be shown that the base flow has a non-trivial effect on the triad resonant condition.

About the speaker:

Anirban Guha is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at IIT Kanpur. Before taking up this position, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at UCLA. Dr. Guha completed his Ph.D. from The University of British Columbia in 2013. He was a recipient of the 2013 David Crighton fellowship from the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP), University of Cambridge and several awards and scholarships from UBC, including the Earl R. Peterson memorial scholarship, Faculty of applied science graduate award and the Four-year fellowship. Dr. Guha is primarily interested in understanding hydrodynamic instabilities, waves and vortices occurring in environmental flows.

Abstract:

Cracks follow intriguing trajectories that seem to hide a mysterious secret. Ancient Chinese civilization interpreted the tortuous path of cracks in turtle shells as an oracle to foresee the future. Nowadays, fractography, the study of fracture surfaces, is a broadly used engineering technique that aims at tracing back the history of a failure and determining its root causes. For 30 years, the study of fracture patterns has taken a new turn: could we learn from the morphology of cracks the fundamental laws of fracture? During this presentation, I will present some remarkable advances in the understanding of fracture patterns and I will explain how they challenge the current theory of fracture and, in fine, contribute to improve it. I will first discuss how to decipher triangular patterns observed on fracture surfaces of polymeric solids and why it contributed to understand on how tensile cracks behave in presence of shear. Then, I will focus on crack roughness that is the fingerprint of the interaction of cracks with the microstructure of materials. I will present how their statistical properties reveal basic crack growth mechanisms, leading us to revisit, and even reconcile, the concepts of ductile and brittle failure. Last but not least, I will discuss some implications for engineering sciences. Even though the analysis of fracture patterns still does not help to foresee the future, it can now be used to trace back the history of the failure and characterize material properties with unprecedented accuracy and reliability.

About the speaker:

Dr. Laurent Ponson is CNRS faculty at Institute d’Alembert for mechanics of Sorbonne University where is also head of the Solid and Structural Mechanics group that consists of about 20 faculties. After graduating from the Engineering school Centrale-Paris in 2003, he earned a doctorate in Physics at Ecole Polytechnique in 2006 for his work on the statistical properties of fracture surfaces for which he received the thesis prize Daniel Guinier from the French Society of Physics. He then worked for three years at the California Institute of Technology as a post-doctoral scholar before joining Sorbonne University in 2011. His research interest lies in the fracture behavior of heterogeneous materials that he investigates by the combination of theoretical, numerical and experimental studies.

Abstract:

Motility is an essential characteristic of many biological cells. For the unicellular organisms, such as bacteria, it is crucial for their survival. For the multicellular organisms it is required for some of the physiological functions, such as protection against pathogens by the immune cells, during development and disease. In this talk I am going to present some examples of the cellular motions and the mechanics behind them. *Clamydomonas, *an aquatic unicellular microorganism uses two flagellae to move from one place to another. Its small size results in negligible inertial forces and its motion is described using Stokes flow. Recently, our immune cells have also been shown to move in fluid by similar mechanism as deployed by *Clamydomonas. *This motion which does not require any support from solid substrate for the cellular motion has been labelled “amoeboid swimming”. The influence of the hydrodynamic as well as adhesive interaction of these motile cells with substrates on their motion will be presented. I will also highlight the fundamental differences between these interactions of amoeboid swimmers and flagellated swimmers with substrates. Another example of cell motion is collective cell migration which is essential during animal development and in conditions such as wound healing. I will show an example of the regulation of the collective cell migration in the epithelial tissues during development. The motion of cells in tissues adds another layer of complexity which arises from its genetic regulation. I will show how the subcellular proteins affect the mechanical properties of the epithelial tissues and their movements.

About the speaker:

Dr. Rizvi obtained B.Tech from BSBE Department of IITK. After a very brief tenure at Global Analytics, Chennai he joined for M Tech program at IIT Kanpur in BSBE Department. He converted his program to PhD under Late Prof. Anupam Pal and eventually finished it under Prof. Sovan L Das of ME. During his PhD he worked on Mechanics of Bio-membranes. Presently, he is working as a CNRS post-doctoral fellow with Chaouqi Misbah and Alexander Farutin at Grenoble in France.

Abstract:

In August 2014 the ESA spacecraft Rosetta encountered the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The overall objective of the Rosetta mission was to determine physical and chemical properties of comet 67P. The orbiter of Rosetta was itself an instrument platform. It also carried the lander Philae that landed on the comet’s nucleus on November 12th 2014. Philae had ten different instruments on board including the Surface Electric Sounding and Acoustic Monitoring Experiment (SESAME) comprising CASSE, DIM, and PP. The mission ended on September 30th, 2016 when the orbiter was landed on the comet as well. The Comet Acoustic Surface Sounding Experiment (CASSE) is housed in the soles of Phi-lae’s landing-gear feet. The acceleration signals at the first landing site Agilkia occurring in the first seconds of the touchdown at an impact velocity of approx. 1 m/s was recorded by CASSE. The inversion of the data based on the transfer function of the landing gear and the foot soles yielded the compression strength and the elastic modulus of the cometary soil. Both the compression strength and the elastic modulus of the surface of comet 67P are very low compared to commonly used engineering materials. The accelerometers of the SESAME/CASSE instrument recorded surface waves at the final landing site Abydos generated during the MUPUS (“Multi-Purpose Sensors for Surface and Sub-Surface Science”) hammering phase. Group arrival time differences between the three feet of Philae were measured and the Rayleigh wave was derived. From the frequency-dependent dispersion of the signals, one can conclude that the surface of comet 67P at Abydos is layered. The Dust Impact Monitor (DIM) on board of Philae is a cube with PZT detectors. DIM was aimed to derive the elastic-plastic properties and the flux of the millimeter-sized dust-particle population that moves near the surface of the comet nucleus. During the descent phase of Phi-lae, a signal was recorded by a dust particle and its diameter and elastic modulus was derived. The SESAME-PP instrument is an impedance probe with which the resistivity, i.e. the die-lectric response near the surface was measured. In this presentation, an overview on the course of the Rosetta mission is given and data rec-orded by CASSE, DIM and PP are presented. The mechanical and the dielectric properties of the comet material correspond to very porous solids with porosities up to 80% and of agglomerates of regolith particles. A part of the CASSE instrument was developed at the Fraunhofer Institute for Non-Destructive Testing in Saarbrücken where the speaker was employed until retirement. Fi-nally, the SESAME measurement techniques used on comet 67P are briefly compared to those used in non-destructive materials characterization.

About the speaker:

W. Arnold obtained a diploma in physics (equivalent to a master degree) in 1970 and a PhD in Solid State Physics in 1974 both from the Technical University Munich, Germany. He then held various positions as a researcher in Solid State and Applied Physics in academia and industry in France, USA, Switzerland, and in Germany. From 1980 until retirement end of 2007 he was employed at the Fraunhofer IZFP, Saarbrücken as a department head developing and applying methods for non-destructive materials characterization. W. A. was appointed professor of materials technology in 1989 at the Saarland University. W.A. guided 151 undergraduate students in their diploma, master thesis and study projects and till now 33 PhD’s. Parallel he served in various scientific committees, for example from 2001 to 2014 in the selection committees of the Alexander von Humboldt foundation. W.A. is a fellow of the Institute of Physics in London and an honorary member of Indian Society of Non-Destructive Testing in Delhi. Since 2009 he is a guest professor at the I. Physikalische Institut, Georg-August Universität Göttingen, Germany and in addition works as a self-employed consultant.

Abstract:

Biological growth necessarily involves mass addition in bodies leading to microstructural rearrangements and internal stress distributions. It can be classified as either volumetric, surface, or interfacial based on the nature of mass exchange with the external environment. Whereas mass is added in the bulk material during volumetric growth (e.g., soft tumorous and arterial tissues), it accretes on to a free surface of the body during surface growth (e.g., hard horn and bone tissues), and to a material or a non-material interface within the body during interfacial growth (e.g., ring formation in trees and healing of cutaneous animal wounds). In the first part of this talk, a general theory of thermodynamically consistent biomechanical-biochemical growth, considering mass addition in the bulk and at an incoherent interface, will be presented. The incoherency arises due to incompatibility of growth and elastic distortions at the interface. The biochemicals in the model are essentially represented by nutrient concentration fields and a nutrient balance law is postulated which, combined with mechanical balances and kinetic laws, yields an initial-boundary-value problem coupling the evolution of bulk and interfacial growth, on one hand, and the evolution of growth and nutrient concentration on the other. In the second part, we will discuss the solution of the posed problem for two distinct examples: healing of cutaneous wounds in animals and annual ring formation during tree growth. In the former, the biomechanical growth model is used to study the proliferation stage of cutaneous wound healing while emphasizing the emergence of stress along with instabilities such as wrinkling and rupturing in the skin and the wound. We also calculate the nutrient concentration field during the healing process. In the second example, we will calculate the growth stress and nutrient concentration distributions in trees as a result of annual ring formation. We will also use bark elasticity to correlate the crack patterns on the bark with the growth strains therein.

About the speaker:

Dr. Anurag Gupta, Dept. Mechanical Engineering, IITK.

Abstract:

Craya-Herring basis is very useful for describing incompressible fluid flows. It exploits the fact that in the Fourier space, the velocity vectors lie in the plane perpendicular to the wavenumber vector. In this pedagogical talk I will describe how this basis function helps us derive long instability computations in a relatively simpler way. In this basis, we do not need the stream function. We will work out the instabilities in thermal convection, rotating thermal convection, and magneto-convection.

About the speaker:

Prof. Mahendra Verma, Physics Dept., IITK.

Abstract:

Diesel engine emissions of oxides of nitrogen and particulate matter can be reduced simultaneously through the use of high levels of exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) to achieve low temperature combustion (LTC). Although the potential benefits of diesel LTC are clear, the main challenges to its practical implementation are the requirement of EGR levels that can exceed 60%, high fuel consumption, and high unburned hydrocarbon and carbon monoxide emissions. These limit the application of LTC to medium loads. In order to implement the LTC strategy in an on-road vehicle application, a transition to conventional diesel operation is required to satisfy the expected high load demands on the engine. The investigation was therefore aimed at improving the viability of the high-EGR LTC strategy for steady-state and transient operation and this would be core of the presentation. In this presentation, the research work carried out on a single cylinder high-speed direct injection diesel engine will be presented and discussed in terms of engine in-cylinder performance and engine-out gaseous and particulate emissions at operating conditions (i.e. EGR rate, intake pressure, fuel quantity, injection pressure) likely to be encountered by an engine during transient and steady-state operation. At selected operating points, further investigation in terms of in-cylinder spray and combustion visualization, flame temperature and soot concentration measurements will be provided in order to get deeper insight into the combustion and emissions phenomena. Increased intake pressure at single injection and split fuel injection will be presented as strategies to reduce the emissions of partial combustion by-products and to improve fuel economy in the high-EGR LTC operation. The higher intake pressure, although effective in reducing partial combustion by-products emissions and improving fuel economy, increased the EGR requirement to achieve LTC. A split fuel injection strategy with advanced injection timing on the other hand was effective in reducing the EGR requirement for LTC from 62% with single injection to 52% with split injections. The difficulties associated with drivability, emissions and fuel economy during a load transient necessitating a combustion mode transition at a constant speed will also be presented. A future outlook outlining research proposals in low temperature combustion will be discussed.

About the speaker:

Dr Asish Sarangi is currently working as a Senior Engine Development Engineer in JCB Power Systems, UK. JCB is a leading firm that develops many of their engine systems for off-road equipment: his current role covers all aspects of engine development from engine modelling to combustion and exhaust after-treatment system development. Dr Sarangi completed PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Loughborough University, UK where he worked on his PhD thesis entitled “Diesel Low Temperature Combustion – An Experimental Study” under the supervision of Professor Colin Garner and Dr Gordon McTaggart-Cowan. For pursuing his PhD, Asish has been the recipient of Loughborough University Departmental Scholarship with support from the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. Dr Sarangi did his postdoctoral work at the Future Engines and Fuels Lab in The University of Birmingham, working on gasoline direct injection combustion and the effects of fuel additive, bio-fuel contents and fuel quality on injector deposit formation. Prior to joining PhD, Asish worked in Honeywell, Bangalore on the thermodynamic simulation of turbochargers, and in National Aerospace Laboratories Bangalore on the mechanical aspects of turbo-machineries, rotor dynamics and the development of high-speed foil air bearings. He completed his undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from Utkal University Odisha and subsequently his MS (by Research) degree in Mechanical Engineering with specialisation in IC Engines from IIT Madras Chennai. For his MS thesis, Asish worked under the guidance of Professor Pramod Mehta and Professor A. Ramesh on the evaluation of performance, combustion and emission characteristics of a mini IC engine used in unmanned air vehicles. He received the Junior and Senior Research Fellowships of CSIR India to pursue his MS degree.Asish has authored and co-authored over 10 journal and conference papers.

Abstract:

Lithium (Li) ion batteries are widely being studied due to their high energy and power density. But the electrodes in Li-ion batteries undergo huge volume expansion under constrained conditions causing very high stresses, leading to eventual fracture, loss of electrical connectivity. Binders which are soft, polymeric material surrounding the electrode particle is proposed as a strategy to reduce the stresses -failure in Li-ion battery electrodes. In this talk, the effect of binder on the stresses in electrode will be modeled through a representative system of spherical isolated electrode particle enclosed by binder. Binder will be analyzed for its proportion, stiffness and viscosity under two sets of boundary conditions (i) traction-free and (ii) fully constrained. Finally, current efforts to improve the modeling assumptions will be discussed.

About the speaker:

Dr. Tanmay K. Bhandakkar is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, IIT Bombay.

Abstract:

One of the central questions concerning wall-bounded turbulence is that of its sustenance in a boundary layer. Turbulent boundary layers feature flow structures of a wide range of spatial scales. The small-scale structures close to the wall play an important role in the production of turbulence and are known to be modulated by the large-scale flow structures. I will present the results of a study which utilizes particle image velocimetry (PIV)-based pressure measurements to investigate the role played by pressure gradient fluctuations in this interaction between the large-scale and the small-scale motions. I will also discuss the contrasting effects the mean pressure gradient and the pressure gradient fluctuations have on the turbulence structure.

About the speaker:

Pranav is an experimental fluid dynamicist and works at the Experimental Aerodynamics Division (EAD) of the CSIR-National Aerospace Laboratories in Bangalore. He completed his Ph.D. at the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA in 2013, working primarily on turbulent boundary layers. After a postdoctoral stint at the Eindhoven University of Technology in Netherlands, where he studied natural convection, he joined EAD in 2016. Currently his work focuses on flow control, specifically on Hybrid Laminar Flow Control (HLFC), which aims to decrease the friction drag on aircrafts by applying boundary layer suction. In his free time, Pranav enjoys singing and reading

Abstract:

Leonhard Euler is one of the all-time greats in mathematics. He is unmatched in quantity, diversity and quality. He continued to publish more than 250 papers over a period of about 50 years after his death. He lost vision in one eye when he was twenty eight years old and was completely blind for the last twelve years of his life. Total loss of vision probably added to his mathematical productivity. He would dictate mathematics to his associates and ask them to go back twenty pages to make a correction. He calculated without any effort just as men breathe as eagles sustain themselves in the air. In this talk, we will present his extraordinary life in a nutshell and discuss only a few of his important results which carry typical Euler’s magic.

About the speaker:

Prof. Asok Kumar Mallik is currently an Honorary Distinguished Professor at Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur. He retired as a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur in 2009. He has held positions at The Institute of Sound and Vibration Research - Southampton, England as a commonwealth scholar and TH Aachen and TU Darmstadt, Germany as an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow. He is a recipient of the Distinguished Teacher Award of IIT Kanpur, Indian National Science Academy Teacher Award and Distinguished Alumnus Award of BESUS (Former Bengal Engineering College, Shibpur). He is an elected fellow of Indian National Academy of Engineering (FNAE), National Academy of Sciences, Allahabad, (FNASc), Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore (FASc) and The Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi (FNA) along with being an Institute Fellow at IIT Kanpur. He is an Honorary Fellow of The Association of Mechanisms and Machines for his lifetime contribution in the field of Theory of Mechanisms and Machines. His research area includes Vibration Engineering, Nonlinear Dynamics and Kinematics. He also writes articles and books on Mathematics and Physics at popular level.

Abstract:

Predicting effective material properties of nonlinear heterogeneous complex materials from the knowledge of its microstructure through numerical modeling and computational homogenization (CH) has many applications in engineering design. Direct numerical modeling (DNM) using finite element method (FEM) is capable of predicting material behavior accurately. Unfortunately, DNM and/or CH are computationally expensive methods. To address the computational complexity issue, many researchers have focused on reduced order modeling. However, most of the available schemes are only suited for linear and moderately nonlinear behavior in 2D setting. Moreover, these techniques do not preserve local micro-scale fields in localization processes and cannot accommodate generic loading conditions. Addressing these shortcomings, proposed technique extracts the pattern in the solution manifold, which consists of an ordered set of microscale deformation fields. Each point on the manifold represents data obtained from a detailed parallel finite element simulation of a representative microstructure. In this work, a global dimension reduction technique, Isomap, is used to understand the underlying pattern. Next, a map between the reduced space and the macroscopic loading conditions has been established using a Neural Network. Finally, the microscale deformation field is obtained by exploiting the concept of reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS). Also a novel pattern/physics based sampling strategy has been introduced to construct a representative solution manifold with a few number of simulations. This graph-based technique essentially explores the rotational (principal direction) sensitivity. This novel reduced order model is able to predict the macro-scale as well as micro-scale deformation field for any unknown loading condition without any expensive simulation for finite deformation in 3D setting. Furthermore, this model potentially can accelerate the traditional CH by providing an initial solution vector.

About the speaker:

Satyaki Bhattacharjee has recently finished his PhD in aerospace and mechanical engineering from University of Notre Dame. During his PhD, he has worked on diverse research projects including multi-physics modeling, modeling of complex materials. He has developed manifold based reduced order model, which is a data-driven approach, in the context of complex multi-scale material modeling. Prior to joining PhD program, he obtained a master of technology in aerospace engineering from IIT Kanpur, where he worked on flexible structures. He received his bachelor degree from Bengal Engineering and Science University, Shibpur (Now IIEST, Shibpur) in civil engineering. Satyaki is recipient of several awards including prestigious GE Foundation scholar leader, academic excellence award from IIT Kanpur and Elizabeth Fitzpatrick Graduate Fellowship from University of Notre Dame.

Abstract:

In a rotating fluid, the Coriolis force acts as the restoring force resulting in oscillations known as inertial waves. Columnar flow structures that resemble Taylor columns have been observed in the laboratory experiments of rotating turbulence; however their mechanism of formation is not understood. Using localized turbulence in a periodic box as the initial condition for direct numerical simulation (DNS), the formation of columnar structures is investigated. Helicity, defined as the inner product of velocity and vorticity, is a measure of the degree of knottedness in the flow field. It is well known that inertial waves propagating parallel (anti-parallel) to the rotation axis have negative (positive) helicity. For my doctoral research, I used this helicity segregation characteristic to conclusively show that the columnar structures are actually low-frequency inertial wave-packets. Columnar structures resembling Taylor columns have also been observed in rotating magnetoconvection (dynamo) simulations of the Earth’s core. Moreover, even a similar segregation in helicity, negative (positive) in the north (south) of the equator, has been observed in simulations. Such a segregation pattern can help explain how the magnetic field of the Earth is created and maintained against a natural dissipative decay. What exactly creates such helicity segregation? Could this also be due to inertial waves? These are two very interesting questions that I have investigated during my postdoctoral research, using both periodic box and spherical DNS. Developing new statistical techniques, I have been able to detect a signature of inertial waves in a strongly forced (high Rayleigh number) spherical simulation. Finally, I will talk about my research plan and teaching plan. Using both numerical simulations and experiments, I plan to investigate the magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) flow in liquid metal batteries. These batteries are promising options for grid level energy storage in India and a thorough study is required before the battery size can be scaled for industrial use. I also plan to study the buoyancy-driven flow in rotating compressor cavities, in particular the effect of Coriolis force. Obtaining accurate and reliable heat transfer characteristics is crucial for the aircraft industry both from operational and energy budget considerations.

About the speaker:

Dr. Avishek Ranjan is a postdoctoral research associate in the department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge, presently working on spherical rotating magneto-convection with Professor Peter Davidson. He completed his PhD in the same department in June 2015. To carry out his doctoral work on 'inertial waves in rotating turbulence', he was awarded the Dr Manmohan Singh scholarship by St Johns college, Cambridge. Before his PhD, he completed MS (by research) at IIT Madras when he worked on incylinder optical flow diagnostics under the supervision of Prof Pramod S Mehta and Prof S R Chakravarthy. Along with his MS research at IITM, he also worked as a project associate in a TIFAC-DST sponsored project on ‘the use of straight vegetable oils in engines’ with Prof Mehta. Prior to IITM, he was an assistant manager in the connecting rod & camshaft manufacturing line at Tata Cummins Ltd. Jamshedpur for a year, after completing his B.Tech. (Mechanical engineering) from NIT Jalandhar.

Abstract:

Smart materials such as shape memory alloys (SMA), piezoceramics, 1-3 piezocomposites etc. are new generation materials surpassing the conventional structural and functional materials. These materials possess adaptive capabilities to external stimuli, such as loads or environment, with inherent intelligence. SMA wrapped with polymeric materials are used as stents in cardiovascular diseases, whereas piezoceramics and 1-3 piezocomposites are used in energy harvesting, underwater and in MRI scans. These materials are characterized under different loading conditions (such as fluid, electrical, mechanical, electromechanical and thermal) to understand their behavior and to be utilized in various applications. Computational modelling will help us to achieve this by means of non-invasive or non-destructive technique.
The developed modelling techniques are validated with experimental measurements, which will provide insight to the design engineers to design and develop these materials for various applications.

About the speaker:

Dr. Jayendiran Raja is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Texas A&M University, Qatar campus. He specializes in computational mechanics applied to material (smart composites, biological soft tissues and
biomaterial) characterization. He holds a PhD in Smart composites material characterization (Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India, 2014), a Masters in Computer Aided Design (Anna University, India, 2007), and a Bachelor in Mechanical Engineering (University of Madras, India, 2001). He has worked as a Postdoctoral researcher at University of Lorraine-LEMTA-CNRS (Nancy, France) on piezoceramics material characterization .His research interests include Fluid-Structure Interaction of Elastic Shells for Aerospace and Biomedical Applications, constitutive modeling and experimental characterization of piezocomposites for underwater and biomedical applications.

Abstract:

Engineering materials with abrasive constituents (hardness >15 GPa) are difficult-to-cut because the hardness of these constituents is comparable to that of the conventional tools or tool coatings. Diamond is a potential tool material for such applications (hardness ~ 100 GPa). Natural diamond as a cutting tool is discouraged due to its scarcity and cost. However, diamond can be synthesized in the form of coatings using chemical vapour deposition (CVD) method, which is economical. CVD diamond/WC Co is a widely accepted coating/substrate system for tooling applications. But some of the characteristics of diamond such as low thermal expansion coefficient (~ 1.0×10-6K-1), high chemical inertness and high elastic modulus (~ 1050 GPa) proved the vulnerability of this system for high stress cutting applications. In this talk, I will introduce some fundamental aspects and requirements of CVD Diamond/WC-Co system. In particular, substrate material composition, surface pre-treatment, diamond nucleation and crystallinity of the coating will be discussed. In fact, coating substrate adhesion/integrity, hardness and tribological characteristics of the CVD diamond coatings are dependent on their micro/nano grain size. Detailed experimental evaluation of the above characteristics was carried out with respect to the coating grain size. The objective is to develop CVD Diamond/WC-Co system with high interfacial integrity, high hardness and low friction coefficient. To obtain high coating performance, we have successfully developed a novel integrated nano- and micro-crystalline architecture (NCD/transition-layer/MCD) for the diamond coating on WC-Co tools.

About the speaker:

Dr. Ravikumar Dumpala is currently working as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, at VNIT, Nagpur. His expertise is in the area of manufacturing and surface engineering. He received his bachelor’s degree in Mechanical engineering from Andhra University, Visakhapatnam (2004) and M.Tech from NIT Warangal (2007). After 2 years of coding at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), he moved back to academics. During his PhD (2009-2014) at IIT Madras, he worked on the CVD diamond coatings for the machining of Alm-SiCp metal matrix composites. His current focus is on the development of coatings/ surface composites for aerospace applications especially for the maintenance and repair of metallic components (MRO operations). He is currently funded by DST on “Nickel based composite coatings (Ni-P/hBN) for high temperature tribological applications”. He has several international publications to his credit. He believes in closely working with the industries and research organizations in solving their problems. His vision project is to develop “Cold Spray Technology” for the repair and maintenance of aerospace components, which is the need of the hour. He is a member of Materials Research Society of India (MRSI).

Abstract:

Lubricating grease is commonly applied to lubricate parts e.g. rolling bearings, seals and gears. Greases have a complex rheology dominated by its yield stress behaviour, which in turn is a result of the multi-phase composition of the material. The viscosity of the grease is heavily dependent on temperature and shear rate. In a rolling element bearing for instance the shear rate varies from 0.01 to 1e7 1/s, means the viscosity of the grease cover the range from the viscosity of the base oil to an infinite viscosity (solid body). Being able to fully model the flow dynamics of grease, including phase separation, will be highly valuable in the design of lubricated machine elements such as rolling element bearings. Complete models will also be a valuable tool in the process of providing tailor-made greases for different applications. An understanding of the grease flow dynamics enables prediction of grease distribution for optimum lubrication and for the migration of wear- and contaminant particles. In this research work the potential of combined analytical modelling, flow visualizations, and numerical modelling in grease flow dynamics is presented. Specifically, the relation between the rheology of the grease and its impact on the flow motion is of interest in combination with validation of the numerical models in simplified geometries. The numerical models then enable simulations in more complex geometries of particular interest for the grease and bearing industry. It is shown that grease flow is heavily influenced by its non-Newtonian properties and the shear rates in the contact, resulting in distinct regions of yielded and unyielded grease. Further, the numerical models are shown to match well with experiments and analytical models, enabling numerical models on more complicated geometries.

About the speaker:

Dr. Chiranjit Sarkar received his B. Tech degree in Production Engineering from Jadavpur University in 2009, M. Tech degree in Industrial Tribology and Maintenance Engineering from IIT Delhi in 2011 and Ph. D degree in Design of Magnetorheological (MR) Brake from IIT Delhi, India in October, 2014. During his Ph.D program he has synthesized, characterized magnetorheological fluids and fabricated MR brake experimental setup. He has published several journal articles and filed one Indian patent from his PhD work. His post-doctoral research work at Division of Fluid and Experimental Mechanics, Lulea University of Technology, Sweden from January, 2016 to October, 2016 was on Computational Fluid Dynamics of grease flow in channels, bearings and seals. He has recently published work based on grease flow in straight channel, straight channel with restrictions and double restriction seal geometry. He has worked as Assistant Professor at Department of Mechanical Engineering, Delhi Technological University from August, 2014 to June, 2015. He has worked as Assistant Professor at Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technology Rourkela from July, 2015 to December, 2015. Currently he is working as Assistant Professor at Department of Mechanical Engineering, IIT Patna.

Abstract:

This paper presents an outlook to enhance the productivity of a basin type double slope multi–wick solar still by introducing the wicks. The experimental data for different months are presented, and analyzed the effect of climatic and operational parameters on the performance of modified basin type double slope multi–wick solar still (MBDSMWSS). The study has been conducted at Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology Allahabad (MNNIT Allahabad), Uttar Pradesh (U.P.), India. A significant increase in the heat input, yield, and overall thermal efficiency have been obtained. In the instantaneous efficiency equation, the yield output and the heat input to the solar still is modified as input from both the glass covers and transparent walls are considered for the modified solar still. The result shows that, the maximum yield is obtained as 9012 ml/day (4.50 l/m2 day) for black cotton wick in comparison to 7040 ml/day (3.52 l/m2 day) for the jute wick at 2 cm water depth in MBDSMWSS. Also, for same basin condition, the overall thermal efficiency of MBDSMWSS with the jute and black cotton wicks are 20.94% and 23.03%, respectively.

About the speaker:

Dr. Rahul Dev is an Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering Department, Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology (MNNIT) Allahabad, Allahabad since October 23, 2012. He obtained his B.Tech. in Mechanical Engineering from the Institute of Engineering & Technology, Lucknow in year 2004. He received his Master of Technology degree in Energy Studies from Centre for Energy Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi in year 2007. He also did his Ph.D. in the field of Solar Distillation on topic 'Thermal Modeling and Characteristic Equations for Passive and Active Solar Stills' from Centre for Energy Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi in year 2012. Dr. Dev has supervised several students at MNNIT. His interest are in the field of Solar Energy Applications. He has mainly worked on solar thermal areas such as Solar Distillation, Solar Passive Buildings, Daylighting, Solar Greenhouse Dryers, Solar Water Heating, Solar Air Heater and 'Photovoltaic integrated thermal application'. He has published several papers and has delivered several invited talks. At MNNIT, he teaches Engineering Thermodynamics, Heat & Mass Transfer, Thermal Engineering, Thermo-fluid dynamics, Solar Energy & Its Applications, and Solar Architecture, Non-conventional Energy Sources, Energy Conversion Techniques in UG and PG courses in MNNIT Allahabad.

Abstract:

Presentation overview: Our presentation would cover how we receive challenging problems and how machines are built as solutions. Presentation takes the participants through various stages of machine building. Focus is given on how machines are designed from scratch. Participants would be able to get an understanding on systematic process of design. These stages on conceptualization and designing will be explained through few case studies. Presentation would also cover video clips of few machines built by ETA. Presentation would be followed by a Q&A, where participants can clear their doubts on various aspects of machine building. Take away: We would also throw open a challenge for bright students for innovative design. Students can come out with innovative solutions, which can be shared with ETA within a month. Selected student/team (Maximum 3) will be invited to ETA for presentation and the best design would be given handsome reward.

About the speaker:

About ETA: ETA is a high technology company, providing process solution in different areas of engineering. Some of the typical machines we are manufacturing are high end solid phase welding machines, advanced simulation & testing machines, special purpose machines, metal gathering machines and packaging machines for various applications. ETA Technology is Driven by Innovation and thrives to make environment friendly machines using state of the art technologies.

Abstract:

The study focuses on the adiabatic expansion and hyper-velocity acceleration of aerosol impurity in the post-disruption and thermal quench scenario inside the vacuum chamber of a fusion reactor. A pulsed electrothermal plasma (ET) capillary source has been used as a source term simulating the surface ablation of the divertor or other interior critical components of a tokamak fusion reactor under hard disruption-like conditions. The capillary source generates particulates from wall evaporation by depositing transient radiant high heat flux onto the inner liner of the capillary. The particulates form a plasma jet moving towards the capillary exit at high speed and high pressure. Computational work, backed by the data from actual electrothermal source experiments from the in-house facility “PIPE” (Plasma Interactions with Propellants Experiment), shows the supersonic bulk flow patterns for the temperature, density, pressure, bulk velocity and the flow Mach number of the impurity particulates as they get ejected as a highpressure, high-temperature and hyper-velocity jet from the simulated source term. It also indicates the uniform steady-state subsonic expansion of bulk aerosol inside the expansion chamber. Scaling laws in 1-D were developed for the aforesaid bulk plasma parameters for ranges of axial length traversed by the flow, so that one can retrieve the flow parameters at some preferred location. Electrothermal plasmas exhibit highly non-linear nature as a bulk; and thus effect of temperature and the non–linearity of the adiabatic compressibility index on the supersonic flow patterns for high density metal vapor plasma have been presented, where the study shows significant changes in flow parameter values in the extreme limits of suggested nonlinearities. The study brings out finer aspects like agglomeration, recombination and particulate precipitation from the dense bulk plasma as it undergoes isentropic expansion. The analytical expressions to represent the 2-D steady-state spatial evolution of polycarbonate ablated plasma have been also developed and is expected to enable us in predicting the spatial distribution of the debris from the plasma facing components (PFC) or the migrated dust in an efficient manner. The study of dust particulate flow adds to plasma diagnostics database and helps in safe, undeterred operation of the fusion devices.

About the speaker:

Dr. Rudrodip Majumdar was born in Kolkata on 25th day of April in 1987 to his parents Sri Kiriti Majumdar and Smt. Anusri Majumdar. Rudrodip’s school life was divided between Purulia Ramakrishna Mission Vidyapith and Barrackpore Govt. High School. Upon finishing the High School, Rudrodip pursued his B.Tech. degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from West Bengal University of Technology. During undergraduate studies he developed keen interest in space charge solid state devices and charge carrier transport, following which he pursued computational work in plasma physics and fusion energy at IIT Kanpur in Nuclear Engineering and Tech. Program. Thereafter, Rudrodip joined North Carolina State University in 2011 to pursue his Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering. His specialization was in studying flow patterns of hyper-velocity electrothermal plasmas. He was awarded Ph.D. in December 2015. He served as a postdoctoral research assistant at NCSU from December 2015 to August 2016. His current stint at IIT Bombay as an institute PDF began in October 2016. Rudrodip is keen about joining a premier academic institute in India for teaching and conducting interdisciplinary research in the fields of high enthalpy flow and clean energy technologies. Apart from academics Rudrodip takes great interest in wildlife conservation, nature photography, creative writing and Indian classical music.

Abstract:

Predicting roles played by small scale features on the macroscopic response of solids is an important challenge in solid mechanics. The central question is: How can we connect the microstructural parameters of materials to their macroscopic behaviors? In the context of fracture problems, the key issue is that of presence of crack singularity. It makes a sharp interface that governs the relation between the microscopic properties and macroscopic behavior, very sensitive tolocalized small scale phenomena. As a result, a rare specific small scale phenomenon can have a giant effect on the macroscopic failure behavior. The talk presents some results in following two directions (a) brittle failure of heterogeneous materials and (b) toughness of glassy materials. The first direction presents problems of the brittle crack propagation in a heterogeneous toughness field. To this end, some studies on predictingthe effects due to large front deformations will be presented in two cases: half plane crack in a finite body and penny-shape crack in an infinite body. The first case of half-plane crack involves analytical> studies with a verification from experiment. The study shows that the crack front becomes stiff as it deforms. The second case of penny-shape crack focuses on numerical study of arbitrary crack front deformations using numerics. It shows the existence of a fingering instability (crack front becomes more flexible). The second direction of failure of bulk metallic glasses is devoted in understanding the fracture properties of glassy materials. A theoretical model on exploring the notch toughness dependency on the loading rate, notch curvature radius and the history (age) of glass materials will be presented. This theory sheds light on the elementary competition between an intrinsic plastic relaxation time scale and an extrinsic driving time scale, as well as the roles played by nonlinear yielding dynamics and a crossover between thermal and a thermal rheological processes. Non-monotonicity that has been observed in the master function of the notch toughness vs ratio between these two time
scales, is the key feature of the theory.

About the speaker:

My main research interests lie in predicting effects due to small-scale heterogeneities on macroscopic failure properties of materials. Recently, I finished my first postdoc (2015-2017) from the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel. I worked there in understanding the toughness of glassy materials. I did my PhD from the University of Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC) - Paris VI. Focus of my thesis was in developing tools to study the brittle crack propagation in a highly heterogeneous medium. I did my master with major in solid mechanics from IIT Delhi. I did master thesis in the field of topology optimization of metal-ceramic composites at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany under DAAD/IIT sandwich fellowship. I did my undergraduate in mechanical engineering from the Nirma University, Ahmedabad, India. .

Abstract:

I will talk briefly about my recent research on multifunctional Parylene-C microfibrous thin films. Next, I will outline my future research directions on low-frequency acoustics using thin films, and thermomechanical phenomenon. Following this I will present my teaching interests and abilities. Multifunctionality: Towards sustainable development, multifunctional products have many advantageous over single-function products: reduction in number of parts, raw material, assembly time, and cost involved in a product’s life cycle. As a proof of concept, I will demonstrate the multifunctionalities of Parylene-C microfibrous thin films (µFTFs). As the functionalities of a material are dependent on the microstructure and physical properties, the investigation made was two-fold (1) Experimentally, the wetting, mechanical, and dielectric properties of columnar µFTFs were determined, and correlated to the microstructural and molecular differences between bulk films and µFTFs. (2) Computationally the elastodynamic and electromagnetic filtering capacities of Parylene-C µFTFs were determined. In all cases suitable applications were identified. Thin-film acoustics: The focus of the project is to develop a low-frequency acoustics material. I will present the computational details with initial results and experiments needed for this project. Thermomechanics: A material when subjected to continuous tensile loading, cools in the elastic regime and heats up in the plastic regime. I will aim to understand the thermal behavior of metals and polymers subjected to (1) monotonic tensile loads and (2) shock loads, towards nondestructive evaluation. I will present the work done so far and the future directions.

About the speaker:

Chandraprakash Chindam was born in Hyderabad, India. He received his Bachelors and Masters degrees in Mechanical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras), Chennai, India in May 2010. He was advised by Prof. Krishnamurthy Chitti Venkata (Department of Physics) and Prof. Krishnan Balasubramaniam from 2007 to 2010 in the Center for NonDestructive Evaluation (CNDE), IIT Madras. His Masters thesis he explained the thermomechanical phenomenon, both experimentally and theoretically, in stainless steel SS304 material subjected to cyclic elastic loads and monotonic tensile loads in plastic regime at room temperature. He briefly worked as a Project Officer at CNDE in Summer 2010. After this, he worked in the Noise-Vibration-Harshness Department of Engineering Research Center, Tata Motors Ltd, Pune, India, testing small commercial vehicles on high-speed tracks and in an anechoic chamber. For a year in the Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics, Pennsylvania State University, he studied theoretical microfluidics. Since June 2012, he has researched on Multifunctional Parylene-C microfibrous thin films under the supervision of Prof. Osama O. Awadelkarim and Prof. Akhlesh Lakhtakia. So far, Chandraprakash has co-authored 13 first-author and 2 second-author peer-reviewed journal publications part from conference presentations.

Abstract:

The function of biological membranes is controlled to a large extent by their interaction with various proteins. A set of these proteins are curved and interact with the membrane by preferentially binding or diffusing to the similarly curved regions of the surface. These proteins are important for many biological processes such as cellular transport and in particular, endocytosis, where the membranes are required to undergo large deformations to engulf the cargo. In the first part of this talk, we focus on the equilibrium of membranes in the presence of three key membrane-deforming proteins, namely, clathrin, BAR and actin filaments. Our study reveals a protein-induced snap-through instability that offsets tension in the membrane and drives transport. In the second part, we focus on the dynamics of protein-membrane interaction. We use Onsager’s variational principle of irreversible thermodynamics to model the sorption (reaction) and diffusion of curvature inducing proteins on a time evolving membrane. The resulting calculations allow us to understand various experimental observations and systematically predict the curvature sensing or generation capabilities of a protein-membrane system depending on a few key physico-chemical parameters.

About the speaker:

Dr. Nikhil Walani is currently a postdoctoral researcher at LaCaN, Barcelona. He did his PhD from University of Houston (Fall 2015) with the thesis focussing on mechanics of cellular transport. Prior to this, he was at IIT Kanpur for the Bachelors in Civil Engineering. He is currently working on modeling chemo-physical interaction of proteins with cell membranes.

Abstract:

Thermoacoustic systems with a turbulent reactive flow, prevalent in fields of power and propulsion, are highly susceptible to oscillatory instabilities. Recent studies showed that such systems transition from combustion noise to thermoacoustic instability through a dynamical state known as intermittency. The aim of this talk is to show the spatiotemporal dynamics during the transition from combustion noise to limit cycle oscillations in a turbulent bluff-body stabilized combustor. The study shows that the aperiodic oscillations during combustion noise are phase asynchronous, while the large amplitude periodic oscillations seen during thermoacoustic instability are phase synchronous. An interesting spatiotemporal pattern is observed during intermittency: patches of synchronized periodic oscillations and desynchronized aperiodic oscillations coexist in the reaction zone. In other words, the emergence of order from disorder happens through a dynamical state wherein regions of order and disorder coexist, resembling a chimera state. Therefore, the dynamics of local heat release rate oscillations change from aperiodic to periodic as they synchronize intermittently. The global synchrony in local heat release rate oscillations is characterized by computing Kuramoto order parameter to quantify the synchronization transition. The temporal variations in global synchrony, estimated through the Kuramoto order parameter, echoes the breathing nature of a chimera state. The talk will also present different states of synchronization between pressure and heat release rate oscillations during quasiperiodic route to chaos in a laminar burner.

About the speaker:

After graduating from Kalyani Govt. Engineering College, Dr. Sirshendu Mondal did his masters and Ph.D. from Jadavpur University, Kolkata. He worked on dynamical transition in pulse combustor analytically and experimentally at JU. He also did a numerical analysis of cold flow and hot flow situations in pulse combustor during his research stay at TU Munich with DAAD sandwich fellowship. Currently, he is pursuing his post-doctoral research at IIT Madras. His current research focuses on the spatiotemporal dynamics during the transition to thermoacoustic instability and exploring different dynamical states using synchronization theory. His research interests include combustion instability, nonlinear dynamics, and time series analysis.

Abstract:

The demand for precision surgical knives is enormous. Currently, diamond knives have been the preferred choice among surgeons for use in precision surgeries, owing to the extreme hardness of diamond and the sharpness that can be achieved in single crystal diamond blades, but material and processing costs are high. Bulk metallic glass (BMG) has the potential to be an economically-viable material of similar performance for use in precision surgical knives. To this end, a novel hybrid manufacturing process integrating thermally- assisted micro-molding and micro-drawing has been developed for producing multi-facet and curvilinear surgical-grade knife blade cutting edges from bulk metallic glass (BMG) with edge radii

About the speaker:

Shiv G. Kapoor is a Professor and GrayceWicall Gauthier Chair, Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering University of Illinois at Urbana -Champaign. For nearly 30 years, Professor Kapoor has sustained a relevant and well -supported research program in the areas of manufacturing process modeling and process automation both at the macro - and micro-scale with the goal of developing a science -based understanding of the processes for the purpose of increasing productivity and improving quality. He has directed an NSF-sponsored Industry-University Cooperative Research Center on Machining and Machine Tools for fifteen years. He has published more than 350 technical articles in Journals and conferences of high repute. A Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME), Prof. Kapoor has received numerous ASME and SME society awards including most recent SME Gold Medal in 2015, SME’s most coveted Education Award in 2005 and ASME William T. Ennor Manufacturing Technology Award in 2003. He also received ASME’s Blackall Machine Tool and Gage Awards for outstanding research paper, in 1992, 1997, and 2008. He currently serves as an editor -in-chief for the Journal of Manufacturing Processes and Chair the ASME Technical Committee on Publications and Communications that provide long-range plans and manages affairs of all 30 ASME Transaction and Review Journals for the dissemination of technical knowledge.

Abstract:

From the dawn of modern civilization, writing on a piece of paper with an ink has been one of the preferred modalities of transferring knowledge and information in documented form. On a different note, beginning of this century has witnessed another emerging prospect of paper: acting as the essential building block of a rapid diagnostic kit for testing blood, urine, and saliva samples in ultra-low-cost paradigm. Our study unveils that despite elusively diverse scenarios, there is a uniqueness of liquid spreading through paper, bearing analogy with molecular movement. Scanning electron micrograph of paper reveals distribution of multiple fibers. While each fiber pertains to a channel of micron size diameter, the resultant orientation and distribution of all the fibers corresponds to a randomly distributed network. As a consequence, random motion of the liquid in all possible direction is at occurrence. The complexities in generalizing the underlying physics through a simplified paradigm, constitutes the major challenge. Mapping the single micro-channel behavior onto the random network of fibers, we observe an analogy with the diffusion due to complex migration characteristics of molecules or particles. This culminates in effective diffusive transport behavior on paper, brought about propelling of liquid through the randomly distributed fiber network. Our conceptual paradigm appears to bring in a generalization by providing a simple and consistent accounting of notable applications ranging from liquid imbibitions, mixing and separation, to the hydrodynamics of writing.

About the speaker:

Dr. Kaustav Chaudhury received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering (yr. 2016) from IIT Kharagpur. He completed his MTech in Thermal Science and Engineering (yr. 2011) from the same institute and BE in Mechanical Engineering (yr. 2009) from Jadavpur University. Focusing on fundamental fluid mechanics and its implications in cutting edge technological applications, Dr. Chaudhury has published in journals of international repute, including Applied Physics Letters, Physical Review E, Langmuir, Lab on Chip etc. One of his research works “Diffusive Dynamics on Paper Matrix” has received an overwhelming appreciation and published as news articles in Phys.org, Science Daily, The Economic Times and Business Standard. One of his collaborative works “Swirling Flow Hydrodynamics in Hydrocyclone” (published in Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research of ACS Publications) receives appreciation and has been conferred with Industrial Institute of Mineral Engineers (IIME) best paper award on beneficiation. Presently Dr. Chaudhury is working in Schlumberger, Pune, India as Modeling and Simulation Engineer in the area of fluid mechanics. Here he has delivered projects focusing on new product development and issues faced in the fields. His work on mixing tank, has been selected for Asia Level Reservoir Symposium 2017, and presented satisfactorily.

Abstract:

Clathrate hydrate is a solid ice like material which forms when some hydrophobic guest molecules stabilize cell structures made of hydrogen bonded water molecules. Methane hydrate, a type of clathrate hydrate forms inside oil and gas pipes at higher pressure above the freezing point, may cause severe problem in flow assurance and even catastrophic accident by plugging. Cyclopentane clathrate hydrate, which forms similarly at water-oil hydrophobic interface at atmospheric pressure, was used as a model system for safe experimental study on hydrate adhesion. Both theoretical and experimental studies were carried out to design and fabricate surfaces with a non aqueous liquid barrier film which is expected to minimize the hydrate adhesion. Liquid impregnated surface (LIS) is one of such surfaces with a thermodynamically stable impregnated lubricating liquid phase inside its texture. Detailed thermodynamic design map of LIS inside two immiscible liquid phase environment was constructed based on the interfacial energetics. Subsequently silicon based LIS were constructed from surfaces of well ordered texture and appropriate chemistry, produced by standard lithography and reactive ion etching. Adhesion forces between these surfaces and clathrate hydrate were measured using a custom made device based on the cantilever deflection. Some of these surfaces showed extremely low or zero hydrate adhesion and accumulation. Surfaces of ultra low hydrate adhesion based on industrial material and process were also developed.

About the speaker:

Arindam Das is currently working as a postdoc researcher in Mechanical Engineering department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His present research topic is clathrate hydrate adhesion on solid surfaces. He received his Doctorate degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2013. His doctorate research was on multifunctional polymer-nanoparticle composite surfaces of extreme wettability. He received his Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering degree from Jadavpur University in 2006.

Abstract:

The talk is aimed at bringing to the audience how bad things lead to good endings in the field of science. A few past famous examples will be presented to show how some unfortunate happenings lead to some major breakthroughs in science. The discovery of the occurrence of chaotic motion in mechanical systems was first noticed at IIT Kanpur and the first experiment on mechanical chaos was conducted here. The audience will be told what circumstances lead to this discovery which were induced by some very unfortunate happenings in our country. The talk is not a technical lecture but a story of the department in mid seventies.

About the speaker:

Amitabha Ghosh received his Bachelor of Engineering and Master of Engineering degrees from Bengal Engineering College, Shibpur, (Calcutta University) and Doctorate degree from Calcutta University in 1969. He was a former faculty at the Mechanical Engineering department, IIT Kanpur, and from 1997 to 2002 he served IIT Kharagpur as the Director. Currently he is a Platinum Jubilee Senior Scientist of the National Academy of Sciences, India, Allahabad and also an Honorary Distinguished Professor at Bengal Engineering & Science University, Shibpur. His research and academic interests are in Basic Mechanics, Kinematics and Dynamics, Advanced Manufacturing and Robotics. His books are considered classics and are followed extensively in India and abroad. He has received many awards including Prof Jai Krishna award from the Indian National Academy of Engineering, Doctor of Science (h.c.) from Bengal Engineering and Science University, Shibpur and was the first to receive the Distinguished Teacher award form IIT Kanpur. He is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers (India), Indian National Academy of Engineering, New Delhi, Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore, Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi and the National Academy of Sciences, India, Allahabad.

Abstract:

Demand for techniques capable of micro-scale machining has been increasing rapidly as the trend towards miniaturization continues. Micro electrical discharge machining (micro-EDM) process has been successfully employed in aerospace, automobile, and other industries due to its unique capabilities of manufacturing high-accuracy micro-parts with a range of materials irrespective of their hardness. However, one of the major disadvantages of the micro-EDM process is its low productivity, mainly due to the low energy efficiency of individual discharges and accumulation of debris particles in the inter-electrode gaps, especially, while drilling holes, milling 2D/3D cavities and machining micro-scale features. This research presentation will describe the development of a multi-physics model to gain fundamental knowledge of the micro-EDM process and to explore possible mechanisms of productivity improvements. The modeling tools developed in this research enable an understanding of the micro-EDM plasma and material removal mechanism at the workpiece. The presentation will also overview development of atomized dielectric-based EDM process based on the understanding of the process mechanisms obtained through modeling of the conventional EDM process. Use of atomized dielectric in EDM as a novel solution both to reduce the consumption of dielectric and to efficiently flush out the debris and therefore, can be a sustainable alternative to the conventional EDM process. Atomized dielectric-based EDM process that involves supplying the dielectric in the form of atomized droplets that coalesce on impacting the workpiece surface to form a thin, moving film, which can penetrate the inter-electrode gap. The presence of a thin film of the dielectric can confine the plasma expansion during an EDM discharge, thereby, focusing the discharge energy in a narrow region. Moreover, moving dielectric in the gap could lead to a faster restoration of the dielectric strength and enhanced heat removal from electrode surfaces at the end of each discharge when compared to the stationary dielectric, thereby, providing stable discharge conditions for the subsequent discharges. The final part of the presentation will briefly discuss the application of the liquid atomization technology for cutting fluid delivery in titanium machining. This research aims to study the effect of various atomization-based cutting fluid delivery (ACF) system parameters on the film formation and associated film characteristics in order to improve the effectiveness of the ACF system in titanium machining. Viewing the research program in its entirety, its most consequential impact will be the creation of a scientific and technological base for development of high-performance and sustainable alternatives to the existing manufacturing processes.

About the speaker:

Soham Mujumdar is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Micromanufacturing Processes Research Lab at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received a B. Tech degree in Production and Industrial Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee in 2009 and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2016. Dr. Mujumdar’s research interests include development of micro/meso-scale manufacturing processes, sustainable manufacturing. His Ph.D. dissertation research involved development of a multi-physics model of electrical discharge machining (EDM) process to study the process of dielectric breakdown, formation and expansion of EDM plasma, and resulting material removal mechanism. His current research involves study of atomization-spray-based cutting fluid delivery (ACF) system for titanium machining, development and modeling of atomized dielectric-based EDM process, and virtually-guided certification of die cast manufacturing processes.

Abstract:

Thermal energy storage (TES) is known as the most efficient among energy storage means. Due to the promising potentials, scientists are keen on improving innovative materials and validating systems. Material development and processing could be two different issues in this respect but overlapping in some cases may be synergistic. Materials could be designed according to processing necessity, efficiency or economy. The phase change materials (PCMs) which are the most popular in TES science have been improved very effectively in the last two decades. For genuine usages they should still be further improved. The present proposed sophisticated means to exploit PCMs are composites, solid-solid PCMs and microencapsulated PCMs. GOUPAL is an experienced laboratory developing innovative TES materials from Tokat city of Turkey.

About the speaker:

Prof Dr Cemil Alkan is chemist from Gaziosmanpaşa University in Tokat city of Turkey with a PhD degree on polymer science and technology. He has mainly concentrated on polymer based TES materials in the last 15 years. He produced 85% encapsulation ratio in composites of PCMs with engineering thermoplastics, microencapsulated PCMs at competitive diameters and original solid-solid polymeric PCMs in the past. In one of the last projects he incorporated to a consortium (EU-India Project) to overcome encapsulation of salt hydrates in polymeric matrices to produce passive TES systems. The task is very important because salt hydrates have never been proposed as TES material for passive systems.

Abstract:

Metallic glasses (MGs), which are metals solidified in an amorphous state, have shown attractive mechanical properties such as high strength, yield strain and good corrosion resistance. They exhibit heterogeneous plastic flow by formation of shear bands (SBs) at temperatures well below the glass transition temperature. However, they can be very brittle with KIc ∼ 1 - 15 MPa m1/2 or very tough (KIc ∼ 80 MPa m1/2 ). Experiments and MD simulations suggest that failure in the brittle MGs occurs by cavitation with little shear banding and can be traced to nanoscale fluctuations in atomic density. To explain this behaviour, we propose a model of a heterogeneous solid containing a distribution of weak zones to represent a brittle MG. In this talk, I will discuss the plane strain finite element simulations of cavitation in such an elastic-plastic solid subjected to biaxial loading. We have examined the effects of the yield strength and volume fraction of the weak zone as well as the stress state on the cavitation response. It is found that the presence of weak zones can dramatically lower the cavitation stress, and also gives rise to interesting cavitation bifurcation behaviours including the possibility of snap cavitation. We have also conducted continuum simulations of crack initiation in a heterogeneous plastic solid under mode-I plane strain, small scale yielding conditions. Results show that a three-step process is involved in the catastrophic fracture observed in brittle MGs.

About the speaker:

Dr. Indrasen Singh received B.Tech degree in mechanical engineering from NIT, Allahabad in 2004. Subsequently, he joined the position of scientist at ARDE, Pune, a premier lab of DRDO. In 2010, he moved to PTC software (india) Pvt. Ltd., Pune and worked there for 3 years as a software developer. He obtained his PhD from IISc, Bangalore. His PhD work focused on understanding the fracture and deformation response of metallic glasses and nanoglasses. In Oct, 2016, he joined post-doctoral position at NUS, Singapore. Since April 2017, he is working as assistant professor at IIT, Indore.

Abstract:

The talk involves study pertaining to Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS) of a turbulent channel flow subject to spatially modulated thermal forcing with a special interest to realize reduction of skin-friction drag. Thermal forcing has been employed using both streamwise and transverse arrays of heated strips on the bottom wall of the channel. The simulations have been carried out for a fixed friction Reynolds number Reτ =180 with friction Richardson number Riτ varying from 15 to 30.The periodic transverse strips exhibited an increase in skin-friction drag with a decrease in the width of hot strips though wider hot strips exhibit a slight decrease in skin-friction drag. Streamwise periodic strips exhibited a reduction in skin-friction drag of the order of 8% with an increasing trend in reduction of friction drag with increasing Riτ. The mechanism responsible for turbulent skin-friction drag reduction due to streamwise thermal forcing affects two processes, namely: (a) Advection of streamwise kinetic energy from the buffer-layer to outer layer by the wall-normal buoyancy forces leading to formation of border low-speed streaks over the heated regions and it (b) brings about suppression of cross-flow fluctuating velocities which in turn weakens the transient growth of the turbulent streaks.

About the speaker:

Dr. Mirza Faisal Baig is professor at Mechanical Engineering, AMU. He obtained Batchelors in Mechanical Engineering from AMU, Aligarh, Masters in Aeronautical Engineering from Canada and PhD from University of Southampton, UK. His research work is related to fundamental aspects of near-wall turbulence, flow control methodologies in both compressible and incompressible turbulence, Geophysical flows, Planetary dynamo modeling.

Abstract:

Diffusion in solids controls many metallurgical processes including various phase transformations, homogenization and joining of materials. Control of interdiffusion is also crucial aspect of material systems that operate at elevated temperatures as they may experience degradation in performance due to alloy loss or change of microstructure caused by interdiffusion of various alloying elements during service. Most of the applications are based on multicomponent systems containing three or more components. However, there is a severe lack of data on diffusion in multicomponent solids. A brief theoretical background on multicomponent diffusion will be presented at the beginning of this talk followed by experimental methodologies used to determine interdiffusion coefficients in the multicomponent systems. Experimental interdiffusion studies carried out in various practically important systems will be presented including the binary Al-Mg, ternary Ti-Al-Mo and quaternary Fe-Ni- Co-Cr systems. Diffusional interactions or the effect of one diffusing species on the diffusion of the others is an important aspect of multicomponent diffusion. Its manifestation in the form of uphill diffusion and zero flux planes will be highlighted. Use of the interdiffusion data in practical applications will be illustrated with couple of examples of alloy and processes being developed in our research group.

About the speaker:

Dr. Kaustubh Kulkarni is a faculty in the department of Materials Science and Engineering at IITK. He completed his B.E. in Metallurgical Engineering from College of Engineering Pune and his PhD in Materials Engineering from Purdue University, USA. Before joining IITK in 2012, he worked in Automotive Research Association of India, Pune and with GM R&D Bangalore. Dr. Kulkarni has 19 journal publications and 2 US patents.

Abstract:

The presentation discusses the computational modeling of lipid bilayer membranes based on the nonlinear theory of thin shells. Several computational challenges are identified and various theoretical and computational ingredients are proposed in order to counter them. In particular, C1-continous, NURBS-based, LBB-conforming surface finite element discretizations are discussed. The constitutive behavior of the bilayer is based on in-plane viscosity and (near) area-incompressibility combined with the Helfrich bending model. Various shear stabilization techniques are proposed for quasi-static computations. All ingredients are formulated in the curvilinear coordinate system characterizing general surface parametrizations. The consistent linearization of the formulation is presented, and several numerical examples are shown.

About the speaker:

Prof. Dr. Roger A. Sauer (Roger) is currently engaged with RWTH-Aachen as an Associate Professor with the AICES (Aachen Institute for Advanced Study in Computational Engineering Science). His research interests are catered towards Nonlinear continuum mechanics, advanced finite element and multi-scale methods, contact and adhesion mechanics, membrane and shell theories, self-cleaning surface mechanisms, biological cell membranes and multi-physics of interfaces. He earned his Bachelors degree in Civil Engineering in 2002 from the University of Karlsruhe, Germany and Masters and Doctoral degrees in 2003/2006 from the University of California, Berkeley, USA. Before joining RWTH-Aachen in 2008 as a Junior Research and Group Leader, Roger did his habilitation with Prof. Peter Wriggers. Roger has received notable recognition for his research and teaching contributions till date. Hs is a recipient of the J. Tinsley Oden fellowship (2016), member of the ‘Junges Kolleg’ of the North-Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences and Arts (2012), member of the Emmy-Noether program of the German research society (DFG, 2009), participant of the Academy of Excellence ‘Computational Material Science’ (2008), recipient of the Robert L. Taylor FEAP (2004) and Earle C. Anthony (2003) fellowships, and many more. He is a member of many societies, e.g., Biophysical Society, Euromech to name a few, and is collaborating actively with close to 20 researchers around the world. Roger has been very successful in garnering third party research funds (net: ~2355, 000 €). Roger is a co-author in 47 Journal articles, 104 peer reviewed Conference articles and 5 Book chapters. He has delivered numerous invited talks in the USA, UK, India and Germany, has co-organised many conferences and mini-symposia. Roger is in the Editorial Board of the Journal of Micromechanics and Molecular Physics and the Journal of Adhesion, has advised many Doctoral and Post-Doc researchers, masters and undergraduate students.

Abstract:

Droplet-based microfluidics where reactants or biological species are encapsulated in thousands of tiny water droplets is witnessing a tremendous interest for applications in chemistry, biology, medicine and material science. To enable the development of robust droplet-based devices, my laboratory has been investigating the dynamics of confined drops in a special class of fluidic networks called microfluidic parking networks. These networks consist of a repeated sequence of loops, with each loop containing a fluidic trap to park drops. In this talk, I will discuss how we harness collective hydrodynamics of drops to engineer multi-functional microfluidic devices. I will also present some counterintuitive fluid phenomena associated with squeezing and coalescence of parked drops; and highlight the underlying hydrodynamic mechanisms. Finally, I will discuss our efforts to translate these inexpensive microfluidic platforms for high throughput analysis in biology and medicine.

About the speaker:

Dr. Siva Vanapalli is an Associate Professor in Chemical Engineering at Texas Tech University. He obtained his B.Tech from IIT Kharagpur and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. He is currently the holder of the Bill Sanderson and the Ed & Linda Whitracre Faculty Fellowships at Texas Tech. His research interests are in the areas of microfluidics, complex fluids, cancer, healthy aging and technology development. He received the CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation and the Rising Star Award from the Cell & Molecular Bioengineering Group of Biomedical Engineering Society. He has developed several enabling microfluidic technologies, which led to six pending patents, two of which have been licensed to start-up companies. To date he has mentored 8 Postdoctoral researchers, 14 PhD students, 38 undergraduate students and 3 high school students.

Abstract:

Indian nuclear power programme has been envisaged to have three stages for judicious utilization of limited uranium and vast thorium resources. In the second stage, sodium cooled fast breeder reactors (FBR) are deployed. Design of a fast breeder reactor demands detailed knowledge of thermal hydraulic parameters prevailing in the reactor at various conditions, prediction of which poses interesting challenges. Sodium, being a liquid metal has a high heat transfer coefficient and hence is the natural choice as the primary coolant to remove very high heat fluxes (~2 MW/m2) encountered in the compact reactor core. Another favourable factor for selection of sodium is its high boiling point (880C) which leads to low pressure systems. Thus, the main loads on FBR structures are of thermal origin, viz., high operating temperature (creep), large temperature gradient (thermal stress) and large number of cyclic variations in temperature (thermal fatigue) due to various incidents taking place in the plant. In FBR system, the Biot number is of the order of unity, demanding multi-physics heat transfer studies for accurate prediction of structural temperatures. Wide operating temperature range coupled with a high volumetric expansion coefficient of sodium is favourable for natural convection heat removal. However, a large buoyancy force in sodium pools leads to high Richardson number ~1, posing the risk of thermal stratification and the associated temperature fluctuations and thermal fatigue in the structures. Sodium jets from fuel bundles at differing temperatures entering into a common reactor pool leads to high-cycle thermal fatigue as a consequence of jet instabilities and large heat transfer coefficient of sodium. Nuclear heat is generated in fuel pin bundles with helical wire spacers housed inside a hexagonal wrapper. All the sub-channels of the bundle are not of identical hydraulic resistance, which leads to flow mal-distributions and circumferential temperature variations in fuel clad. Knowledge clad hotspot temperature is essential for safety analysis. During emergency decay heat removal conditions, there is favourable interaction between pool and inter-wrapper sodium which transports considerable fraction of core decay heat to the pool limiting the clad temperatures, especially during the onset of natural convection. Prediction of this phenomenon calls for multi-scale modelling of the entire primary system. The main drawback of sodium is its violent chemical reaction with air and water. Hence, inert argon gas is maintained above sodium free surfaces to avoid sodium-air contact. Large free surface velocity in compact reactor pool leads to argon gas entrainment in sodium and the associated risk reactivity fluctuations in the core, which is a serious safety issue. As a part of reactor safety analysis, it is essential to assess the effectiveness of online monitoring of core cooling. During a postulated complete flow blockage in fuel bundle, the entire scenario, viz., the rate of damage to the subassembly, radial propagation of damage in the core, the number of subassemblies that are likely to get damaged during such an accident, relocation of the molten fuel from core to core catcher and effective cooling of the core debris by safety grade decay heat removal system by natural convection need to be established. This calls for a coupled multi-phase and multi-physics thermal hydraulic studies coupled with appropriate validation exercises. The full paper would address thermal hydraulic issues specific to sodium cooled fast reactors, computational models developed to understand them, typical case studies.

About the speaker:

Dr. K. Velusamy is working as Outstanding Scientist and Associate Director, Nuclear Systems Analysis Group, in Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, Kalpakkam. He is also a Senior Professor in Homi Bhabha National Institute, Mumbai. He is a specialist in Computational Fluid Dynamics & Fast Reactor Thermal Hydraulics. He completed his B.E. (Honours) in Mech. Engg. from Madras Univesity in the year 1983, his M.Tech (Mech. Engg). from IIT-Kanpur in 1985 and his PhD from IIT-Madras in 2000. He, a member of Indian Nuclear Society & Indian Society for Heat and Mass Transfer. He an Editorial Board member of Annals of Nuclear Energy. He is Fellow, Indian National Academy of Engineering. He got DAE - Scientific and Technical Excellence Award for the year – 2006, HBNI Distinguished Faculty Award for the year – 2015 and DAE Group Achievement Awards for Design of PFBR Components – 11 times. He has published 102 Journal papers and 125 Conference papers. He has guided 16 PhD Theses and 27 M.Tech / M.S theses.

Abstract:

Thermal Transport: With miniaturization in size, thermal transport is becoming increasingly important in the design and realization of micro-electronic devices. Due to additional scattering of heat carriers at boundaries, the thermal conductivity of material is reduced in these devices. While the reduced thermal conductivity deteriorates device performance and could result in device failure for applications such as microprocessors, it is advantageous for thermoelectric energy conversion, where the figure of merit is inversely proportional to the thermal conductivity. Our objective is to understand and predict the thermal transport physics in technologically important materials by using first-principles based density functional theory calculations and the Boltzmann transport equation. We consider phonon-phonon scattering in semiconductors and phonon-phonon and phonon-electron scattering in metals. The scattering rates are obtained using the Fermi golden rule. We study the phonon thermal transport properties in (i) Conventional semiconductors such as silicon and germanium, (ii) Semiconductor nanostructures (silicon nano-porous lms) (iii) Two-dimensional semiconductor (phosphorene), and (iv) Metals (aluminum and gold). Our predicted values of thermal conductivities show excellent agreement with the experimentally measured values (wherever available) without the use of any fitting parameters and highlights the phonon thermal transport physics in these technologically relevant materials. Optoelectronic Properties: The optoelectronic properties determine material's performance in photovoltaic and light-emission applications. The photoluminescence quantum yield is inversely affected bynon-radiative losses. Similarly, defects can trap the charge carriers and deteriorate the device performance in photovoltaic applications. Our objective is to use atomistic simulations to study non-radiative losses in colloidal quantum dots (CQDs) for light-emitting applications. In particular, we use density functional theory fitted tight-binding Hamiltonian to study Auger and trap-assisted non-radiative losses in CQDs. Our calculations explain the experimental findings and help in the design of improved CQDs with suppressed non-radiative losses.

Abstract:

Over the last few decades, CFD has developed into a rich and diverse subject and is emerged as a major component of applied and basic fluid dynamic research alongwith theoretical and experimental studies. Simultaneous development of new computers, numerical algorithms, physical and chemical models of flow are responsible for the great impact of CFD in both basic and applied scientific/engineering problems. Presently, CFD methods are employed routinely for the estimation of various complex aerodynamic and propulsion flow parameters where experimental data cannot be obtained economically or feasibly and contributing significantly in reducing developmental cost and time for aerospace vehicle design. In India, the designers of missiles are depending heavily on CFD techniques for the accurate prediction of various aerodynamic and propulsion parameters in the design exercise. DRDL has developed a host of indigenous grid generators, 3-dimensional Euler, RANS and LES solvers using advanced numerical techniques and physical models and are routinely used to estimate various aerodynamic parameters pertaining to DRDO missile systems. Systematic validations were carried out through comparisons against reliable experimental results to assess their accuracy and application range. Aerodynamic characterization of various missiles in complete M- - δ-φ flight regime, store separation from aircraft, heat shield separation of hypersonic vehicles etc., are some of the notable applications of these codes. Commercial RANS codes are effectively applied for design and analysis of many advanced propulsion systems including hypersonic air breathing mission, scramjet combustor, Integrated rocket ramjet intake, jet vane, base flow etc. Key performance parameters were predicted and propulsion systems were optimized through the analysis of various thermochemical parameters obtained from numerous numerical simulations. An indigenous Large Eddy Simulation (LES) code is developed to predict compressible turbulence. Central differencing (Maccormack scheme) and upwind (modified SLAU2) scheme are coupled together to treat the smooth flow as well as the flow with discontinuity. Gibbs phenomena sensor and digital filtering are implemented to detecting shocks and contact discontinuity and to provide inflow turbulence. An alternate upwind scheme namely Rotated HLL (RHLL) scheme is also developed to enhance the applicability of the code. The scheme is validated extensively for number stringent canonical problems namely, supersonic flow past forward facing step (Emery test case), supersonic flow past compression corner, hypersonic flow past cylinder, stationary compressible isentropic vortex, lid driven flow in a square cavity, Toro’s blast wave problem, shock-vortex interaction problem, subsonic and supersonic backward facing step problems, supersonic mixing layers etc. The code is currently being tested for practical engineering problems like shock-boundary layer interaction, intake unstarting, sonic injection in supersonic cross flows etc. The lecture will contain two parts. In the first part, a brief overview of the development and application of CFD techniques for aero-propulsive characterization of various DRDO missile systems will be presented. The development and validation of the indigenous compressible LES code will be deliberated in the second part of the lecture.

About the speaker:

Dr. Debasis Chakraborty is currently working as Technology Director of Computational Dynamics Directorate at DRDL Hyderabad. Prior to that he worked in Vikram Sarabhai Space Center during 1986-2001. He received M.Sc in Applied Mathematics from Jadavpur University, M.Tech in Computational Mechanics from IIT, Kharagpur and Ph.D in Aerospace Engineering from IISc, Bangalore. He was AICTE-INAE Distinguished Visiting Professor in Aerospace Engineering at IISc Bangalore during 2007 – 2009. Currently he is also a visiting professor at Center for Modeling, Simulation and Design (CMSD), University of Hyderabad. He is a Fellow of INAE, Aeronautical Society of India, and Institution of Engineers. His works have been awarded with many awards like, DRDO Scientist of the year award 2012, DRDO award for Best innovation/futuristic Development, 2010, Technology Group award (Group leader) of DRDL for 2008. He is the member of aerodynamics and propulsion panels of AR&DB and expert panel member of National Supercomputing Mission. His research interest includes CFD, Aerodynamics, Propulsion, Turbulence and Combustion modeling, Transient and unsteady flows, Numerical methods. He has published more than 215 research papers in various international journals and conferences in the area of CFD.

Abstract:

The Shutdown System (SDS) of a typical Medium Size Fast Breeder Reactor (MSFBR) is a safety system designed to shut down the reactor on demand. This is one of the most important and critical system from safety point of view and therefore failure probability of this system is normally kept less than 1.0 x 10−6 per reactor year. This target is achieved by introducing redundancy, diversity and reducing the common cause failure (CCF) among the components/subsystems of SDS and is confirmed by the Reliability Analysis performed using Fault Tree (FT) analysis. It is well known that there are uncertainties in the values of the failure rate of the components of SDS. Therefore, uncertainty analysis has been carried out to assess the uncertainty in the failure rate of SDS due to uncertainty in failure rates of its components. It is observed that the spread in the failure rate of the SDS is less than the spread in the failure rate of the individual components of SDS. Sensitivity analysis carried out for failure rate of control and safety rods indicate that an increase of a factor of 10 in the failure rate of components of SDS increases the failure rate of SDS by factor of 2 only. The results of the analysis are of practical importance and provide insight in the propagation of uncertainty in the failure rate of SDS components on the failure rates of SDS. In the proposed presentation, the details of the features of MSFBR and its shutdown systems, the methodology used in carrying out the reliability and uncertainty analysis and the results will be presented.

About the speaker:

Dr. Om Pal Singh is Ph.D. in Physics from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi. He served as Secretary of Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) and Director of one of its division for about 7 years and was involved in regulatory and safety aspects of Indian nuclear and radiation facilities, matters relating to HRD/RTI/Vigilence /Internatinal relations, interface between media and AERB. He carried out R&D on space and time dependent safety analysis of Pressurized Water Reactors (PWRs) and design aspects of loose neutronic coupling in large size PWRs. Before joining AERB, he served Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR), Kalpakkam for 31 years in different capacities including as Head Reactor Physics Division. He is an Expert in Reactor Physics and Deterministic & Probabilistic Safety Analysis of nuclear reactors. He is recognized by Madras and Bombay university as Ph. D. Guide. He guided 7 Ph.D thesis in IGCAR Kalpakkam. He has to his credit over 60 research papers in refereed journals, more than 100 papers presented in conferences and about 200 design and analysis reports on Indian Fast Reactors. He served as member in the Steering committee of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on HRD in member states with nuclear power plants. He provided the IAEA Expert Services several times in Indonesia. He has been Chief Investigator in 3 IAEA`s Coordinated Research Projects. He is also an holder of Alexander Von Humboldt Foundation fellowship. He visited TAMU, College Station USA and University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA for a short period in 2013 as a visiting scientist. He joined IIT Kanpur as visiting professor in the first week of August 2010 and served for 9 semesters. He guided 8 M.Tech theses on topics such as dynamic simulation of high temperature gas cooled reactors, conceptual studies on CANDLE reactors and uncertainty analysis of safety systems (Decay heat removal and shutdown systems) of fast reactors. Today`s presentation is on one of the studies carried out by one of the M.Tech. students on reliability and uncertainty analysis Shutdown System of Indian PFBR that is under construction in Kalpakkam. He has keen interest in quality of education of students in schools. He was secretary and vice president of 'KG Association' in Kalpakkam for 4 years and served for 2 years as Chairman of `Managing Committee` of Department of Atomic Energy's six high schools and one inter college at Anushaktinagar in Mumbai. For school students, his slogan is 'learning without knowing that one is learning'.

Abstract:

Longitudinal ambient air ventilation is the most common methodology for maintaining amicable environment during normal situations while providing an evacuation path during tunnel fire emergencies. The present work investigates the influence of forced ventilation air oxygen concentrations on the tunnel fire dynamics. Mixing ambient air with inert gasses such as nitrogen, argon, carbon dioxide will change the oxygen concentration of ambient air. To quantify the influence of the oxygen content on the critical tunnel safety parameters, we perform multiple computational fluid dynamics simulations on a reduce size tunnel while preserving the Froude number. We develop analytical expressions to estimate the importance of oxygen content on tunnel fire dynamics. By employing the Froude scaling technique, we extrapolate these relations to the realistic tunnels. Furthermore, for the ambient air ventilation, the comparison of these expressions to the experimental data display good agreement. We find that by adjusting the oxygen concentration, we can control the parameters such as the maximum tunnel ceiling temperature, the fire growth rate, the maximum heat flux to the tunnel floor, the maximum flux on the tunnel ceiling and maximum heat release rate. It can help evacuation and assist in fire-fighting. The work shows that we can control the tunnel fire severity by adjusting oxygen concentrations to levels significantly improving tunnel fire safety.

About the speaker:

Dr. Sanjay Khattri is working as a professor at the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences. He holds a bachelor degree, a master degree and a Ph.D. degree from IIT - BHU, Texas A & M College Station and the University of Bergen, respectively. He has worked within the oil industries for more than four years and within the academic institutes for more than fourteen years. His research interests include scientific computing, computational fluid dynamics, and applications of these for solving real life problems. Presently he is working with fire dynamics in confined environments such as subsea and road tunnels.

Abstract:

In the last 20 years, big afford has been made to optimize conductor materials for magnet technology such as Cu-Ag composites. Two-phase eutectic (lamellar) Cu-Ag composites consist of alternative finely spaced layers of Cu-rich and Ag-rich lamellae. In this contribution, we study the microstructure and texture evolution in near-eutectic cold drawn Cu-Ag composites using a combination of X-ray diffraction (XRD) and finite element simulations with an implemented crystal plasticity model 1,2 . Stress strain curves from compression tests and measured XRD texture data before and after the compression are presented 3 . Lamellar textured Cu-Ag polycrystals are modelled by periodic Voronoi tessellations in the finite element software ABAQUS. The numerical calculations use periodic boundary conditions to simulate the mechanical behavior of textured polycrystals, considering Voce-type hardening behaviour and initial texture. The numerical model is validated by experimental compression tests for a constant strain rate 10 -4 s -1 at room temperature. The numerical results in terms of the texture of each phase and the mechanical behavior have been compared with the experimental results.

About the speaker:

Dr. Srihari Dodla received the B. Tech. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati, in 2009, the M. Tech degree in Applied Mechanics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, in 2011, and the Ph.D. degree in Institute of Mechanics from Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, Germany, in 2015. He worked as a research assistant in Institute of Materials and Joining Technology at Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Germany during Aug 2014 to May 2015. From July 2015 to Nov 2016, he was a PDRA in the Wolfson school at Loughborough University, UK. In December 2016, he joined the Ad-hoc faculty of the department of Mechanical Engineering of the National Institute of Technology Calicut, India. His fields of interest are crystal plasticity based on isomorphism, multiscale material modelling, texture evolution, homogenization methods (FEM, Taylor, VPSC) and texture components.

Abstract:

The overall design of aerodynamic systems has many interacting components to consider, from the structural geometry of the hardware to the computational platforms and eventually the controller architecture and gains. The traditional development cycles typically involve hardware iterations followed sequentially by controller development, leading to the potential for more design iterations than necessary or over-specification of the components within the final complete system. Advances in simulation capability potentially enable the use of optimization techniques within the design process to address these potential issues, ideally leading to better overall designs and shorter development cycles. However, evaluation of performance at each design point for a dynamic system may involve lengthy computation times, thus the overall optimization becomes non-trivial and necessitate the use of targeted approaches. In this talk I will (attempt to) briefly discuss three problems in this regard: global optimization of structural design parameters in the aerodynamic system; locally optimal co-design of structural and controller parameters; and optimal design of model based controllers in aerodynamic systems.

About the speaker:

Chris Manzie is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at The University of Melbourne. He is also an Assistant Dean (Research Training) and the Mechatronics Discipline coordinator in the Melbourne School of Engineering. His research interests are in model-based and model-free control and optimisation, with applications in a range of autonomous systems related to energy, transportation and mechatronics. Currently, he is an Associate Editor for Elsevier Control Engineering Practice; IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics; IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology and Elsevier Mechatronics.

Abstract:

Carbon nanostructures are of utmost importance in nanoscience and nanotechnology in view of their promising physical, mechanical and electrical properties. Properties such as high electronic conductivity, high corrosion resistance and large surface area of carbon nanotubes (CNT) and carbon nanofibers (CNF) make them the materials of choice for catalyst layers in polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs). As large-scale application of PEMFCs is restricted by their high initial cost attributed mainly to the Pt-based catalyst layers used to catalyze oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) at cathode, alternative Pt-free catalysts based on heteroatom doped carbon nanomaterials are of significant interest. However, despite numerous Pt-free ORR catalysts being investigated, their catalytic activity remains low as compared to that of Pt-based ones. As a part of the present research work, cost efficient PEMFC cathode catalyst based on Pt-nanoparticle coated CNTs has been developed. Further, heteroatom doped carbon nanostructures synthesized by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) have been investigated for their suitability as Pt-free ORR catalysts. The seminar will focus on the effects of various process parameters on the ORR activity of CNT supported Pt-based electrocatalysts. Next, the synthesis of Pt-free, doped carbon-based electrocatalysts through CVD will be discussed. Nature of ORR active sites will be deliberated in light of the ORR activity-structural correlations.

About the speaker:

Dr. Raghunandan Sharma is a postdoctoral fellow at Department of Mechanical Engineering, IIT Kanpur since February-2016, after completion of his PhD in Materials Science from the Materials Science Programme, IIT Kanpur. He completed his masters (MSc) from Department of Physics, University of Rajasthan in 2005 and moved to Physical Research Laboratory Ahmedabad for a short project thereafter. Later, he did his MTech from the Materials Science Programme, IIT Kanpur in 2009 and continued to work as a PhD student. His current research interests include the development of materials for electrochemical power conversion and storage devices. His areas of focus include Pt-free cathode electrocatalysts for PEMFCs and electrode materials for Li-ion batteries.

Abstract:

The designing, developing and testing of skin panels that can withstand severe unsteady pressure loads is a serious challenge faced by the aerospace industry. One of the problems faced by the panels is acoustic fatigue which can cause structural damages and can reduce the service life of aircrafts significantly. The dynamic and multiphysics nature of the problem makes its analysis, prediction and testing even more difficult. Results for the coupled response of a duct-mounted, elastic plate to acoustic loading using a modal expansion of the relevant eigenmodes exist in the literature. The effect of uniform grazing flow on the coupled response is investigated. As an effort to reduce the amplitude of the plate's response, the effect of constraining an interior point on the plate is explored in this study. This modification can alter the amplitude and spectral characteristics of the plate's response. Interestingly, some new peaks are observed in the response because of the excitation of unsymmetric modes which are otherwise dormant. The results of the ongoing investigation of the forced vibration of a clamped-free beam using the large displacement beam equation will be presented. The equation is solved by expanding the beam displacement using a series of modes which are the Eigenfunctions satisfying the linear beam equation along with the boundary conditions for a clamped-free beam. The forced vibration due to uniform external pressure having harmonic time dependence is calculated for various values of forcing frequency.

About the speaker:

Dr. Mahesh Manchakattil is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering at IIT Hyderabad. Prior to that he was working in Defence Institute of Advanced Technology, Pune since 2013. He received his B.Tech and M.Tech degrees in Aerospace Engineering from IIT Madras in 2004. From 2004 till 2007, he worked as scientist/engineer in the Aerodynamics R & D division of Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, ISRO. He received his Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2013. His research interests include Aeroelasticity, Computational Mechanics, Warhead Mechanics and Aeroacoustics. He has worked on the structural- acoustic coupled response of aircraft panels, aeroelastic analysis of composite and delta wings. He is also interested in the numerical algorithms for Multiphysics simulations. In collaboration with Armament R&D Establishment, Pune, he is investigating explosive-metal interaction for design of shape charge warheads against concrete targets. He has seven publications on these topics in international journals.

Abstract:

In this talk I will discuss about a novel method for generating vortex rings that circumvent some of the drawbacks associated with existing methods in producing them. The predominant effects that occur in previously used methods are due to presence of some of the other vortices such as, stopping vortex, piston vortex, image vortex and orifice lip generated vortices in the early stage of development. These disturbances influence the geometric, kinematic and dynamic characteristics of a vortex ring and lead to mismatches with classical theoretical predictions. It is shown in the present study that the disturbance free vortex rings produced, follow the classical theory. Flow visualization and PIV experiments are carried out in the Reynolds number (defined as ratio of circulation (Γ) and kinematic viscosity (ᵥ)) range, 2270< ReΓ <6790, to find the translational velocity, total and core circulation, core diameter, ring diameter and bubble diameter. In reference to the earlier studies, significant differences are noted in the variations of the vortex ring diameter and core diameter. A model for core diameter during formation stage is proposed. The translational velocity variation with time shows that the second order accurate formula derived using Hamilton's equation by Fraenkel (Jl Fluid Mech. 1972, 51, pg 119-135) predicts it best. Subsequently the axial interaction of this classical vortex ring with a thin circular cylinder has been studied. It is observed that due to the presence of the cylinder, there is an increase in the velocity of the vortex ring. Also, noticeable changes in the characteristic properties of vortex ring such as core circulation, core diameter and ring diameter have been observed. To justify these experimental observations quantitatively, an analytical study of the interaction under inviscid assumption is performed. The inviscid analysis does predict the increase in velocity during the interaction, but fails to predict the values observed in present experiments. However, when the theory is used to correct the velocity change through incorporation of the effects of axisymmetric induced boundary layer region over the cylinder, modelled as an annular vortex sheet of varying strength, the changes in the translational velocities of vortex rings match closely with the experimental values.

About the speaker:

Dr. Debopam Das is a professor of the Department of Aerospace Engineering, IIT Kanpur, India. His research interest is in flapping flight, incompressible and compressible vortex rings, instability and transition of unsteady internal flows and instability of buoyant and non-buoyant free shear flows

Abstract:

Stability analysis of two-phase flow systems are of preponderant interest to the researchers for several decades. Analysis of such systems like Boiling Water Reactors (BWRs) are carried out using large scale system codes. Due to extensive computational effort associated with the system codes, they are less capable of investigating the nonlinear behavior of the system. In contrast, Reduced Order Models (ROMs) prove itself as an important tool, through which deeper insights of instability phenomena (Density Wave Oscillations, DWOs) can be obtained with a few simplified representative system equations. The prime objective of the research is development of ROMs to carry nonlinear stability analysis of a two-phase flow system. As a part of the work, improved thermal hydraulic ROMs using homogeneous equilibrium and drift flux correlations are developed; including a new insight of density variation of subcooled coolant in single phase region. It is noted that the density variation of the coolant due to heating in the single phase region is significant. The aforementioned variation is captured by considering the density to be a function of local enthalpy along the length of the channel. Time dependent spatially linear approximations are considered for single phase enthalpy and two-phase quality and nonlinear coupled ODEs are obtained by weighted residual approach. Linear stability analysis is carried out using the model and stability maps are shown in various parameter planes namely phase-change number (Npch), subcooling number (Nsub) and applied external pressure drop (∆Pext). The occurrences of subcritical and supercritical Hopf bifurcations across the stability boundaries are shown for various sets of design parameters. In subsequent studies, a Nodalized Reduced Order Model (NROM) is developed, where discretization is done by equally dividing the enthalpy interval provided by inlet subcooling in the single phase region. Adopting the moving boundary scheme, coupled nonlinear ODEs are obtained for consecutive intervals. The unique feature of the developed NROM is that, it behaves as an auto-adaptive scheme where the mesh sizes vary according to the enthalpy variation in the flow system. This reduces the computational effort drastically for non-uniform axial enthalpy variation. In addition to this, the NROM is developed with internalization of different two-phase friction factor multipliers which helps to predict the pressure drop more accurately compared to existing ROMs. Using the NROM, the DWOs are analyzed for non-uniform axial heat flux shapes; considering single humped and double humped heat flux profiles. It is seen that, the bifurcation characteristics of the above said system changes significantly as the heat flux is changed from uniform to non-uniform even though the total heat flux remains same. In addition to these, the ROMs developed in the previous section are coupled with point reactor kinetics to investigate the instability phenomena of a BWR and AHWR.

About the speaker:

Dr. Subhanker Paul is an Institute Post Doctoral Fellow (IPDF) in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at IIT Kanpur. He has joined in Feb 2016. He completed his graduation in physics (hons) from Ranchi University in 2010. After this he did his masters (M.Sc) on Energy science from IIT Bombay in 2012. He earned Ph.D from IIT Bombay in 2015. His research interests include stability of dynamical systems, and two-phase flow instability with an application to different nuclear reactor systems. During his Ph.D he worked with Prof. Suneet Singh on development of Reduced Order Models which can be used as a tool carry stability analyses of Density-Wave-Oscillations in a two-phase flow system. Presently he is working on nuclear coupled thermal hydraulic instability analyses of Boiling Water Reactors and Advanced Heavy Water Reactors.

Abstract:

Geothermal power is a form of renewable energy that makes use of near-constant temperature of the earth and groundwater. Open-loop geothermal cooling or heating involves using the groundwater as a heat sink or source. Groundwater is extracted from bore wells and heat is exchanged with it using a heat exchanger. The hotter or cooler water (depending on cooling or heating mode) is sent back to the ground where it mixes with the groundwater table and dissipates heat to the Earth. Geothermal cooling for a commercial air-conditioning is investigated in detail. Groundwater temperature is seen to be 7-8 degrees below ambient during peak summer months. Compared with an IKW/TR of 1.5 for air-cooled chillers and 0.8 for water-cooled chillers equipped with cooling towers, geothermal cooling provides an IKW/TR of 0.55. This results in energy savings of approximately 40% and 10% over air-cooled and water-cooled chillers, respectively in addition to a 100% saving on water and chemicals. Drawbacks and future prospects of open-loop geothermal cooling are discussed.

About the speaker:

Dr. Abhijit Sathe is a Mechanical Engineering professional. Abhijit received his Bachelor degree in Mechanical Engineering from Shivaji University in 1999, M.Tech from IIT Madras in 2001 and PhD from Purdue University in 2008. He worked as a Vice President – Technology and Engineering at GIBSS in Mumbai from December 2015 to May 2016, as a Senior R&D Engineer at Parker Hannifin from June 2008 to November 2015 and as a Steam Turbine design Engineer at BHEL Hyderabad from September 2001 to August 2004. Abhijit’s core competencies are thermodynamics, heat transfer, refrigeration and air conditioning, renewable energy and liquid cooling. He has written several journal papers and conference proceedings and also has a few United States patents to his name.

Abstract:

Composite materials, find extensive use in many engineering applications such as structural components of spacecrafts and satellites because of their superior mechanical properties. Knowledge of their thermal properties like effective directional thermal conductivity is important from the viewpoint of design of components involving such materials. This study primarily aims at the development of an experimental methodology to simultaneously estimate the principal thermal conductivities and thermal contact conductance of anisotropic composite medium using an inverse technique. Principal thermal conductivities of anisotropic media are treated as unknown parameters and are estimated by solving an inverse heat conduction problem. The methodology involves three major parts namely the forward problem, measurements, and the inverse solution. The forward problem involves the heat conduction equation in a three dimensional domain subjected to boundary conditions as realized in experiments. A synergistic combination of Artificial Neural Networks and Genetic Algorithms is used to solve the inverse problem along with experimental data. Simultaneous estimation of all the three principal thermal conductivities and thermal contact conductance is thus enabled from a single experiment.

About the speaker:

Dr. Samarjeet Chanda is a Post Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, IIT Kanpur, since March 2016. He received his B.E in Mechanical Engineering from R.V. College of Engineering (Visvesvaraya Technological University), Bangalore and after working for a brief period of one year as a design engineer for coal based thermal power plant with GMR Energy Limited, he joined IIT Madras for his higher studies. He completed his MS/PhD from IIT Madras in December 2015. His doctoral dissertation focused on simultaneous estimation of principal thermal conductivities of layered honeycomb composites using inverse methodology. His doctoral work was based on a collaboration between IIT Madras and ISRO Bangalore. His research interests include transport property estimation using inverse techniques, design of appropriate instrumentation for carrying out measurements in vacuum environment and inverse problem solutions using evolutionary techniques like Genetic Algorithms. He is presently estimating thermal and mass diffusivities of a solute-solvent system from interferometric data.

Abstract:

Improvement in heat and mass transfer characteristics and controlling pressure losses is important to develop high performance systems for wide variety of thermal-fluid applications viz. Turbomachinery, Turbine blade cooling, Microchannel heat-Sinks, Micromixers, among others. Optimization techniques are now recognized as a promising tool in the design of modern heat and mass transfer equipment and processes. Design optimization based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis has become a reliable tool for heat and mass transfer applications due to the rapid increase in computing power. Accurate, high-fidelity CFD simulations are used to design efficient systems that meet desired performance requirements. Unfortunately, high fidelity simulations are often computationally expensive and impractical for the entire design process. To alleviate this problem, surrogate models have been used to reduce the computational burden with a reliable representation of the simulation data. Surrogate based optimization has been used by many researchers to develop efficient designs for a wide range of applications, especially in the thermo-fluid field, where the analysis using Navier-Stokes equations is quite time-consuming. The development of an efficient thermal-fluid system relies on the underlying physics of the flow, and the potential to fully exploit it. However, lack of understanding may result in inefficient and sub-optimal designs. Thus, a series of steps viz. development of novel designs, parameterization with design and manufacturing constraints and optimization is required for a successful design. To build a surrogate model, a high number of runs from the simulation model may be required to ensure an acceptable accuracy. However, design of experiments (DOEs) procedures can be used to economically construct a surrogate with fewer runs of the original simulation model. A number of DOEs method have been used by researchers to select the design sites for the simulation model, namely full factorial, fractional factorial, central composite design (CCD), Latin hypercube sampling (LHS) etc. Upon a careful review of the literature, it was found that the tentative surrogate always depends on the number and distribution of sample points. Therefore, it is important to study the effect of number and distribution of sample points in the design space with the available surrogate models. With recent developments in surrogate-based optimization and their application to engineering problems, evaluation of comparative performances of surrogate models in light of available DOE procedures is desired. The research aims to resolve two distinctive issues under consideration. Firstly, the research will lead to substantial advancement and development of thermal-fluid systems which are efficient and effective. A combination of numerical and experimental approaches will be used to determine the optimal design. Secondly, it will provide useful insights on the effective use of surrogate-based optimization techniques. The outcomes of research will provide a clear perspective to practitioners and designers on the application of surrogate modeling based optimization properly with respect to DOE procedures (sample size and distribution, adaptive sampling) as well as choice of appropriate surrogate model.

About the speaker:

Dr. Arshad Afzal is Brain Korea 21 (BK 21) Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Yonsei University, South Korea. He has completed his PhD Degree (Thermal and Fluids Engineering) from Inha University, South Korea in 2015. He received his M. Tech (Thermal Engineering) and B. Tech (Mechanical Engineering) degrees from Aligarh Muslim University in 2009 and 2006, respectively. His research interests are Microfluidics, Computational Fluid Dynamics, Gas Turbine cooling and Thermal/ Fluids Design Optimization. He has published research papers on these topics in reputed International Journals and conferences (For details, please refer to https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Arshad_Afzal). Currently, he is working on the design of internal cooling systems for gas turbine applications using numerical simulations and Naphthalene Sublimation Technique for experiments. Recently, he has received the INSPIRE Faculty award from Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India.

Abstract:

Aim of the presentation is to give an overview on the basics of the nuclear technology, nuclear reactors and development of nuclear technology in Indian context. The topic covers an introduction to the nuclear technology since its inception and various milestones achieved thereafter over decades. The viability of nuclear power has been underlined with statistics referred from various national and international facilities. Front end and backend of nuclear power generation process has also been covered in brief. Various types of nuclear reactor technologies have been brought out with suitable examples. Indian nuclear facilities have also been covered in the subject. Indo-US nuclear deal was an important landmark towards fulfillment of India’s quest for power in 21th century. Background and its implications have also been covered in the presentation. The topic concludes with briefs on use of nuclear technology in development of nuclear weapons.

About the speaker:

Dr. Tushar P. Ghate holds PhD in Nuclear Energy with his thesis entitled Nuclear Energy: Changing Dynamics and Feasibility Analysis of Siting at Nuclear Power Plant at xyz Location in India. This study was aimed at analyzing the current technologies, laws, provisions and guidelines necessary for setting up nuclear power plant in India and to bring out framework for the setting up of nuclear power plants in future, considering all current and proposed legal and technological developments/amendments in Indian context. Having worked in the Government/defence sector for last 20 years, he has undertaken multifarious independent academic and executive assignments. He has headed trial and evaluation department in Military Engineering College and conducted trials and evaluations of various radiation detection equipment introduced in India. He was also involved in carrying out analysis of Indo-US civil nuclear deal and its futuristic implications on power generation perspective in India vis-a-vis opportunities in Indian contexts. He has written papers on various aspects of nuclear energy, terrorism, forensic and security in national and international journals.

Abstract:

The designing, developing and testing of skin panels that can withstand severe unsteady pressure loads is a serious challenge faced by the aerospace industry. One of the problems faced by the panels is acoustic fatigue which can cause structural damages and can reduce the service life of aircrafts significantly. The dynamic and multiphysics nature of the problem makes its analysis, prediction and testing even more difficult. Results for the coupled response of a duct-mounted, elastic plate to acoustic loading using a modal expansion of the relevant eigenmodes exist in the literature. As an effort to reduce the amplitude of the plate's response, the effect of constraining an interior point on the plate is explored in this study. This modification can alter the amplitude and spectral characteristics of the plate's response. Interestingly, some new peaks are observed in the response because of the excitation of unsymmetric modes which are otherwise dormant.Furthermore, the frequency response by varying the point constraint location is also analyzed. Mode-localization phenomenon, which is the localization of vibration in specific regions of the plate, is observed for selected constrained points.

About the speaker:

Dr. Mahesh Sucheendran is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Defence Institute of Advanced technology, Pune since 2013. He received his B.Tech and M.Tech degrees in Aerospace Engineering from IIT Madras in 2004. From 2004 till 2007, he worked as scientist/engineer in the Aerodynamics R & D division of Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, ISRO.He received his Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2013.His research interests include Aeroelasticity, Computational Mechanics, Warhead Mechanics and Aeroacoustics. He has worked on the structural-acoustic coupled response of aircraft panels, aeroelastic analysis of composite and delta wings. He is also interested in the numerical algorithms for Multiphysics simulations. In collaboration with Armament R&D Establishment, Pune, he is investigating explosive-metal interaction for design of shape charge warheads against concrete targets. He has seven publications on these topics in international journals.

Abstract:

Precision and micro machining are widely used in the manufacturing processes for optics, biomedicine, aerospace and electronics areas. Process efficiency and components quality highly depend on the fundamental mechanisms of material deformation and surface generation in the precision machining processes. This seminar presents the current research progress in Dr. Jin’s group, including the following topics: 1. Mechanics and dynamics in micro machining of metallic materials with tool edge geometry. A generalized analytical model based on material plasticity is proposed to predict the stress distribution and cutting force with round tool edge effect. Chatter stability of micro machining with process damping due to tool edge-surface contact is predicted and validated. 2. Machinability in micro machining of typical amorphous materials including bulk metallic glass and BK-7 glass. The mechanism in machining amorphous materials is different from that on metallic materials due to their unique microstructure and mechanical properties. Experimental investigations on the effect of process parameters on the crystallization of zirconium based bulk metallic glass in micro milling are conducted. A 2-D vibration stage is developed to apply vibration assisted milling in machining brittle glass in ductile mode. 3. Prediction of coupled torsional-axial vibration of drilling tool. Vibration assisted drilling has been applied in composites, high-strength alloys and bone materials for various applications. The coupled axial-torsional vibration of drilling tool plays a significant role in the drilling performance. An efficient analytical dynamic model is developed to predict the drill dynamics considering the clamping boundary conditions.

About the speaker:

Dr. Xiaoliang Jin is an Assistant Professor in the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Oklahoma State University, USA. He received Bachelor and Master degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Beihang University in China, and obtained PhD degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of British Columbia, Canada, in 2012. His research interests include precision manufacturing, mechanics and dynamics of precision machining processes, vibration assisted machining of brittle materials, surface texturing and controller design for precision machine tools. He has published papers in the ASME Journal of Manufacturing Science and Engineering, CIRP Annals – Manufacturing Technology, Journal of Materials Processing Technology etc. He has been leading several national and state research projects in US. He is an awardee of the Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program from the National Science Foundation, and an awardee of 2016 Outstanding Early Career Researcher from Oklahoma State University.

Abstract:

This research explores the dynamical behavior of granular materials via experiments in a vertically vibrated granular bed. Experiments are designed with the primary objective to understand the pattern formation dynamics that manifests in a vertically-vibrated container filled with mono-disperse spherical particles as well as binary mixtures of equal sized spherical particles of different materials. We report, for the first time, (i) a variety of “phase-coexisting” patterns having different spatial and temporal order, a novel “Ratcheting/ Oscillatory” cluster, and the related phase diagrams in vibrated binary mixtures, (ii) a novel unsteady dynamics of the so-called “density-inverted” Leidenfrost state and (iii) the micro- structural signatures of the transition from the “bouncing-bed” to the Leidenfrost state. The phase coexisting patterns are segregation-driven and exhibit in mixtures with large density- contrasts wherein a gas-like phase can coexist with a liquid-like phase separated along the horizontal direction – this type of ‘horizontal’ segregation, induced along the length of the container in the horizontal direction, was never reported in the literature on vertically vibrated granular mixtures. We also discovered a simple recipe to control convection patterns by adding a small amount of heavier (or lighter) particles in an otherwise monodisperse system. With this technique, one can control the number of convection rolls emerging in the system and can transit from a convection- state to a “partial” convection state (i.e. the convection rolls coexisting with a Leidenfrost State along the horizontal direction) and subsequently to a “complete” Leidenfrost State and vice versa.

About the speaker:

Dr. Jaya Mukherjee is a senior Scientist and Head of Isotopic Clean up Process Physics & Engineering Section in Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai. She has worked in design, development and implementation of sub-systems for laser based purification processes for technology demonstration. Currently, she is leading a team for demonstration of laser based purification process, involving multidisciplinary expertise. Her specializations include Characterization of Free Jet expansion of atomic metal vapour, Simulation of Free jet using indigenously developed direct simulation code in parallel form, working on complete solution for control and operation of the process, Design and development of vapour generator system, Study of condensation and flow of liquid metal in hot environment, Design of liquid metal corrosion resistant coating, development of non-interfering on-line measurement systems for process parameters, etc. She has received DAE Scientific & Technical Excellence Award and Group Award for her contributions to the department.

Abstract:

Some of the most critical challenges of modern civilization are related to energy conversion, consumption and dissipation. Nanomaterials based composites and devices can play an important role in finding the innovative solutions to these challenges. In the present talk, I will talk about the charge and heat transport in the emerging composites and devices based on the nanomaterials such as carbon nanotubes (CNTs), Silver nanowires (AgNWs) and Graphene. In particular, I will discuss two applications: thin-film transistors (TFTs) and transparent conducting electrodes (TCEs) which will enable flexible, transparent and energy-efficient integrated circuits, solar cells, e-displays, implantable medical devices and chemical, bio- and optical sensors.
CNTs are known for their exceptional electrical, thermal, mechanical, optical, and chemical properties; and CNT network based TFTs are
considered to be very promising candidate for the building blocks of future flexible macro-electronics. CNTs in CNT-TFTs are deposited on low
thermal conductivity substrates, which can impede the heat dissipation from Joule heating resulting in high temperature. Excessive self-heating in the device can degrade their electrical and thermal performance and could potentially lead to failure of the devices. In order to understand and mitigate self-heating issues in CNT-TFTs, we develop and employ a computational framework based on the physics of electron transport, thermal transport and heterogeneous percolation theory. The model is used to study how device parameters such as the channel geometry (length and width), network morphology (network density, CNT length and alignment distribution, CNT junction topology), and interfacial thermal resistances affect the heat dissipation and the high-field breakdown of CNT- TFTs. The findings provide useful design guidelines to enhance the performance of CNT-TFTs for macro and flexible electronics applications.
Transparent conducting materials (TCMs) are useful for many applications such as solar cells, touch screens, and flexible electronics. Traditional TCMs such as Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) pose limitations due to limited availability, high cost and poor reliability. Nanowire/nanotube doped polycrystalline graphene composites are being explored as an alternative of ITO as they can overcome these challenges. We utilize percolation transport theory to study the electrical and thermal transport behavior in these composites. This will allow optimal design of the composite structure for improved electrical and optical properties.

About the speaker:

Man Prakash Gupta currently works a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA. He completed his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering in 2014 at the same place. Man Prakash obtained his B.Tech. - M.Tech. dual degree in Mechanical Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur in 2009. His current research work is focused on the electrical, thermal and electromagnetic energy transport and dissipation in emerging electronic materials/devices with the goal of understanding their properties and improving their behavior under external stimuli. Man Prakash is a recipient of multiple awards including the Best Ph.D. Thesis Award at Georgia Tech, the Best Paper Award from IEEE, and the Best Poster Awards from ASME

Abstract:

This study presents a melt electrospinning technique to fabricate highly porous and controllable poly (ε-caprolactone) (PCL) microfibers for
tissue engineering applications and rehabilitation applications. Electrospinning without solvents via melt methods may be an attractive approach to tissue engineering of cell constructs where solvent accumulation or toxicity is an issue. This method is also able to produce microfibers with controllable parameters. However, the fiber diameters resulting from melt electrospinning processes are relatively large when
compared to the fibers from solution electrospinning. The typical microfiber diameter from melt electrospinning was reported to be approximately 0.1mm. In order to further develop the melt electrospinning technique, we focused on the design of a melt electrospinning setup based on numerical analysis using the Solidworks 2013 simulation package and practically established a melt electrospinning setup and thermal control system for accurate experiments. One of main purposes of this study is the build-up of mathematical modeling to control and predict the electrospun microfiber via a more intricate understanding of their parameters such as the nozzle diameter, applied voltage, distance between the nozzle and counter electrode, temperature, flow rate, linear transitional speed, among others. The model is composed of three parts: 1)melt electrospinning process modeling, 2) fibrous helix movement modeling, and 3) build-up of microfibers modeling. The melt electrospinning process model describes an electric field, the shape of jet’s continuously changing shape, and how the polymer melt is stretched into a Taylor cone and a straight jet. The fibrous helix movement model describes movement of electrospun microfibers influenced by Lorentz force, which moves along the helix pattern. Lastly, the build-up microfiber modeling describes the accumulation of the extruded microfibers on both flat and round counter electrodes based on the physical forces involved. These models are
verified by experimental data from our own customized melt electrospinning setup. Moreover, the fabricated scaffolds are tested by seeding neural progenitors derived from murine R1 embryonic stem cell lines and it demonstrates the potential of scaffolds for tissue engineering applications. To increase cell attachment and proliferation, highly porous microfibers are fabricated by combination of melt electrospinning and particulate leaching technique. Finally, auxetic stretchable PCL force sensors are fabricated by melt electrospinning for hand rehabilitation. These stretchable sensors can be used to measure applied external loads or displacement and are also attachable to various substrates. We have attempted to apply the sensors to real human hand in order to prove their functionality.

About the speaker:

Dr. Junghyuk Ko received the Bachelor degree in biomedical engineering from the Konkuk University, Korea, in 2006, the Master of Applied Science and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in mechanical engineering from University of Victoria, in 2010 and in 2014 respectively. Presently, he is a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Victoria in the department of Mechanical Engineering. His interests include fabrication of biomedical scaffolds, electrospinning hybrid 3D printing.

Abstract:

In this talk, I will speak about my expertise on “Acoustics and Vibration” with the main focus on the projects I have carried out in my short research career. I worked on various projects in different capacities, but the standout works are “Dynamic instability regions of sandwich beam”, “Construction of structural actuators for active control of sound” and “Active control of sound transmission though sandwich structures”. Brief summary about these research topics are illustrated one by one as follows.
Use of sandwich beams with visco-elastic core has enormous applications in reducing the transmission of vibratory energy in mechanical systems. When structures are subjected to dynamic loading, for some values of excitation amplitude and frequencies, they may behave as parametrically excited systems. So, parametric instability regions need to be investigated to operate the system safely. Two types of three-layered symmetric sandwich beam subjected to a periodic axial load are studied. In the first, the middle layer is made of soft-core and in the other, the middle layer is consist of both soft-core and Magnetorheological Elastomer (MRE). The advantages of using MRE to actively control the vibration of the sandwich beam have also been studied in detail.
Like the vibration modes are orthogonal to the vibration field, radiation modes are orthogonal to the radiated sound field. Therefore, attenuating the amplitude of a radiation mode can give guarantee of reduction of sound radiation. This procedure is called as Active Structural Acoustic Control (ASAC). At low frequencies, radiation efficiency of the first radiation mode (volume velocity mode) is highest of all. Thus, specific actuators need to be designed to control this mode. For this application, two types of structural actuators, Elastic Mass Actuator and Magnetic Mass Actuator, are modeled, simulated and tested in the semi-anechoic and reverberation rooms with the main focus of reducing vibration of firewall in order to attenuate low frequency sound inside a car cabin and also in buildings close to noisy environment.
The greatest difficulty ASAC suffers is in finding an “optimal” error quantity, which can be easily implemented as the minimization quantity in
a control algorithm. Volume velocity control metric, which is generally used in ASAC, typically requires either a large number of sensors distributed across the entire structure, or a single distributed shaped sensor to accurately measure the volume velocity. A new parameter termed “weighted sum of spatial gradients (WSSG)” showed a great potential to significantly reduce noise transmission by using four sensors only. A comprehensive study on volume velocity and WSSG has been carried out, and the control strategies are implemented on soft-core sandwich panels and double panel partitions. Numerical calculations indicate that, by intelligent selection of modal indices for the calculation of WSSG and the frequency band for active control, WSSG is able to achieve comparable amount of sound attenuation with volume velocity.
I will conclude the presentation with my future plan of research and the subjects I would like to teach.

About the speaker:

Kiran Chandra Sahu is pursuing Postdoctoral studies at Aalto University (Finland) where he will defend his PhD thesis on 22nd April 2016. His PhD is also from the same place. He finished his undergraduate studies in Mechanical Engineering at University College of Engineering Burla, and Masters in Mechanical Engineering at IIT Guwahati. His research areas include Acoustics and Vibration. He has authored and co-authored 7 international journal publications and 8 conference papers and presentations.

Abstract:

Uncertainties are unavoidable in the description of any real-life systems. There are several sources and forms of uncertainties, both in the mathematical models and in the experimental results. In general, an additional factor of safety is assumed by the designers due to difficulty
in quantifying those uncertainties. The existing common practice results in either an ultraconservative or an unsafe design. Uncertainties from a single source can propagate and influence to another parameters. Subsequently the reliability of the system cannot be ensured due to such cascading effects of the accumulated errors, unless the inherent uncertainties of the system are quantified. Otherwise, such variabilities can result in significant deviations from the expected output of the system. Hence uncertainty quantification (UQ) has practical importance to avoid any failure and simultaneously to insure the reliability of the system. The present discussion topic portrays the myth and reality of UQ in the light of laminated composite structures which has gained immense popularity in aerospace, marine, civil construction and automotive industries due to large specific strength and high specific stiffness properties. Due to the inherent anisotropy and complexity, composite structures are difficult to manufacture accurately according to its exact design specifications, resulting in undesirable uncertainties. The uncertainties in composites can be promulgated due to the variabilities inadvertently arising in their geometry, materials, environment and operations. Thus output responses of such system show the fluctuation from its deterministic value. Thus the structural reliability is subjected to considerable element of risk which can be arrested by UQ through efficient computational modeling of the system. The stochastic dynamic behaviours such as, stochastic natural frequencies, stochastic frequency response function, stochastic mode shapes are presented. The sampling size and computational cost is reduced by employing the present method compared to direct Monte Carlo simulation (MCS). The convergence studies and error analysis are carried out to ensure the accuracy of model. The flow charts are presented for different UQ models. A comparative study along with tests for validation and verification are conducted to justify the merit of different models for laminated composite plates and shells. Statistical analysis is presented to illustrate the results and their performances.

About the speaker:

Dr. Sudip Dey is at present working as Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering Department of National Institute of Technology Silchar, India from November, 2015. Previously, he was a Post-doctoral Researcher at Leibniz-Institut für Polymerforschung Dresden e. V., Germany, worked with Prof. Gert Heinrich (TU Dresden, Germany). Prior to that, he was a Post-doctoral Researcher at College of Engineering, Swansea University, United Kingdom, worked with Prof. Sondipon Adhikari. He obtained Bachelor in Mechanical Engineering Degree from Jadavpur University, India. He received Ph.D. (Engg.) degree from Jadavpur University, India. His field of specializations include Applied Mechanics and Design. He has more than ten years experience in research, teaching, industrial and professional activities. His research interests include uncertainty quantification, numerical investigation of fibre-matrix interaction, mechanics of composites, multi-scale and finite element analyses with an emphasis on computational modelling. He has several research publications in reputed international journals and conferences. (For more detail, please refer to https://sites.google.com/site/drsudipdey/)

Abstract:

Nature has its own complex way of lubricating sliding surfaces with the help of glycoproteins. In recent times mankind has tried to imitate natural lubrication using polymer brushes. Polymer molecules are attached by one end to a surface using different approaches (‘grafting to’ or ‘grafting from’); if the surface grafting density is so high that the polymer chains start to overlap, they stretch away from the surface
forming a polymer brush. The equilibrium brush height is larger than the size of the unperturbed chains in bulk solution. Polymer-brush-coated surfaces find applications in many fields including colloidal stabilization, adhesion, bio-compatibilization and tribology. The aim of
this work is to understand the underlying molecular mechanisms of frictional behavior of polymer brushes and gels in a good solvent by
employing complementary experimental and simulation studies.
The colloidal-probe-based lateral force microscopy (LFM) technique was employed for experimental investigations, and used to study the frictional behavior of PGMA (poly glycidyl methacrylate) brushes and gels in a dimethylformamide (DMF) solvent. Polymer brushes and gels were grafted on a silicon surface using SI-ATRP (surface initiated atom transfer radical polymerization) by another PhD student in the project. The ex-situ/post-modification method was used to fabricate PGMA gels of different degrees of crosslinking with two different lengths of
crosslinkers to facilitate the study of the effect of crosslinking on the frictional behavior of polymer brushes. The AFM-based nanoindentation
technique was employed to study the mechanical properties of PGMA brushes and gels in DMF.
Polymer brushes were modeled using a multibead-spring model and studied via molecular-dynamics (MD) simulations to understand their tribological behavior. The simulations were performed for two kinds of systems (i) brush-against-brush and (ii) brush-against-wall. Both implicit and explicit solvent-based approaches were employed in this work. Polymer chains were modeled as linear semi-flexible chains, randomly grafted on a planar surface with the help of tethered beads. In the first step, the polymer-brush-bearing surfaces (grafting surface and wall) were brought near to each other and allowed to equilibrate. In the next step, tethered beads were displaced at constant shear speed, keeping the separation between the brush bearing surfaces (brush and wall) constant. Simulations were performed over a range of shear speeds and separation between grafting surfaces (grafting surface and wall). Normal and shear stresses were calculated using the Irving-Kirkwood expression for the stress tensor. The coefficient of friction was defined as the ratio of shear and normal forces. Speed-dependent studies were carried out using an implicit-solvent approach for a fixed separation, whereas the separation-dependent studies were carried out at a fixed speed using an explicit-solvent approach. Simulations were performed on polymer brushes as well as gels for a combination of lengths of crosslinker chains and degree of crosslinking to facilitate the study of the effect of the crosslinking on the behavior of polymer brushes subjected to shear. Quantities extracted from the simulations were the normal and shear stresses, radius of gyration, density and velocity profiles and interdigitation for different combinations of shear speeds and separations between brush-bearing surfaces (brush and wall). At each stage, simulation results were compared with our experimental data to rationalize the behavior of end-grafted polymer chains under shear.
The combined experimental and simulation study offers a number of insights that will help to establish a framework for design rules for polymer-brush-based lubrication aiming at specific tribological properties.

About the speaker:

Dr. Manjesh Kumar Singh has recently completed PhD at Department of Materials of ETH Zurich in the field of Surface Science and Technology. His PhD thesis titled “Simulation and Experimental Studies of Polymer Brushes under Shear” involved complementary experimental and simulation studies to facilitate understanding of tribological behavior of polymer brushes and gels at molecular scale.
He studied Bachelor in Engineering in Mechanical Engineering from Indian Institute of Engineering, Science and Technology, Shibpur, India
(formerly BESU). Later, he studied at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, Master of Engineering in Materials Engineering. His master's
thesis was supervised by Prof. Vikram Jayaram and Prof. (Late) Sanjay K. Biswas.

Dr. Singh's research interests include computational mechanics and materials science, tribology and soft matter.

Abstract:

Electrokinetics in porous media plays a pivotal role in a wide gamut of applications ranging from ion batteries, waste-water treatment, soil
dewaterification, water deionization etc. to transport in ultra-low cost diagnostic devices like paper-and-pencil based devices and paper based
fuel cells. The key to understanding the transport phenomena in suchdevices involves an appropriate resolution and subsequent interlinking of the coupled physics which spans over multiple length-scales. In the present talk, the pressure-driven electrokinetic transport of electrolytes
in porous media will be quantified through a matched asymptotic expansion based method, to obtain a homogenized description of the upscaled transport. The effective upscaled transport equations and coefficients will be obtained for both topographically simple and complex domains without and with the consideration of streaming potential. Subsequently, the influence of the microstructure topology, solid fraction, surface zeta potential and induced streaming potential on the modification of the Darcy's law will be discussed in connection to transport processes through porous plugs, clays and soils by considering a case-study on sandstone Berea.

About the speaker:

Dr. Debabrata Dasgupta completed his Ph.D. from IIT Kharagpur. He obtained his M.S. from IIT Kharagpur and his B.E. from Jadavpur University, Kolkata. Presently Dr. Dasgupta is working as a Research Associate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at IIT Kharagpur. He has research interests in the area of Microfluidics and Micro/nano scale transport processes, and transport in multiphase and multiscale systems. He has several research publications including those in Applied Physics Letters, Soft Matter, Physical Review E, Physics of Fluids and Journal of Computational Physics.

Abstract:

Two-phase flow inside and near nozzle regions of the automotive fuel injectors is an important area of research. Extreme low pressure regions develop in the high pressure direct injection fuel flow inside the fuel injector holes, compelling the liquid fuel to transform to vapor phase in the form of cavities or bubbles, a phenomenon known as cavitation. The cavitation phenomenon determines the quality of primary atomization and hence affects the performance of direct injection diesel or gasoline engines. A cavitation model, coupled with the mixture multiphase approach and RNG k-e turbulence, has been developed and implemented in the ANSYS Fluent platform for analyzing cavitation in diesel injectors. The model predictions were in decent agreement with the experimental findings. Comparison of the model predictions with those of other existing models such as, Schnerr & Sauer, and Zwart-Gerber-Belamri indicated that the developed model provides reasonable numerical predictions and does not have some of the fundamental drawbacks imbibed in the equations of the other existing cavitation models. The developed model has also been extended to execute a comparative analysis of diesel and biodiesel cavitation. At lower pressure differentials biodiesel cavitation prediction was lower than that of diesel, but at high pressure differentials both diesel and biodiesel cavitation patterns were comparable. For cavitation inception scenarios i.e. at low pressure differentials molecular viscosity appeared to be a dominant factor for the diesel versus biodiesel cavitation study. The developed model has also been extended to a three-dimensional fuel injector with a moving needle and the predictions were in accordance with the published results.
Gasoline direct injection (GDI) is a growing trend in the automotive sector for the past decade. High injection pressure, better fuel economy have provided the impetus to the developments of GDI systems. At low or part load conditions the in-cylinder pressures are often sub-atmospheric and thus, the heated (around 360 K) injected gasoline fuel is subjected to superheated conditions. In such scenarios bulk liquid fuel undergoes rapid transformation to bulk vapor and the phenomenon is known as flash boiling. Experimental studies have indicated that extent of flashing strongly depends on the degree of superheat. Previous studies indicated that flash boiling strongly affects the spray characteristics and combustion phenomena in GDI engines. A mixture multiphase model coupled with Homogeneous Relaxation Model (HRM) has been developed and implemented in the CONVERGE code for analyzing flash boiling problems. Reasonable agreements have been obtained with experimental findings and published numerical results. Best practices for running a flash boiling simulation using a Cartesian cut-cell method has been outlined. It has been found the model setup is capable of capturing the two-phase flow characteristics under different thermodynamic conditions, substantiated by prior thermodynamic calculations. The model has also been used to understand the needle lift effects on flashing patterns in GDI systems.

About the speaker:

Kaushik Saha is currently pursuing his postdoctoral research at Argonne National Laboratory, under supervision of Dr. Sibendu Som. At Argonne National Laboratory he is working on flash boiling phenomenon of Gasoline Direct Injection systems and internal combustion engine simulations for NOx reduction using air-separation membranes. Dr. Saha finished his undergraduate studies in Mechanical Engineering at Jadavpur University. He pursued his Masters in Mechanical Engineering at University of Connecticut, USA. During Masters he carried out numerical studies in the field of material processing in thermal plasmas. After his Masters, he completed his doctoral studies at University of Waterloo, Canada. At University of Waterloo Dr. Saha worked on topics such as, Urea-SCR for NOx reduction, blended diesel-biodiesel droplet evaporation and cavitation in diesel injectors. His PhD thesis focused on two-phase flow inside diesel injectors. He has authored and co-authored 7 journal publications and 12 conference papers and presentations. Dr. Saha was also a recipient of Outstanding Teaching Assistant award at University of Waterloo during his PhD.

Abstract:

In this talk, we discuss a method by which Magnetic Fields which are prevalent in the Sun’s Atmosphere, namely, the Corona, can be calculated with the Kink Oscillations, which is basically an MHD (Magneto Hydro Dynamic) wave. Kink Oscillations are found in structured media, in particular in cylindrical geometries, which are modeled in the Coronal Loops. The MHD equations are linearized and the solution of the resulting wave equation, is written in terms of Bessel Functions. The boundary conditions (continuity of velocity and total pressure) at the interface of the cylinder are applied. The resulting dispersion relation is a complicated transcendental function. Analytic solutions of this relation are hard to find. However, in the limit of large wave numbers, ka → ꝏ, the dispersion relation can be simplified and an analytic solution of this relation can be found. Using the phase velocity of the Kink Oscillations, and a few parameters such as the loop length, the density ratio and the frequency (or period), one can determine the magnetic field. The dispersion relation with the effect of uniform flows has also been derived.

About the speaker:

Dr. A. Satya Narayanan is presently an Associate Professor at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore, India. He obtained his undergraduate and graduate degrees in Mathematics from the University of Madras in the years 1976 and 1978, respectively. In the same year, he joined the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore for pursuing his Doctoral degree at the Department of Applied Mathematics and successfully defended his thesis on "Studies on Internal Atmospheric Gravity Waves and their Stability Characteristics". He was awarded the Ph.D. Degree in Dec. 1982.
In January, 1983, he joined the Center for Atmospheric Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, as a Research Associate and worked on problems related to jets, solitary waves, Rossby waves. He returned to the Department of Applied Mathematics in Dec. 1984 as one of the Research Scientists , chosen by the University Grants Commission, New Delhi, India. After completing the tenure of five years, he briefly joined the Mathematics Department as a Research Associate.
He joined the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, initially as a Visiting Fellow in 1990, was regularized and rose to the present position. He has publications in peer reviewed national and international journals. He is one of the Editors of the Proceedings of the International Conference on Spectroscopy, held at Kodaikanal, published by Springer in 2010. He is also the author of a textbook, 'An Introduction to Waves and Oscillations in the Sun’, which has been published by Springer in 2013. He has also written a book in collaboration with Prof. S.K. Saha of IIA,
titled "Waves and Oscillations in Nature – An Introduction", published by CRC Press (Taylor and Francis) in 2015.

Abstract:

The first step on the way to understanding the complicated dynamics of spray is to study the behavior of isolated droplets. In many industrial
and natural processes such as turbulent combustion, agricultural sprays, spray cooler, falling raindrops and cloud evolution the droplet is subjected to a chaotic unsteady external flow field. The interaction between the liquid and gaseous phases results in very intricate droplet dynamics like capillary instabilities, atomization, droplet collision and coalescence and vaporization, to name a few. In this talk, the focus is on shape oscillations dynamics of droplets subjected to an external convective flow field. Such a droplet will exhibit different modes of shape oscillation; the competition between capillary forces and the aerodynamic forces is primarily responsible for these oscillations. By decomposing the droplet shape into Legendre modes, the shape oscillations exhibited by a droplet hanging from the junction of cross-wire placed at the center of an air jet is studied. Both high-speed imaging and hot-wire anemometry are employed to prove that the driving force of oscillation of droplets subjected to the air jet is in fact the inherent pressure fluctuations in the jet and the vortex shedding has minimal role to play in the range of Reynolds number investigated. The effect of surface tension, viscosity and Reynolds number on the shape oscillation level has been examined. The first experimental evidence of viscous attenuation of lower frequencies in a particular mode in glycerol/water mixture is reported. A theoretical model was developed to simulate the droplet shape oscillations induced by an external flow with broadband energy spectrum, as measured in the experiment. This model, albeit a linear one, further corroborates the conclusions drawn from the experiment. The effect of additional possible features in the ambient flow fields like pulsatile and vortical disturbances were also investigated using the model. The time of interaction of the droplet with an eddy in the flow is found to be very crucial in determining the amplitude of oscillation of the droplet. The shorter the interaction time, the higher are the chances of the droplet oscillation being pushed into resonance.
About the speaker:

Dr. Deepu P is currently working as a postdoctoral fellow at TIFR Hyderabad. Prior to joining TIFR, he completed two postdoctoral fellowships at department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of Florida and Interdisciplinary Centre for Energy Research, Indian Institute of Science. He holds a Ph. D. in Mechanical Engineering from Indian Institute of Science, where he was awarded Professor B.K. Subba Rao Medal for best PhD thesis in 2014. He received his B.Tech degree from Mahatma Gandhi University, following which he had a four-year stint at ISRO as a scientist/engineer. His research interests include cloud physics, biophysical aerodynamics, droplet dynamics, hydrodynamic instability, transport processes in porous media, absorption enhancement and multiphase flow.

Abstract:

Stratified fluid is a fluid with density variation in the vertical direction of gravity. There are many instances in nature and technology in which flows are strongly affected by stable density stratification. For instance, propagating internal gravity waves owe their existence to the presence of a restoring buoyancy force, and turbulence, especially in its later stages of decay, can be dominated by the presence of a stabilizing stratification. In the atmosphere and oceans, flows on intermediate scales are usually strongly influenced by stable stratification. In the presence of such phenomena, fluids undergo slow quasi-horizontal vortical motion, and in addition, the buoyancy forces tend to damp the turbulence. Besides stratification, a mean non-zero helicity may also present in any geophysical environment, for instance in storm systems. It has been known that helicity slows down the energy transfer from large scales to small scales in stably-stratified turbulence. Due to the importance of helical and non-helical stratified turbulence in the ocean and atmosphere, it has been a subject of tremendous interest for a lot of researchers.

Fully-resolved or direct numerical simulations (DNS) can provide invaluable insights into the energy scaling and cascade processes in stratified turbulence. However, DNS is inapplicable to the typically high Reynolds numbers (Re) observed in geophysical flows, due to the increased computational expense. Large eddy simulation (LES) overcomes this limitation by filtering out all scales of motion larger than a cutoff filter width, while smaller scales are represented using sub-grid-scale (SGS) models. DNS of weakly and strongly stratified decaying homogeneous turbulence are presented for two transition-to-turbulence cases with different initial conditions: the non-helical Taylor-Green vortex (TGV) and the helical Arnold-Beltrami-Childress (ABC) configurations at varying Froude numbers (Fr), where Fr marks the relative importance of density stratification for decaying turbulence. Furthermore, SGS turbulence models for LES are quantitatively assessed through comparisons to in-house DNS.
About the speaker:

Dr. Abhilash J. Chandy is an Associate Professor in Mechanical Engineering at The University of Akron, Ohio in the USA. He received his Masters in Aerospace Engineering at University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida, and Doctoral degree in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University in 2007. At The University of Akron, Dr. Chandy has been involved in research activities concentrating on computational fluid dynamics of (CFD) of fundamental problems in stratification and magnetohydrodynamics, where turbulence models are developed and tested for scalability and performance, and industrially-relevant topics such as manufacturing and tire acoustics, where CFD modeling is utilized to improve efficiency and reduce tire noise, respectively. Focus is also on the development of model implementations for modern computing architectures like graphics processing unit (GPU) applied to turbulence modeling and chemical kinetics solution algorithms. Research projects at Dr. Chandy’s Mathematical Modeling and High-Performance Computing Lab (MathModHPCL) have been funded by federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), and also industrial partners such as Goodyear, Babcock and Wilcox, Kraton polymers and Sherwin-Williams.

Abstract:

Microfluidics have innovated various application in terms of miniaturizing the system, reducing the measurement time and cost, and enhancing the accuracy, and have made a large contribution to the fields of medicine and biology. We have been working on developing a microfluidic device which can measure the blood cells deformability and sort the specific cells from others with high throughput (1000cells/s). The device consists of microchannel flows producing the sheath and elongational flows, cell electric resistance sensor using micro-electrodes and dielectrophoretic cell collecting-aligning-sorting system employing the rail-type, ladder-type and flip-type electrodes.
In this talk, I will introduce the measurement and sorting physics, fabrication procedure, numerical modeling and discuss the results and the performance of our microchip.
About the speaker:

Dr. Kazuya TATSUMI has received M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in 1999 and 2003 from the Department of Mechanical Engineering of Kyoto University. He worked in Osaka prefecture University during 2003-2006 as Assistant Professor and Kyoto University during 2003-2006 as Assistant Professor, and was promoted to Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Science of Kyoto University. He has been a Visiting Scholar at AGH University (Poland) in 2007. His current research activities and interests include the development of microfluidics platforms with the functions of cell sorting using dielectrophoretic forces, RBC deformability sensors using impedance measurements, development of mechanical models of blood cells, heat and mass transfer in viscoelastic fluids, and analysis of thermal physics in thrombus generation.

Abstract:

Rotation imparts elasticity to a system so that the Coriolis force acts as the restoring force (a consequence of angular momentum conservation in the inertial frame of reference). The resulting oscillations are called inertial waves. Localized turbulence under rotation frequently occurs in nature and practice. Columnar flow structures that resemble Taylor columns have been observed in several investigations on rotating turbulence; however their mechanism of formation remains a subject of debate. In the talk, the role of inertial waves in the formation of columnar structures (by using a layer or 'cloud' of localized turbulence) will be discussed. Recent results from the DNS of a turbulent cloud under rapid rotation will be presented. Using helicity as a diagnostic, it can be shown that the columnar structures are actually low-frequency inertial wave-packets. A spatiotemporal analysis using proper orthogonal decomposition and discrete Fourier transform reveals significant off-axis radiation of inertial waves apart from the columnar modes which travel parallel to the rotation axis. The implications of this study for the Earth's 'turbulent' outer core will also be discussed.
About the speaker:

Dr Avishek Ranjan is a postdoctoral research associate in the department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge, presently working on ‘spherical rotating magneto-convection’ with Professor Peter Davidson. He completed his PhD in the same department in June 2015. His doctoral thesis was on ‘inertial waves in rotating turbulence’ (about which he will talk today). Before his PhD, he completed a MS (by research) in the I C Engines laboratory at IIT Madras when he worked on incylinder optical flow diagnostics under the supervision of Prof Pramod S Mehta and Prof S R Chakravarthy. Along with his MS research at IITM, he also worked as a project associate in a TIFAC-DST sponsored project on ‘the use of straight vegetable oils in engines’ with Prof Mehta. Prior to IITM, he was an assistant manager in the connecting rod & camshaft manufacturing line at Tata Cummins Ltd. Jamshedpur for a year, after completing his B.Tech. (Mechanical engineering) with a Gold medal from NIT Jalandhar.

Abstract:

Several experimental methods such as tension, compression and shear tests are well established to characterize mechanical behavior of materials under quasi-static loading conditions whereas the impact, split-hopkinson bars and explosion tests are some of the generally adopted techniques for determining dynamic material characteristics. Although the test methods have been satisfactorily standardized for conducting experiments at macro-scale, any such methodologies have failed to evolve for the cases when the material dimensions are constrained to micro- and nano- levels. Also, the conventional techniques can only provide average macroscopic behavior of materials with the microscopic mechanisms, especially in regards to the failure, being largely obscured. Micro- and nano- sized materials have a range of engineering applications. For example thin films are key component of microelectronics devices while they are also extensively used in aerospace applications as adhesive layers. Typically, sensors and some of the aircraft components that cannot be fastened to the base structure by riveting, bolting or welding due to smaller sizes and/or complex shapes, are bonded using polymeric adhesives. The reliability of these joints is inevitably governed by the material and the interfacial failure properties of the adhesive layer. The failure behavior of such components complicates when they are subjected to extreme dynamic loading conditions. Therefore, prior to design and fabrication of multilayer structures dynamic cohesive, adhesive and interfacial fracture characteristics of the adhesive materials should be determined.
In the seminar a novel Laser Spallation Technique to load materials at extremely high strain rate (of the order 10^7 /s) using laser induced stress waves will be presented. The working principle with details of nano-scale inetreferometric measurements will be provided. The adaptability of the method to characterize fracture behavior of metallic, polymer and ceramic film interfaces will be reviewed. The experimental technique’s capability of mixed-mode loading along with its extension to characterize materials’ dynamic strength parameters will be discussed.

About the speaker:

Dr. Rajesh Kitey is a faculty in Aerospace Engineering department at IIT Kanpur since 2010. Prior to joining at IIT Kanpur he worked at Penn State Dubois as an Assistant Professor for 1 year. He obtained PhD degree from Auburn University, USA and has Postdoc experience from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His areas of interests include quasi-static and dynamic fracture in heterogeneous materials, Dynamic wave propagation in anisotropic media and interfacial fracture characterization in multilayer thin films.

Abstract:

One of the major objectives of my laboratory is to develop novel therapy for osteoarthritis. Almost 65% of 65 and above Indians suffer from the debilitating disease affecting joints of hands and legs, primarily the knee joints and hip joints. This disease, though not fatal, causes massive economic loss due to loss in productivity and compromises quality of life. Early signs of osteoarthritis often appear in mid-40s to early 50s and the disease gets progressively worse with age. At present there are only two types of therapy available: (i) Symptomatic – where the pain is managed through administration of pain-killers and (ii) Radical surgery – where the natural joint is replaced by prosthesis. Symptomatic treatment ceases to be effective after a certain point while joint replacement is very expensive and often requires corrective follow-up surgeries.
The tissue affected in osteoarthritis is referred to as joint cartilage and it undergoes many changes during the disease. It is not clear whether the disease associated changes are the causes of the disease or the result of the disease. I will explain why I view osteoarthritis as an aberration arising out of triggering an embryonic developmental process in adult life. This hypothesis arises out of our recent proposition of a new paradigm of joint cartilage development. I will demonstrate that the tissue affected in this disease is mechanosensitive and will narrate the importance of this issue in development of novel therapies for osteoarthritis.

About the speaker:

Amitabha Bandyopadhyay graduated with an honors in Chemistry from Presidency College, Kolkata in the year 1992. Subsequently, he attended the Biochemistry MSc program of Calcutta University. In 1995, he joined the laboratory of Prof. Umadas Maitra at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York for his doctoral research. For his PhD thesis he investigated the role of eukaryotic translation initiation 3 (eIF3) in protein synthesis. Upon receiving his PhD in 2002 he joined the laboratory of Prof. Clifford Tabin at Harvard Medical School for his post-doctoral research. During his postdoctoral work he used mouse genetics and chick molecular embryological techniques to study cartilage and bone development. Amitabha joined the faculty of BSBE in December 2006. He is interested in understanding the molecular mechanism regulating the development of bone and joint cartilage. Several skeletal disorders result from improper development and/or maintenance of bone and articular cartilage such as osteoarthritis and osteoporosis. His group studies the molecular basis of these disorders using transgenic mouse and chicken as model systems.

Abstract:

Shock waves are typically generated in a material when it is subjected to a high velocity impact or a blast. These waves are characterized as propagating discontinuities across which material properties and states jump. They can cause the material to achieve very high stress states, and if transmitted without mitigation, it can lead to failure of key components. An important question here is 'Can we design materials which can successfully mitigate damage?' Another important question is 'Can we exploit the energy associated with shock waves for other applications?'.
In this talk, I will discuss my work on shock propagation in composites and ferroelectric materials. We try to understand the interplay between the length scale of the heterogeneities and the length scale associated with the wave front thickness. We study the phenomenon of scattering by solving an impact problem on a layered (not-necessarily periodic) material. We obtain analytic solution to the impact problem and comment on optimal design parameters for the composite. Additionally, we characterize the effective behavior of a random medium by studying front propagation in a stationary ergodic medium. We characterize the oscillations of a moving front and obtain probabilistic bounds on the front roughness. Next, we study the nonlinear electro-thermo-mechanical coupling of ferroelectric materials and study shock induced phase transitions, depolarization and energy harvesting through current generation. We develop a continuum framework to explain the physics behind pulsed power generators and shock induced phase transitions. We obtain current profiles from the analysis and compare them with experiments. Finally, I will discuss our current efforts, open problems and many directions which are to be explored in the future.

About the speaker:

Vinamra Agrawal is a PhD candidate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at California Institute of Technology. He received his Masters in Mechanical Engineering from Caltech in 2012. He graduated from IIT Kanpur in 2011 with a Bachelor in Technology in Mechanical Engineering. His areas of interests include understanding the mechanics of heterogeneous materials, ferroic and multiferroic materials, and engineering new materials with targeted properties.

Abstract:

Fatigue is the major failure mode for any structure under cyclic loading. In particular, composite materials exhibit highly complex damage mechanisms and are often overdesigned due to lack of understanding under cyclic loading. Many theoretical models exist in the literature for modelling and predicting the mechanical property degradation behavior under cyclic loading. All such models use some or the other kind of notional internal damage parameter which keeps growing with fatigue cycles. However, the growth of these damage parameters are themselves defined by the mechanical property degradation. Hence these models do not have a true predictive capability for mechanical property degradation. In this talk, true 3D quantitative measurement of microstructural damage in CFRP under cyclic loading is discussed. Damage micromechanisms viz., fiber breakage, matrix microcracking, debonding, and fiber pullout can be directly estimated and used in models to predict the property degradation via micromechanics. This is for the first time that property degradation in CFRP under cyclic loading are modeled with independently measured damage parameters

About the speaker:

Asim Tewari is professor in the department of Mechanical Engineering at IIT Bombay and In-Charge of National Centre for Aerospace Innovation and Research (NCAIR). Prior to this he was a staff researcher at General Motors Global R&D center in Bangalore. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Materials and Metallurgical Engineering from IIT Kanpur, India followed by MS and PhD from Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta. After his doctorate he was briefly with National Aerospace Laboratories. Subsequently, he joined IIT Kanpur where he served as assistant professor before joining General Motors Global R&D center in Bangalore. At IIT Bombay he has been instrumental in setting up several state-of-the-art facilities, including 3D x-ray microscopy laboratory, advanced thermo-mechanical simulation laboratory and Microstructural Mechanics laboratory.
His area of research is in mathematical models for microstructural-mechanics. He has over 50 peer reviewed journal publications and 9 international patents. His pioneering work in 3D microscopy has been widely cited including reproduction in ASM handbooks. He is in the editorial board of several international Journals including Metallurgical and Materials Transactions and Image Analysis & Stereology. He has served as advisory committee member for various national & international research boards and conferences. He has won several awards and recognitions for his research and teaching.

Abstract:

Gasification of solid feedstocks is a popular methodology for the production of useful chemicals and synthetic fuels. Lately, gasification has gained popularity as a viable option for clean energy generation from coal via Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) plants. However, the design of gasifiers and their operation has largely been an experience based enterprise. Most, if not all, industrial scale gasifiers were designed before it was practical to apply CFD models. Moreover, gasification CFD models developed over the years may have lacked accuracy or have not been tested over a wide range of operating conditions, gasifier geometries and feedstock compositions. One reason behind this shortcoming is the failure to incorporate detailed physics and chemistry of the coupled non-linear phenomena occurring during solid fuel gasification. Moreover, in a multiphysics problem like gasification modeling, one needs to balance the effort expended in any one submodel with its effect on the accuracy of predicting some key output parameters.
Focusing on the aforementioned considerations in this seminar, I will describe the bottom-up construction of my multiphysics CFD gasification model, emphasizing the validation of the turbulence and char consumption models. The integrated model is validated with experimental data from various pilot-scale and laboratory-scale gasifier designs, further building confidence in the predictive capability of the model. Finally, the validated model is applied to conduct a sensitivity analysis on the MHI and GE gasifiers. The model is demonstrated to provide useful quantitative estimates of the expected gain or loss in overall carbon conversion when critical operating parameters such as feedstock grinding size, gasifier mass throughput and pressure are varied.

About the speaker:

Mayank Kumar holds a BTech from IIT Kanpur and MS/PhD from MIT, all in Mechanical Engineering. His research interests include clean coal technology, reacting multi-phase flows, energy conversion systems, radiative transport, statistical inference and data science. He also has a 360 degree experience of the industry, having worked in the Oil & Energy sector and founded a data-science enabled internet technology startup.

Abstract:

This presentation summarizes experimental and modeling results in the context of applications of shear driven (including zero/micro-gravity flows) annular regime operations of milli-meter scale innovative flow-boilers and condensers. Besides describing the innovative operations, the presentation summarizes more recent computational and experimental results obtained for annular/stratified internal boiling and condensing flows. The reported results come from experiments as well as from a new fundamental scientific computational tool. The computations yield accurate numerical solutions of the full two-dimensional steady and unsteady governing equations.
The results highlight: (i) experimental ways for realizing high amplitude wavy annular thin film flows, (ii) differences in flow physics for shear driven (horizontal channels) and gravity driven (inclined channels) flows, (iii) non-linear stability analyses based identification of annular to plug-slug transition boundary, (iv) summary of the correlations developed to predict heat-transfer rates and the length of the annular regime, and (v) discussions of contact line flow-physics and acoustics enabled standing wave formations that are needed for very high heat-flux operations.
The talk also relates the science to technologies that can address cooling needs for devices operating at high heat-load and high heat-flux (≥1 kW/cm2) values. The fact that innovation needs change to air-side flows across larger scale boiler and condenser operations (that are used in power-plants and co-generation units) are discussed next. Ongoing research addressing these innovation needs are described.

About the speaker:

Dr. Amitabh Narain is currently Professor in the department of Mechanical Engineering at Michigan Technological University, Michigan, United States. There he leads the Energy Thermo-Fluids Group. He completed his B.Tech in Aerospace Engineering in 1978 from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India. He then completed his masters research in 1980 at University of Minnesota and continued with his Ph.D. in the same place and completed it in 1983. Dr Narain is an ASME Fellow and an Associate Editor of Journal of Heat Transfer.
Narain’s current research interests are both experimental and theoretical/ computational in nature and emphasize the area of phase-change flows – especially internal condensing and boiling flows. His secondary interests are in related areas of transport processes. These include cavitation signatures in an automobile’s torque-converter, melting and solidification processes associated with use of phase-change materials (PCM) for energy storage applications, and computational simulations of forced and natural convection turbulent flows (inside heat exchangers, displacement pumps, etc.).

Abstract:

In this seminar, Ramesh will cover some aspects of the current work done by the research team of the Fluid Dynamics Research Group at Curtin University. The presentation will include both computational and experimental work, bringing out the fluid dynamics as well as heat transfer characteristics. The unsteady flow structures generated by means of active surface vibrations, in combination with the issuing jet is explored in detail. The aim of the work is to focus on, and exploit hidden passive synergies that could be utilized for the quality as well as the quantity of heat removal from the target surface.
This project is supported by the Australian Research Council through its Discovery Project scheme.

About the speaker:

Dr. Ramesh Narayanaswamy is currently Associate Professor at Curtin University, located at Perth in Australia. Ramesh completed his MS Research in 1995 and PhD in 1999 from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras working with Prof. S.P. Venkateshan. Upon completion of his PhD, he undertook postdoctoral research with Prof. Wolfgang Merzkirch as a DFG postdoctoral fellow at the University of Essen, Germany during 1999-2000 working on optical methods in fluid dynamics and heat transfer. Prior to joining academia, he has worked as a Scientist at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Trivandrum (1990-1993), and at the National Aerospace Laboratories, Bangalore (2001-2004) totalling about 7 years. He commenced working as a Lecturer with Curtin University since 2004. Ramesh began his research career working on the interaction of radiation and natural convection problems applicable in the area of electronic cooling. His research interests include: natural convection and radiation, microchannel heat transfer, electronic cooling, jet impingement heat transfer. He is currently working on unsteady impinging jets, to study the fluid dynamics and heat transfer of pulsating flows.
Although his research includes computational and experimental heat transfer, he prefers to do experiments than computational work. He currently teaches Fluid Flow Modelling for 3rd year undergraduate students, and Measurement Science and Technology for 4th year undergraduate and postgraduate students, apart from supervising PhD students. He is currently the Acting Head of the Mechanical Engineering Department at Curtin.

Abstract:

As the largest multiprogram science and energy laboratory of the US Department of Energy (DOE), Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is engaged in a wide range of activities that support DOE’s mission: ensuring America’s security and prosperity by addressing its energy, environmental, and nuclear challenges through transformative science and technology solutions. The Reactor and Nuclear Systems Division (RNSD) of the Nuclear Science and Engineering Directorate at ORNL, provide science and technology to address issues facing the current and future utilization of nuclear reactors and the supporting nuclear systems infrastructure. This talk will provide a brief overview of the research portfolio of RNSD with emphasis on spent nuclear fuel (SNF) related research and activities. The current SNF management practices in the US will be discussed in details with relevant background information. The talk will also include some of the science and engineering challenges facing the current US and international SNF management programs.

About the speaker:

Dr. Banerjee is a staff scientist in the Used Fuel Systems group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Banerjee received a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering and radiological sciences from University of Michigan in 2010. Banerjee started his professional nuclear engineering career at Holtec International in 2010. Banerjee joined ORNL in 2013 as an R&D staff member. Banerjee leads the technical development of Used Nuclear Fuel-Storage, Transportation & Disposal Analysis Resource and Data Systems (UNF-ST&DARDS), which provides a comprehensive SNF database and integrated analysis tools. At ORNL, Banerjee also leads the criticality aspect of the feasibility determination of the direct disposal of already loaded SNF casks and supports many other projects.

Abstract:

Bulk Metallic Glasses (BMGs) have many attractive properties like high strength, stiffness and corrosion resistance. They have many potential engineering applications like in biomedical devices, sporting goods and defense equipment. However, they may exhibit poor fracture resistance which can impede their usage in structural components. A detailed understanding of the physical mechanisms that govern fracture in BMGs remain elusive. This lecture will focus on a cavitation induced failure mechanism which has been observed in brittle BMGs.
Mode I fracture experiments were recently conducted using annealed Vit-I (a Zr-based BMG) specimens. It was found that brittle fracture occurs and the fracture surface exhibits several interesting features. While HRSEM pictures show some evidence of nano-scale void nucleation close to the original ntch front, further away, perodic nano-scale corrugations are noticed. Such fractoraphic features have also been reported by other investigators for inherently brittle (like Mg-based) BMGs. Atomistic simulations show shear band mediated plastic flow and intense crack blunting in a ductile (Cu-Zr) BMG, whereas brittle fracture by a cavitation mechanism is noticed for a brittle (Fe-P) BMG. The latter exhibits several intriguing features such as a low cavitation stress to yeild stress ratio and void-insensitive cavitation behaviour. These are attributed to nano-scale fluctuations in atomic density that are present in the britttle BMG which give rise to weak regions with low yield strength.
Motivated by the above observations, 2D plane strain continum finite element analysis of cavitation in a heterogenous plastic solid containing a distribution of weak zones is performed to understand all features pertaining to nucleation of cavities in brittle BMGs. It is found that the presence of weak zones can significantly reduce the critical hydrostatic stress corresponding to onset of cavitation which is controlled uniquely by the local yeild properties of the weak zones and the prevailing stress state. The volume fraction of weak zones and stress state influence the nature of cavitation bifurcation. The results also show that snap-cavitation occur in heterogenous plastic solids, giving rise to sudden formation of voids with finite size, which does not happen in homogeneous plastic solids. Continnum simulations of crack initiation under mode-I plane strain, small scale yielding conditions in a heterogeneous plastic solid are also performed and various steps involved in cavitation-induced fracture are delineated.

About the speaker:

Professor Narasimhan Ramarathinam received his Ph.D. in Applied Mechanics from California Institute of Technology in 1986. He worked at Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, for four years before joining the Mechanical Engineering Department at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, in 1991. His research interests include Computations Mechanics and Materilas Science, Fracture Behaviour of Materials and Indentation Mechanics. He has published more than hundred articles in refereed international journals and guided the thesis dissertation of about twenty research students, He is a Fellow of Indian Academy of Science, Indian National Science Academy and Indian National Academy of Engineering, He had served on the editorial board of many journals such as Current Science, Engineering Fracture Mechanics, International Journal of Fracture and Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids

Abstract:

Multi-phase poly-dispersed flows are found extensivley in the inustries such as automative, pharmaceutical, food processing and mineral processing, to name a few. Polydispersity refers to the heterogeneity of the dispersed phase which may exist due to the variation in particle size or any other particle property in space. In this talk, I will be presenting a highly-parallelised open-source finite element framework, called Fluidity, for modeling turbulent industrial-scale polysdispersed flows. Due to the high cpmputational cost associated with these simulations, the dispersed phase is generally considered monosized, but its polydispersed nature can have significant impact on the flow dynamics in many cases. To address this issue, a hybrid finite element -- control volume approach was developed for modelling the macroscale multiphase flow equations coupled to the mesoscale population balance equation. The population balance equation, which models the evolution of the particle size distribution, was implemented in Fluidity as a part of this work and will be discussed in some detail including the solution method. I will also be discussing the application of fully-unstructured, anisotropic mesh adaptivity that led to an excellent improvement in the efficiency of the solution. Model validation results will be presented for a 2-phase bubble column followed by its application to a 3-phase mineral flotation system. In the end, I will also be discussing the potential use of this modelling framework for understanding processes such as erosion and natural hazards including debris flow and snow avalanches.

About the speaker:

Gaurav Bhutani is a final-year Ph.D. student at the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial College London. He is working towards the modelling of three-phase polydispersed flows for simulating industrial mineral flotation systems at the Rio Tinto Centre for Advanced Mineral Recovery. He completed his B.Tech.-M.Tech. dual degree in Mechanical Engineering in 2007 from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. Post that he worked in the industry for 4 years in metal mining and data analytics before returning to academia. He will be defending his thesis in March 2016.

Abstract:

Fluid structure interaction is of great relevance on many fields of engineering as well a in the applied sciences. Hence, the development and application of respective simulation approach has gained great attention over the past decades. Often when interaction effects are essential this comes along with large structural deformations. So, it is of great relevance of being able to adequately deal with this case. Obviously, key points in the simulation of coupled problems are the coupling issues itself. Coupling issues are both the transfer of quantities at the interface and the computational coupling algorithm. In this work, effort is directed towards development of high fidelity coupled solver with which can handle large deformations.
The fluid solvers developed at MED, AMU is interfaced with a solid solver(being developed by colleagues in ME, IIT Kanpur). Resulting combined CSD-CFD code will be tested for variety of problems. The fluid solvers which are used are based on Moving Mesh and Fixed Mesh Methods. Moving Mesh Method based approach utilizes body con-formal mapping while Fixed Mesh method uses Immersed Boundary approach.

About the speaker:

Fahed Anwer obtained his doctorate from Department of Applied Mechanics, IIT, New Delhi in 2006. He was awarded the Best Post graduate project at IIT Delhi in 2006 for his doctoral work. He subsequently completed his post doctorate at Laboratoire d'Informatique pour la Mechanique et les Science de I'Ingenieur, (LIMSI), Paris. Since then he is serving in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, ZHCET, AMU Aligarh as an Assistant Professor. His main areas of interest are Turbulence, Non Oberbeck-Boussinesq flows, Insect Aerodynamics, Fluid Structure Interaction. His research publications have appeared in Journal of Computational Physics, JFM, Physics of FLuid, Computers and Sturctures, Numerical Hat Transfer Part A: Applications, Industrial Engg and Chemistry Research, International Journal of Therm Physics.

Abstract:

A key determinant of the performance of almost every engineered and natural system is its mechanical behaviour. Efforts to understand and control this bahaviour can reveal commonalities and motivate application in related areas. With that motivation, this talk will take a brief look at microfluidic electro-chemical systems. and then focus on two important systems from energy and biology, namely: lithium-ion batteries and plant root growth.

Lithium-ion batteries are widely used in almost all portable electronic devices and most recently in electric vehicles. However, they can become commerciallly competitive only with much higher energy capacity - something which can be achieved with the use of new electrode materials like silicon. But use of sillicon poses a major problem in that it undergoes huge deformations due to infusion of lithium during charging. The first part of this talk describes a framework to understand the fundamentals of such diffusion-induced large deformations, and investigate the possibility of buckling as a means of mechanical failure of a cylindrical electrode particle. A simple strategy to mitigate such buckling is also examined. Additionally, a multiple-scales based homogenization framework is outlined that upscales the electrode particle-level model to the whole electrode level.

The second part of this talk is concerned with understanding certain mechanical aspects of plant root growth which is not just an attractive frontier of developmental biology but is also important for developing bio-engineered plants that can thrive in adverse climatic and agricultural environments. One of the long-standing interests in plant mechanobiology at the cellular level is to establish a mechanistic interpretation of the orientation of cellulose microfibrils (which primarily dictate the anisotropic growth of cells) embedded in the cell walls. This talk discusses a framework based on a fibre-reinforced viscous fluid model that incorporates a direct dependence of the fibre deposition angle on the principal stress direction. This dependence, based on existing experimental evidence, is found to influence growth in interesting ways.
Finally, a brief overview is presented on how these modelling frameworks may be extended and applied in related topics like supercapacitors and biofuel production.

About the speaker:

Jeevan qualified with a Dual Degree in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Kharagpur in 2009. Immediately after that, he joined the PhD programme at IIT Kharagpur itself working under the supervision of Prof. Suman Chakraborty in the broad area of microfluidics and nanofluidics, particularly on electrokinetic flows through nanoconfinements. He defended his thesis in October, 2013.

From December 2013 to April 2015, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Mathematical Institute in the University of Oxford on modelling lithium-ion batteries.

From April 2015 he is working as a Research Fellow in the University of Birmingham on modelling the mechanical behaviour of plant root growth with applications spanning from food security to energy. In 2014, he was one of five recipients across all engineering disciplines in the country to be awarded the Innovative Student Projects Award at the Doctoral Level from the Indian National Academy of Engineering. With research interests in both fluid and solid mechanics as well as electrochemical transport, he has publications in some reputed journals like Physics of Fluids, International Journal of Solids and Structures, Physical Review E, Electrophoresis, Journal of Power Sources, and Soft Matter.

Abstract:

The seminar will cover the technology and innovation behind the major design features that resulted in the design of a nuclear power plant that probably is the simplest design available globally. This simplification makes it the most economical design while also ensuring enhanced safety using features without reliance on complex power supplies and moving parts. The testing and analysis to qualify and prove the design and safety features involved a multi-year global effort involving universities, national laboratories and industry design team. This is one of the designs selected by India for the planned acceleration of nuclear power during the next decades.

About the speaker:

Dr. Atam RAO was the leader of the international design team that developed the ESBWR. He has a B.Tech from IIT Kanpur and a Ph.D from the University of California, Berkeley in Mechanical Engineering. He worked at General Electric company in San Jose, USA for 31 years on advanced nuclear power plant designs. He also worked 5 years at the international Atomic Energy Agency (a UN agency) in global advanced nuclear plant design programs. He is a fellow of ASME and the recipient of the ASME Westinghouse Gold and Silver Medals for contributions to the Power Industry.

Abstract:

This presentation focuses on self-sustained thermally-induced oscillations of a two-phase system consisting of an isolated confined liquid-vapour meniscus(a single liquid plug adjoining a vapour bubble) inside a circular capillary tube. The tube length is exposed to a net temperature gradient, thereby creating a continuous cycle of evaporation and condensation. This system represents the simplest 'unit-cell' version of a Pulsating Heat-Pipe (PHP). The fundamental understanding of the transport behaviour leading to self sustained oscillations is vital for building the hitherto non-existent mathematical models of the completer PHP system. A unique and novel understanding of the system dynamics has been achieved by real-time synchronization of the internal pressure measurement with high-speed videography that was used to visualize and record the meniscus oscillations and the thin liquid film that is laid on the wall when the meniscus leaves the evaporator. Analytical and numerical appraoches are developed to simulate the behaviour of this simple system.

About the speaker:

Prof. Frederic LEFEVRE is the Director of Department of Energy and Environmental Engineering, INSA Lyon, FRANCE. His research interests include energy systems, pulsating heat pipe.

Abstract: The articulation of stop consonants involves momentary blockage of air in mouthA's oral cavity. Individual pronounciations of these consonants vary markedly with age, gender, accent, emotional state, and cultural background, Yet as listeners we are able to correctly extract the right cues from varying pronunciations of the same consonant, and use them to identify the articulated consonant. Here, we present the fundamental structure underlying each of the stop consonants and also the mathematical interrelationships existing between their individual structures. We show that such structures may be potentailly used as A"recipeA" for artificial synthesis of pure stop consonants. Towards this end, we have chosen to analyze Devanagari alphabet stops We made this choice for two reasons; because this alphabet has a comprehensive and logically organized inventory of stop consonants which is much larger than that found in several other languages, and also because all the stops in this alphabet terminate with the neutral vowel schwa, i.e. A'uA' as in A'sunA'.

While the former reason makes our findings applicable to several world languages, the latter factor helps reduce the analytical complexity of our endeavor. The alphabet contains velar, palatal, retroflex, dental and bilabial stop consonants in five different flavors; voiceless-unaspirated, voiceless-aspirated, voiced-unaspirated, voiced-aspirated, and nasal. Our study demonstrates how additive combinations of a relatively few number of simple acoustics signals can be potentially used to generate the entire non-nasal stop consonant matrix comprising of twenty stos.

About the speaker:

Dr. Nachiketa Tiwary is an Associate Professor in the Departmentof Mechanical Engineering, IIT Kanpur. He received his Ph.D. from Virginia Tech, USA and MBA from Babson College. His research interests include Acoustics ans Noise control, Solid Mechanics, Composite Structures, Vibrations and Product Design.

Abstract: Digital Microfluidics (DMF) is an emerging liquid-handling technology that enables individual control over droplets on array of electrodes. The applications of Digital Microfluidics are wide encompassing various disciplines, for example Biology and Chemical Engineering, that are still expanding. The most notable of them include portable assays such as DNA, PCR and Proteomics. With Digital Microfluidics, many samples can be created and analyzed in parallel on the same chip this effectively saving time and improving efficiency. Introduction of Optofluids has revolutionized Biomedical Imaging. As the device is on a micro-scale it can capture images of high resolution as well as magnification by integrating the device with imaging electronic circuits. This can be a component of monitoring devices. However, cost is a major concern.

In this talk a low cost approach for development and characterization of open configured electro wetting on dielectric (EWOD) based digital microfluidics devices will be presented. The array of electrodes pattern is realized on copper plated printed circuit board (PCB). Bio-compatible Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) is used as dielectric as well as hydrophobic layer which is a competitive substitute of expensive materials like Teflon-AF and Parylene-C. The device is tested by low cost droplet handling characterization system. Contact angle is measured by curve fitting; the volume of a droplet is calculated using a novel approach based on mathematical modelling of droplet as a spherical cap. The droplet transporting and merging are successfully performed on a fabricated device and velocities for forward and reverse direction on square and interdigitated pattern are also measured. The device is also successfully demonstrated for mixing applications using direct statistical methods.

About the speaker:

Dr. Rajendra Patrikar is working presently as Professor of Electronics at VNIT Nagpur at Center of VLSI and Nanotechnology. He has an M.Tech in Electrical Engineering from IIT Bombay. He later joined the Microelectronics Project in the Department of Electrical Engineering at IIT Bombay from where he completed hid Ph.D.(1992). He joined the faculty of IIT Bombay after working for a year at Computer-vision at R&D, Pune. Later he moved to Singapore to work in TECH semiconductor (now, micron) in the Advanced Device Technology Department (1998-2000). After working there for three years he moved to Institute of High Performance computing, Singapore which is a super-computing center, where he initiated work in the area of nano-electronics and worked for three years (2001-2003). He was a Team Leader of a Nanotechnology group at Computational Research Laboratory Pune (Tata group) for one year. He has published about 28 papers in international journals and 70 papers in international refereed conferences and 20 papers in national conferences. He has also filed four patents in the last two years. Earlier he obtained a patent in USA. He is a fellow of IETE, life member of ISSS, senior member of IEEE and member of SPIE. He has obtained project grants from various agencies and he is the coordinator of various projects, including projects sponsored by Ministry of Communication and Information Technology (MCIT), Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA), Board of Research in Nuclear Sciences (BRNS), Rajiv Gandhi Science and Technology center (RGSTC). He is also heading the center for Innovation at VNIT Nagpur.

Abstract: Earthquake nucleation essentially happens during fault reactivation, when accumulated elastic energy is released due to sudden slip along the fault interface. However, not all faults have earthquake generation potential. With the help of natural examples, laboratory experiments and theoretical analysis this presentation will focus on some controlling factors which dictate the nature of fault reactivation

About the speaker:

Dr. Santanu Misra is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth Sciences, IIT Kanpur. He received his Ph.D from Jadavpur University in 2007. His research interests include Structural Geology and Tectonics, Experimental Rock Deformation and Rock Physics, Deformation Mechanisms & Micro-structure of rocks

Abstract:

It is important that indoor environments (such as buildings and transportation systems) are designed to be healthy and comfortable for human occupancy. A well designed indoor space can enhance occupants' productivity (by 6-9%) and health. To achieve a healthy indoor environment, it is crucial to protect its occupants from various air pollutants such as harmful gases and particles. Ozone is one such indoor air pollutant, and exposure to it is associated with increased morbidity and mortality risks for humans. Ozone is also a major driver of indoor air chemistry, and it reacts with various indoor materials (fragrances, cleaners, carpets, clothing etc.) to generate numerous byproducts. These ozone-generated byproducts include many volatile and semi-volatile organic compounds (VOCs and SVOCs) as well as particles, which can be even more harmful to human health than ozone itself.

This seminar will introduce the development of advanced numerical models for assessing human exposure to ozone-generated particles. I will share experimental results that revealed particle generation from ozone reactions with human-worn clothing. I will focus on the different physical mechanisms that govern the fate of these ozone-generated particles (such as particle nucleation, growth, and deposition); and also explain the development of a numerical model for simulating these mechanisms. By using the model, I will demonstrate that ozone reactions with human-worn clothing could be an important source of ultrafine particles in indoor spaces such as classrooms and airliner cabins, a potential health concern. Finally, I will conclude by highlighting future research opportunities to work towards achieving a healthy indoor environment.

About the speaker:

Dr. Aakash Rai is a Research Engineer at the Flow and Thermal Laboratory in General Electric Company at Bangalore. He received his B.Tech. in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Kharagpur in 2008, and then worked for Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) as a Scientist for two years. Subsequently, he obtained a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University in 2014. His research interests include Indoor Air Quality (IAQ), Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), Heat Transfer, and Fluid Flow.

Abstract:

Due to increased complexity of the systems, cost reduction and detailmodeling of the systems, the requirements of optimization have been increased. The conventional methods, which guarantee to provide the optimal solution, fail to solve many practical problems due to several requirements of these methods. The most familiar conventional optimization techniques fall in two categories viz. calculus based method and enumerative schemes. Though well developed, these techniques possess significant drawbacks. Calculus based optimization generally relies on continuity assumptions and existence of derivatives. Enumerative techniques rely on special convergence properties and auxiliary function evaluation. Moreover, these optimizations are generally single path search and stuck with the local optima.

Intelligent based optimization methods such as genetic algorithm (GA), particle warm optimization (PSO), bacteria foraging, ant colony, neural networks, etc. are multi-path search and provide solution near to the global optima. They do not require derivatives of objective function and constraints. This presentation briefly covers some of the important techniques of optimization along with scope and future challenges

About the speaker:

Prof S. N. Singh obtained his M. Tech. and Ph. D. in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, in 1989 and 1995, respectively. Presently, he is a Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. Before joining IIT Kanpur as Associate Professor, Dr Singh worked with UP State Electricity Board as Assistant Engineer from 1988 to 1996, with Rookree University (Now IIT Rookree) as Assistant Professor from 1996 to 2001 and with Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok, Thailand as Assistant Professor from 2001 to 2002. Dr Singh received several awards including Young Engineer Award 2000 of Indian National Academy of Engineering, Khosla Research Award of IIT Roorkee, and Young Engineer Award of CBIP New Delhi (India), 1996. Prof Singh is receipt of Humboldt Fellowship of Germany (2005, 2007) and Otto-monsted Fellowship of Denmark (2009-10). Dr Singh received 2013 IEEE Educational Activities Board Meritorious Award in Continuing Education which is very prestigious award, first time won by a person of R10 region (Asia-Pacific).

His research interests include power system restructuring, FACTS, power system optimization & control, power quality, wind power, etc. Prof Singh is Fellow of INAE, IE(I), IETE(I), IET(UK) and a Senior Member of IEEE (USA). Prof Singh has published more than 370 papers in International/national journals/conferences. He has also written two books one on Electric Power Generation, Transmission and Distribution and second is Basic Electrical Engineering, published by PHI, India.

Abstract:

The density functional theory (DFT) is a defacto theory of electronic structure of materials. It became popular because of its ease of handling many electron problem. In this talk we will start from basics of quantum mechanics and introduce many body Schrodinger equation. difficulties associated with solving this equation will be discussed. Finally, we will show how these difficulties are bypassed by DFT.

About the speaker:

Prof. Manoj Kumar Harbola joined the Department of Physics, IIT Kanpur in 2000. He obtained his doctoral degree at the City University of New York, USA. Subsequently, he carried out postdoctoral research at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA before joining the Center for Advanced Technology, Indore as a Scientist.

His research interests are Electronic Structure of Atoms, Molecules and Solids using Density Functional Methods.

Abstract:
Multifunctional materials are intelligent material systems designed to exhibit multiple functionalities (e.g. sensing, self-healing, energy harvesting etc.) in addition to load-carrying capacity. These materials are currently implemented in various applications ranging from aerospace, infrastructural, automotive, to biomedical. However, design of such advanced material systems is often limited by the lack of mathematical models that can accommodate their inherent nonlinearity, inhomogeneity, and multiscale, multiphysical effects. To enable the design of the next-generation of intelligent structures with enhanced capabilities and expanded performance space, improved mathematical modeling frameworks are needed that can accommodate these effects. In this talk, I will be presenting my research on development of such advanced mathematical models and computational tools for design and analysis of novel multifunctional composite structures. The talk will focus on two different aspects of material modeling: (i) development of a first-principles based framework for characterization of fully coupled thermo-electro-magneto-mechanical material behavior, and (ii) a mathematical approach to formulate leading-order models for complex multifunctional systems with coupled thermomechanical and electromagnetic behavior. An application to this generalized framework will be demonstrated through a case study on a smart composite actuator consisting of embedded magnetostrictive material in a non-magnetic metallic matrix. The scope of methodologies presented in this talk extends beyond the case study presented, and motivates various future research directions.

About the speaker:
Dr. Sushma Santapuri is a tenure-track faculty member in Mechanical Engineering at Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico. She has previously worked as a postdoctoral researcher at The Ohio State University in Smart Materials and Structures lab. She obtained her PhD and B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering, from Ohio State University (2012) and Indian Institute of Technology - Chennai (2007), respectively. Her areas of expertise and research interests include continuum mechanics, multiphysics modeling of advanced materials, composite smart structures, and multifunctional material systems. Her work has resulted in 5 journal publications and conference proceedings, a text-book chapter, with several others publications under review. She is also the recipient of NSF EPSCoR faculty start-up award.

Abstract:
The motion of microstructural interfaces is important in modelling twinning and structural phase transformations. In continuum setting nonconvex strain energy density functions have been used to model these transformations. Non-convex energy along with linear momentum balance results in non-unique solutions, so a kinetic law for the interfaces and a nucleation criterion is required to resolve the non-uniqueness. However, in this approach the interfaces are "sharp", i.e, deformation gradient is discontinuous across the interface. The computational implementation with sharp interfaces using level-sets or tracking is challenging and/or expensive, particularly when there are multiple interfaces as in problems of interest. Other approaches such as phase-field or augmenting the stress response with a viscosity and strain gradient term have smoothed out interfaces and do not require tracking of interfaces; however, these are severely constrained in the kinetics and nucleation criteria that can be imposed.

We present the formulation of a phase-field model – i.e., a model with regularized interfaces that do not require explicit numerical tracking – that allows for easy and transparent prescription of complex interface kinetics and nucleation. The key ingredients are a re-parametrization of the energy density to clearly separate nucleation from kinetics; and an evolution law that comes from a conservation statement for interfaces. This enables clear prescription of nucleation – through the source term of the conservation law – and kinetics– through a distinct interfacial velocity field. We describe the characterization of the method in 1D and 2D, and apply it to a number of model problems involving dynamic twinning interfaces.

Reference:
A Dynamic Phase-field Model for Structural Transformations and Twinning: Regularized Interfaces with Transparent Prescription of Complex Kinetics and Nucleation. Part I: Formulation and One-Dimensional Characterization. (accepted in JMPS)

A Dynamic Phase-field Model for Structural Transformations and Twinning: Regularized Interfaces with Transparent Prescription of Complex Kinetics and Nucleation. Part II: Two-Dimensional Characterization and Boundary Kinetics. (accepted in JMPS)

Abstract:
The talk concerns some recent work on scattering of (scalar) waves in three types of lattices (square, triangular, hexagonal) by a (finite or semi-infinite) line defect (i.e., a rigid constraint or a crack). Exact solutions are provided, in integral form, for the semi-infinite case of both types of defects. Rigorous statements are provided for the approximation of finite case by its semi-infinite counterpart, along with the existence and uniqueness of the latter in a suitable space. The far field approximations, as well as exact near tip fields, are provided in closed form for the semi-infinite defects. The continuum limit of semi-infinite case for all six problems coincides with the classical Sommerfeld diffraction problem via convergence in suitable Sobolev space. Potential applications of the results are: wave scattering by sharp edged defects in meta-materials, high-frequency elastic wave scattering in elastic media, numerical solution of scattering of plane polarized E/M waves by conducting screens/edges, acoustic wave scattering by soft or hard screens/edges, etc, besides the mechanical application in context.

About the speaker:
Dr. Sharma obtained B. Tech. degree in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Bombay and PhD in Mechanics from Cornell University. After this he served as Post-doctoral research fellow at Cornell University and Ecole Polytechnique, France. He joined the department of Mechanical Engineering of IIT Kanpur in January 2007. His research interest involves theoretical problems in mechanics as well as applied mathematics. In particular Dr. Sharma's research is centered around the mechanics of crystals and involves a theoretical study of equilibrium and motion of defects such as dislocation, martensitic phase boundary, and crack.

Abstract:
DRDO was formed in 1958 from the amalgamation of the then already functioning Technical Development Establishment (TDEs) of the Indian Army and the Directorate of Technical Development & Production (DTDP) with the Defence Science Organization (DSO). Today, DRDO is having more than 50 labs, engaged in developing Defence Technologies covering various disciplines like aeronautics, armaments, electronics, combat vehicles, engineering systems, instrumentation, missiles, advanced computing and simulation, special materials, naval systems, life sciences, training, information systems and agriculture. DRDO is backed by over 5000 scientists and about 25,000 other scientific, technical and supporting personnel. The Department's core business is to design, develop and lead to production of state-of-the-art weapon systems & sensors for the Indian defence forces. The Department offers opportunity to the stakeholders/clients to participate through different forums in the activities of the Department. Stakeholders continuously participate in the monitoring of the projects/programmes of their interest with their viewpoints, apprehensions, reservations, etc. These are objectively discussed and addressed as the project/ programme progresses. The committees and boards are project/ programme specific, suitably structured and are convened at a mandated periodicity. Thus, all the concerns of the stakeholders/clients are addressed objectively and timely in an institutionalized manner. For general interactions with the Services, the Department's Head Quarter has a Directorate of Interaction with Services for Business. Apart from this DRDO also supports research sponsored in academic institutions under extramural research (ER) scheme and through MoU between DRDO laboratories and academia for mutual benefits in the interest of defence preparedness and in nation building. In this talk I will try to put the over view picture of DRDO, its achievement and the types of work being pursued in DMSRDE. Further, the talk will also highlight on how can IIT K and DMSRDE together help in strengthening the nation.

About the speaker:
Dr. S. M. Abbas is presently Scientist 'F', Joint Director and head of Central Analytical Facilities in Defence Materials and Stores Research & Development Establishment (DMSRDE), Kanpur, India. He did his M. Tech. in Metallurgical Engg.& Materials Science from IIT Bombay in 1997 and PhD in Physics (Solid state materials) from IIT Delhi in 2007.His area of interest is characterization of materials, development of camouflage materials/ products, Radar absorbing and multi-spectral Camouflage Net, Mobile Camouflage System, and Radar absorbing structural Composites. He has published 12 papers in reputed journals and presented 10 papers in International conferences. He has also received DRDO award 1999 for development of thermal pads.

Abstract:
The fatigue life and number of cycles to crack nucleation in Ti-alloys exhibit considerable variation. The underlying microstructure has been observed to have significant influence on the scatter and needs consideration for accurate life prediction of these alloys. Such microstructure dependent modeling can provide safe operational limits, optimal design safety factors and prevent premature retirement of components from service. The strong elasto-plastic anisotropy of Ti-alloys cause significant load shedding induced stress concentration near grain boundaries and is perceived to be the primary driver of microstructure-dependent crack nucleation. Though crystal plasticity based finite element method (CPFEM) is fairly successful in capturing these localized stress concentrations, it requires very small time steps for stable numerical integration. Hence, CPFEM based fatigue simulations for large number of cycles till crack nucleation becomes computationally prohibitive. To alleviate this issue, a wavelet based multi-time scale method was developed, motivated from the dual-time scale evolution of CPFE variables under cyclic loading. A transformation of the CPFE variables to the wavelet space then enabled decoupling and integration in the coarse time-scale with much larger time steps. With the use of this multi-time scale algorithm, huge computational savings were obtained with fairly accurate solutions. A non-local crack nucleation criterion based on the Stroh model was then utilized to predict the cycles to crack initiation. Subsequently, correlations between the microstructural descriptors, load forms and cycles to crack nucleation were developed to provide engineering scale predictions of fatigue life.

About the speaker:
Pritam Chakraborty is a computational materials scientist at Idaho National Laboratory, USA. He has done his Bachelor's in Mechanical Engineering from Jadavpur University, followed by a Master's from IIT Kanpur. After working as a mechanical engineer at GE Global Research Center at Bangalore for couple of years, he joined the PhD program at The Ohio State Univeristy, USA. He completed his PhD in 2011following which he moved into his current role. His research interest is the area of computational solid mechanics with focus on meso-scale model and multi-scale method development to study fatigue, fracture, plasticity and creep in metals and ceramics. His recent research activities include development of (i) non-local damage model to study microstructure dependent intergranular brittle fracture in UO2;(ii) engineering scale model calibration and pellet fracture studies; (iii) crystal plasticity model to capture irradiation induced localization in BCC iron; (iv) phase-field model for microstructure evolution under elastic and plastic driving force (e.g. grain growth); (v) phase-field based creep model for polycrystalline materials considering lattice site generation/annihilation.

Abstract:
The remarkable capabilities organized by the brain — from seeing to singing, from remembering to running — originate in the electrical activities of neurons. Neurons interact with each other forming circuits, which process sensory information and drive appropriate behaviors. The basic organizing principles of neural circuits have been conserved during the course of evolution. My research is focused on understanding the fundamental mechanisms used by neural circuits for processing information. The insect olfactory system (sense of smell) provides a good model system because of its simple organization, rich behavior, and amenability to in-vivo experiments. In this talk, I will describe some recent work using this system and the tools of electrophysiology, imaging, and simulations for studying circuit properties, such as inhibition and oscillatory synchronization. I will also describe experiments testing whether the precise timing of neural activity, at the scale of tens of milliseconds, carries usable information in the responses of relatively quiet neurons. I will end the talk by discussing my interest in understanding the processing of ecologically relevant smells by the mosquito brain.

About the speaker:
Dr. Nitin Gupta graduated from IIT Kanpur in 2004 with a B. Tech. in computer science and an interest in biology. He then joined the PhD program in bioinformatics and systems biology at the University of California, San Diego. His thesis focused on developing computational tools for data analysis in protein mass spectrometry, and using these tools for high-throughput annotation of genes and proteins. A collaborative project on identification of neuropeptides introduced him to the field of neuroscience. After completing his PhD in 2009, Nitin spent a few months in the department of Psychology, and then moved to the National Institutes of Health to learn the techniques of experimental neuroscience. He joined the department of Biological Sciences and Bioengineering at IIT Kanpur as an Assistant Professor in July 2014.

Abstract:
Thrust generation is an essential component of all flying and swimming animals and vehicles. Flapping mode of propulsion has been successfully exploited by birds, insects and fish. Force generation by flapping wings and fins in nature thus has been a major source of inspiration to study oscillating foils. Many of the wings and fins are flexible, and flexibility, through the intricately coupled solid-fluid interactions between the structure and the fluid, seems to be an important property that makes large changes in the flow, thrust produced and efficiency. Inspired by this, we experimentally investigate the flow induced by the interaction between a flapping flexible surface and the surrounding fluid for one extreme end of flight regime (zero free-stream speed), i.e. the limiting case of Strouhal number St -> ∞, a case relevant to hovering. The surface selected for this purpose is a two-dimensional sinusoidally pitching rigid NACA0015 foil to which is attached at the trailing edge a thin flexible flap. First, I will talk about how the flexibility in flapping foil suppresses the jet meandering, a phenomenon encountered by the thrust-generating flapping foils at high Strouhal numbers, for the limiting case of infinite St. It will be shown that only for 'moderately flexible' flaps, a coherent, 'orderly' reverse Benard-Karman vortex jet is obtained. Further, I will present a detailed analysis of the processes of flow generation and thrust production. I will discuss about the role of flexibility in the flow and the vortex generation mechanisms. Thrust generation mainly occurs during some parts of the cycle, and we suggest that it can be modelled as an 'unsteady actuator disk'. (Actuator disk is a thin disk which accelerates the fluid passing through it by adding momentum and energy to the fluid). Flexibility is found to be important in accelerating the near-wake flow and in transferring momentum and energy to the fluid. We show that the deformations of the flexible flap are the ones which are responsible for the generation of favourable pressure gradient along the jet direction, and for the observed actuator disk type action. Using control volume analysis we present a detailed account of when and where the momentum and energy are added to the fluid by the flexible flap. The flap is usefully divided into 'active' and 'passive' portions. It is the active portion that does work on the fluid and adds momentum to it, whereas the passive portion is found to be crucial in determining the location of vortex shedding. Modeling thrust generation as a pulsed actuator disk for hovering insects has been suggested, however, for the flapping foils, the unsteady actuator disk action is being suggested, perhaps for the first time.

About the speaker:
I am currently working as Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Engineering Mechanics Unit, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), Bangalore. Prior to that I have completed PhD as well as M.Sc.(Engg.) from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, and B.E. in Mechanical Engineering from the Walchand College of Engineering, Sangli, Maharashtra. I have also worked with Philips India Ltd. My research interests are in the field of experimental fluid dynamics, bio-fluid dynamics (in particular, swimming, flying, fluid-flexible surface interactions), turbulent flows and atmospheric cloud-like flows.

Abstract:
Molten salts are widely used in as the heat transfer fluid (HTF) and thermal energy storage (TES) in a Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) scheme. However, one of the major challenges with molten salt and similar salt mixtures is that they degrade at high temperature. Hence they become unsuitable for CSP operations at high temperature where electricity generated from CSP plant is expected to be cost-competitive to the electricity production from other conventional sources. In this talk, the presenter will discuss a novel compatible high temperature HTF medium possessing high effective heat capacity and thermal conductive. Results from multiphase computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulation based on solid particle receiver will also be presented to analyze the over-all efficiency of the idea CSP system.

About the speaker:
Dr. Vinod Kumar holds a PhD degree in Mechanical Engineering (ME) (2005, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA) and a Bachelor of Technology (B. Tech. ) degree in Aerospace Engineering (1997, IIT K). He has two years of postdoctoral experience at Rice University, where he developed a high performance computing of space plasma physics. After that, he worked as a senior researcher at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Princeton University where his responsibilities included developing HPC computer codes for geophysical fluid dynamic and examining the bottlenecks on scalability and performance through code profiling. Dr. Kumar's current research focus is to develop high fidelity computational thermal-fluid models that are able resolve physics occurring at various temporal and spatial scales, with a particular emphasis on renewable energy systems.

Abstract:
Multifunctional materials are intelligent material systems designed to exhibit multiple functionalities (e.g. sensing, self-healing, energy harvesting etc.) in addition to load-carrying capacity. These materials are currently implemented in various applications ranging from aerospace, infrastructural, automotive, to biomedical. However, design of such advanced material systems is often limited by the lack of mathematical models that can accommodate their inherent nonlinearity, inhomogeneity, and multiscale, multiphysical effects. To enable the design of the next-generation of intelligent structures with enhanced capabilities and expanded performance space, improved mathematical modeling frameworks are needed that can accommodate these effects. In this talk, I will be presenting my research on development of such advanced mathematical models and computational tools for design and analysis of novel multifunctional composite structures. The talk will focus on two different aspects of material modeling: (i) development of a first-principles based framework for characterization of fully coupled thermo-electro-magneto-mechanical material behavior, and (ii) a mathematical approach to formulate leading-order models for complex multifunctional systems with coupled thermomechanicaland electromagnetic behavior. An application to this generalized framework will be demonstrated through a case study on a smart composite actuator consisting of embedded magnetostrictive material in a non-magnetic metallic matrix. The scope of methodologies presented in this talk extends beyond the case study presented, and motivates various future research directions.

About the speaker:
Dr. Sushma Santapuri is a tenure-track faculty member in Mechanical Engineering at Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico. She has previously worked as a postdoctoral researcher at The Ohio State University in Smart Materials and Structures lab. She obtained her PhD and B. Tech. in Mechanical Engineering, from Ohio State University (2012) and Indian Institute of Technology - Chennai (2007), respectively. Her areas of expertise and research interests include continuum mechanics, multiphysics modeling of advanced materials, composite smart structures, and multifunctional material systems. Her work has resulted in 5 journal publications and conference proceedings, a text-book chapter, with several others publications under review.

Abstract:
Structural deformations of machine tool components interact with the cutting process and the control loop of drives to fundamentally limit performance of machine tools. These structural deformations result in a lack of dynamic stiffness at the tool center point that lead to unstable regenerative chatter vibrations and further limit drive positioning speed and accuracy. The chatter vibrations are further influenced by the changing structural dynamics of the machine as the tool moves along the tool path, resulting in position-varying machining stability of the system.Virtually characterizing these interactions has become necessary to address the need for first-time right high performance machining solutions. This talk presents an overview of my research efforts on modelling and control of process-machine and control-structure interactions. Modelling approaches based the dynamic substructuring approach form the central theme of this talk. Work on active vibration isolation of machine tools using novel electro-hydraulic actuators will also be discussed. Recent work on development of dynamic substructuring frameworks to assist in situ machining of large parts using novel nimble parallel kinematic mobile machine tools will also be explored. The talk will conclude by discussing emerging areas of research in dynamic substructuring and control of machine tools.

About the speaker:
Dr. Mohit Law is a Research Associate at the Fraunhofer Institute of Machine Tools and Forming Technology IWU, Germany. He received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from The University of British Columbia, Canada in 2013, his Master's from Michigan Technological University, USA in 2008 and his Bachelors' degree from the University of Pune, India in 2003. Mohit has previously worked as a machine tool design engineer in India. His research interests are centered on applying principles of dynamics to a wide range of problems in the machine tool, cutting tool, automotive and aerospace industries. His research has appeared in the ASME Journal of Manufacturing Science and Engineering, the International Journal of Machine Tools and Manufacture, the CIRP-Annals and in the Journal of Multi-body dynamics. He has participated and presented his research in several international conferences. His work has been funded by the Canadian Network for Research and Innovation in Machining Technology and the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft's ICON Project on Production Engineering Research for Wind Energy.

Abstract:
Recent discoveries of various forms of nano-materials have stimulated research on their applications in diverse fields. Of particular mention is the carbon nanotubes (CNTs) whose unique mechanical and physical properties have triggered a wide-spread research interest. The major focus of this thesis is to study and understand the mechanical properties of free form CNTs and CNTs interacting with water molecules by employing molecular dynamics (MD) simulation. At the beginning, MD simulations were performed on free form SWCNTs and SWCNT array to gain better understanding on the mechanical properties of CNT. The mechanical properties of single-walled CNTs (SWCNTs) interacting with water molecules were then studied by subjecting the SWCNT to four forms of mechanical loading conditions ¬– compression, tension, torsion and shear. The results indicate that the mechanical performance of SWCNT is strongly affected due to interaction of the surrounding water molecules. In addition, the influence of the SWCNT geometry on the mechanical properties of water submerged SWCNTs is also examined. Another study involved the transport characteristics of water molecules in CNTs using MD simulation. The effect of channel diameter, defects and the inter-layer spacing on the transport of water molecules was studied by subjecting the flow of water molecules through CNTs under pressure. The findings show that the efficiency of water transport can be improved by deploying bigger SWCNTs that have wide channel diameter. The investigations and conclusions obtained from this project is expected to further compliment the potential applications of CNTs as promising candidates for applications in nano-fluidics and NEMS devices.

About the speaker:
Dr. Venkatesh is working as Advanced Technologist (Manufacturing and Repair Technologies Division) with Rolls-Royce Aerospace Pte Ltd, Singapore. He obtained his PhD from the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore in 2014. Prior to that he obtained his Master's degree in Mechanical Engineering from National University of Singapore in the year 2009 and Bachelor's degree in Production Engineering from Anna University, MIT Campus in the year 2006. He has published so far 25 peer reviewed SCI journal publications in the field of computational mechanics and manufacturing engineering.

Abstract:
Modelling is a term widely used in System Identification (SI), which is referred to as the art and science of building mathematical models of systems using some measured data. The systems of interest in this work are additive manufacturing processes such as fused deposition modelling, machining processes such as turning, and finishing processes such as vibratory finishing. These processes comprise multiple input and output variables, making their operating mechanisms complex. In addition, it can be costly to obtain the process data and therefore there is a strong need for effective and efficient ways of modelling these systems. The models formulated must not only predict the values of output variables accurately on the testing samples but should also be able to capture the dynamics of the systems. This is known as a generalization problem in modelling. The generalization of data obtained from manufacturing systems is a capability highly demanded by the industry. Past studies reveals that an advanced computational intelligence (CI) approach of multi-gene genetic programming (MGGP) is a possible alternative because it can produce explicit functional relationships between process parameters without the need of assuming any pre-defined structure of a model and other statistical assumptions. However, MGGP have not been able to gain full prominence because it tends to produce over-fitting models. In the present work, four variants/methods of MGGP are proposed to counter the four shortcomings identified, namely (1) inappropriate procedure of formulation of the MGGP model, (2) inappropriate complexity measure of the MGGP model, (3) difficulty in model selection, and (4) ensuring greater trustworthiness of prediction ability of the model on unseen samples. A robust CI approach was also developed by applying these four variants of MGGP and the M5ʹ method in parallel. The statistical comparison with other methods such as MGGP, support vector regression and artificial neural network reveals that the generalization ability achieved from the four variants of MGGP and robust CI approach is better than those of the other methods. Furthermore, the manufacturing processes were optimized using Genetic algorithms and monte-carlo technique by taking into account the uncertainties in the proposed models and input parameters.

About the speaker:
Dr. Akhil Garg completed his PhD from School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singaporein 2015. His research interests include green manufacturing, robust multi-objective optimization of manufacturing processes, developing ensemble methods for studying manufacturing processes, genetic programming, etc. Prior to this, He received Bachelor's degree (B. Tech.) in Mechanical Engineering from National Institute of Technology (NIT), Rourkela, in 2010. Currently he is working as a Research fellow on "Evaluation of Environmental impacts in Manufacturing processes" from School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at NTU.

Abstract:
Novel radiation detection, instrumentation, and imaging technologies play a crucial role in nuclear industry, medical research, and engineering applications as all of these areas utilize radiation technology. A novel imaging system combining traditional neutron and X-ray computed tomography (NXCT) has been designed and developed. This is the first such imaging platform and synthesis method to be developed. The system provides promising results in detection of materials through non-destructive analysis where materials with similar atomic numbers but differing neutron cross sections or vice versa may be present within an object. Normally, interactions of neutrons and X-ray photons with matter produce differing characteristic information that may result in distinctly different visual images. The NXCT system utilizes neutron and X-ray imaging simultaneously without obstructing the beam geometry for each imaging mechanism, and could possibly produce more comprehensive images of the structural and compositional data for a desired object. Based on current studies, it could be concluded that the concept of NXCT can be useful for concealed material detection, material characterization, investigation of complex imaging for in situ studies. In this context, it is imperative to characterize the newly developed digital imaging system as well as describe the parameters associated with performance evaluation. The preliminary evaluation of the NXCT system was performed in terms of image uniformity, linearity and spatial resolution. Additionally, the correlation between the applied beam intensity, the resulting image quality, and the system sensitivity was investigated. The performance of a combined neutron/X-ray combined computed tomography system was evaluated in terms of modulation transfer function (MTF), noise power spectrum (NPS) and detective quantum efficiency (DQE). This presentation will provide an overview of the design, operation, performance analysis and experimental results of the NXCT system. Further more, the second part of the talk will provide a brief description of Cu-67 radioisotope production utilizing photon activation technique, and development of anthropomorphic phantoms for calibrating mobile and whole body counters.

About the speaker:
Dr. Vaibhav Sinha is a Guest Researcher at the Department of Nuclear Engineering at the Missouri University of Science & Technology. He holds a PhD from Missouri University of Science & Technology (2013), an MS from Aachen University of Applied Sciences, Germany (2006), and a BEng (2002) from Agra University, India. He has over 10 years of professional experience in research and teaching. His previous positions include Assistant Professor, Instructor, Research Assistant and Graduate Engineer. His recent research establishes a novel neutron/X-ray combined computed tomography system for advanced nondestructive evaluation research. He also performed research with Research Center Juelich, Germany for development of calibration phantoms for whole body counters, and at Idaho Accelerator Center, USA for production of radioisotope copper-67 using a linear electron accelerator. He has corporate experiences with the aeronautics and power plant industry. His research is based on development of innovative radiation detection and measurement techniques, radiation dosimetry, explosive detection, homeland security applications, nuclear security, development of new algorithms for radiation imaging systems and its performance evaluation, and development of high resolution neutron/X-ray computed tomography system for industrial and medical applications. Dr. Sinha has been honored by Council of Ionizing Radiation Measurements and Standards, American Society for Nondestructive Testing and Alpha Nu Sigma Nuclear Engineering Honor Society. The results of his research include over 27 articles in refereed journals, conference proceedings, and technical presentations.

Abstract:
The theory of homogenization of partial differential equations is a concept that deals with the study of features that are different at different length scales. For instance, in material science, homogenization deals with the study of the macroscopic behaviour of a composite medium through its microscopic properties. The physical parameters such as conductivity, elasticity etc. are rapidly oscillating between different values across a small length scale. The origin of the word"homogenization" is related to the question of replacing a heterogeneous medium by a fictitious homogeneous one (the 'homogenized' material) for computational purposes. The talk will, for the most part, survey through existing homogenization methods applied to various types of equation and the difficulties therein. The theory of homogenization of partial differential equations is a concept that deals with the study of features that are different at different length scales. For instance, in material science, homogenization deals with the study of the macroscopic behaviour of a composite medium through its microscopic properties. The physical parameters such as conductivity, elasticity etc. are rapidly oscillating between different values across a small length scale. The origin of the word "homogenization" is related to the question of replacing a heterogeneous medium by a fictitious homogeneous one (the 'homogenized' material) for computational purposes. The talk will, for the most part, survey through existing homogenization methods applied to various types of equation and the difficulties therein.

Abstract:
Absorbing aerosol system poses the greatest challenge to our ability to accurately predict climate change. In this talk, I will start by providing a brief background of Mie theory that deals with light-sphere interactions. The limitations of Mie theory in the context of highly complex objects, specifically having size greater than the wavelength of light will be underlined. A few applications of advanced method such as Discrete Dipole Approximation in absorption estimation of dust-carbonaceous aerosols will be discussed. Carbonaceous aerosol absorption is a complex problem because of mixing state-physically separated, homogeneous mixture or core-shell configuration-of aerosols, and poorly characterized absorption spectra of organic aerosols. I will present some latest experimental results on mixing state and optical constants of carbonaceous aerosols. Our results show large scale absorption from organic aerosols in the Indo-Gangetic Plain, which was not considered in earlier global modeling studies. Based on these new observations, earth's radiative budget can be calculated more accurately. Implications to long term changes in Indian summer rainfall, and discoloration of heritage monuments will be discussed.

About the speaker:
Prof. Sachchida Nand Tripathi obtained his PhD from Reading University and was a Post Doctoral Research Fellow at Bhabha Atomic Research Center and Oxford University. He currently holds professor position in Civil Engineering Department and is an adjunct professor in Earth Sciences at IIT Kanpur. He has been a Senior Fellow at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. He obtained his B. Tech. in Civil Engineering from IIT-BHU (Formerly IT-BHU). Prof. Tripathi has been awarded NASI-SCOPUS young scientist award-2009 in Earth Sciences and Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award 2014 in Earth, Atmosphere, Ocean and Planetary Sciences. His research interests are aerosol optics and cloud forming properties, aerosol-rainfall interactions and climate mitigation.

Abstract:
Large thermal reactors have remained the main stay of nuclear energy during last five decades. Excellent safety records and reliable operation of thousands of reactor-years has made these reactors a default choice for future nuclear plants. Large core dimensions in terms of neutron migration length, makes these systems spatially unstable against xenon instability. These spatial oscillations, if not controlled properly may lead to slow cycling of local power densities which, may go unnoticed as total core power may not change in course of time. Overall effect could be thermal cycling of fuel and core structural elements and consequent fuel failure. This phenomenon has been extensively studied and spatial control procedure have been well established. Therefore xenon oscillations pose no practical difficulty in safe and smooth operation of present age nuclear power plants. Scaling up of core dimension, a design initiative to gain economy of scale in new generation reactors has rendered renewed topicality to this instability. Seminar will cover the modelling, characterization and control aspects of spatial xenon oscillations in large power reactors. Spatial oscillations and control aspects of advanced reactors will be presented.

About the speaker:
Dr. Obaidurrahman K., is working in Nuclear Safety Analysis Division of Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB), Mumbai. He is involved in development and validation of core dynamics models for safety analysis of Indian power reactors at AERB. He has played a central role in development of AERB 3D kinetics code 'TRIKIN', which a very useful computational tool for carrying out transient simulation of different types of reactors. His analytical findings have provided important technical input towards safety review of several Indian nuclear power plants. He is a recipient of Homi Bhabha Gold medal (2007) and Atomic Energy Young Scientist Award (2013).

Abstract:
The nonlinear theory describing electro-mechanical and magneto-mechanical coupling has received considerable attention in recent years. The chief reason is the recent development of electro-rheological and magneto-rheological elastomers (MREs) which are useful in several engineering applications such as sensors and actuators. MREs are polymeric materials in which micron-sized iron particles are dispersed. On the application of a magnetic field, the interaction between these iron particles manifests itself as changes in shape/stiffness at the macroscopic level. In this talk, I will present a nonlinear continuum theory to describe the magnetomechanical coupling in MREs. The recently developed theory of magneto-mechanics, due to the work of Dorfmann and Ogden, is based on the framework of nonlinear elasticity. The magnetic body force is accounted through a so-called 'total energy density' which allows for simple formulations. Furthermore, I will present some recent results towards modelling of rate-dependent mechanisms that lead to energy dissipation in these polymers. This is based on a theory of internal variables in which the dissipation mechanisms are quantified through a multiplicative decomposition of the deformation gradient and an additive decomposition of the magnetic variable. The evolution laws for internal variables and the energy density functions are designed in a way to be consistent with experimental observations as well as with the laws of thermodynamics.

About the speaker:
Dr. Prashant Saxena obtained Master and Bachelor of Technology in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Kanpur in 2009. Later in 2012 he was awarded PhD in Applied Mathematics by Univeristy of Glasgow, UK. Subsequent to this he was a post-doctoral research associate at University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany for two years and then moved to University of Lausanne, Switzerland in 2014 again as post-doctoral research associate. His research interests are Continuum Mechanics, Nonlinear Elasticity, and Electromagnetic coupling in solids. He has published 7 journal papers in these areas.

Abstract:
Compaction bands are narrow localized deformation zones usually observed in porous granular rocks. Under field and laboratory conditions these structures are found to be oriented orthogonally to the maximum compressive principle stress, while the microscopic observation of their internal structure has revealed the presence of densely packed fragmented rock grains. Theoretically the formation of compaction bands is predicted using the discontinuous bifurcation theory at constitutive level, considering strain rate discontinuity across the band. These predictions are often validated against experimental observations, which are mostly derived from triaxial compression tests. Some experimental studies, however, show that horizontal compaction band can form even under one-dimensional deformation conditions, such as those imposed by oedometric testing and K0consolidation. However, localization analyses of one-dimensiona l compression processes performed at the constitutive level suggest that pure compaction bands are not the preferential mode of strain-localization along these paths. In the present study, the heterogeneous compaction of carbonate rock samples is addressed via boundary value analyses, showing that both material constitutive laws and kinematic constraints imposed at the structural level represent an important control for the genesis and propagation of these important geological features of the Earth's crust.

About the speaker:
Dr. Arghya Das joined IIT Kanpur in July 2014 as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering. He obtained his doctoral degree from The University of Sydney, Australia, Department of Civil Engineering in 2013. He earned his Bachelor degree in Civil Engineering from Jadavpur University, Kolkata in 2006 and Masters in technology from IIT Bombay in 2009. Prior to joining IIT Kanpur he worked at Northwestern University, USA as a Post-Doctoral Researcher. His research interests include constitutive modelling and instability analysis of granular and cementer granular materials related to geotechnical engineering.

Abstract:
In this study, we investigate various aspects of the conformational and dynamic behavior of isolated polymer chains in planar flows using Brownian Dynamics (BD) simulations with chain models encompassing multiple resolutions. Using pre-averaged equations for the normal modes coupled with an appropriate representative spring constant, we develop a model to capture the dynamics of the chain observed in the BD simulations. We show that, for planar flows with varying amounts of extensional and rotational components, the transient growth of chain stretch and stress, in addition to the values at steady state, is predicted quite accurately by our model. Thus, in principle, this model should provide an improvement over the FENE-P, which was formulated by Bird and co-workers decades ago and is known to provide poor predictions for chain dynamics in shear flows. Next, we also present a detailed analysis of the chain deformation at steady state in shear flow, as the flow rates range from weak to ultra-high. Our simulations reveal that, in the absence of any excluded volume, the chain compression obtained at high shear rates in several earlier studies is an artifact of insufficient chain discretization. We show that the chain tumbling at strong shear rates occurs by the formation of loops whose length is limited by the time required to stretch them, and derive scaling laws from a balance of convection and diffusion of monomers in those loops. Our analysis and results presented here corrects the previously reported scaling laws obtained by using coarse-grained bead-spring models, which fails to capture the correct physics at strong shear rates that can excite a single spring away from equilibrium.

About the speaker:
Dr. Indranil Saha Dalal obtained his Undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering from Jadavpur University, Kolkata (2003) followed by Masters in Engineering (2005) degree from the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. He worked for a couple of years (2005-2007) as an Engineer in the Water and Process Technologies division of General Electric (GE) at Bangalore. He joined the Doctoral program at the University of Michigan (USA) in 2007 and earned a PhD in Chemical Engineering with a Masters in Mathematics in 2013. He has been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at IIT Kanpur from July 2014.

Abstract:
Least squares finite element method (LSFEM) has been proposed as a new computational technique for solving computational fluid dynamics (CFD) problems. For this formulation one does not need to satisfy the LBB condition. In the context of LSFEM the standard implementation has been usage of Jacobi preconditioning for solving the least squares system. We extend the procedures used to obtain LSFEM solutions to more elegant pre-conditioners for the solutions of linear systems namely Multigrid methods. The Multigrid preconditioned conjugate gradient method is employed to solve the driven cavity and Backward facing step problems. Parallelism of the algorithm is explored and we obtain super-linear to linear speedup. While solving CFD problems with mixed finite element method one encounters stability issues and ensuring the convergence of the Navier-Stokes equations is often an issue with iterative solvers. We utilize lower order SUPS stabilized finite element methods for solving incompressible flow problems. This formulation also does not need to adhere to the LBB condition and admits equal order interpolations for the velocity and pressure variables. SUPS stabilized finite element methodology is extended to the spectral/hp framework for solving CFD problems. The new formulation is validated with analytical solutions available for Kovasznay flow and extended to solve an array of benchmark two and three dimensional CFD problems. A new methodology in literature that has been proposed is the Fictitious Domain method (FDM) for solving flow past different objects without the usage of body fitted meshes to faithfully represent the flow field around complex geometries on a fixed Cartesian product grid. FDM methods have been applied to CFD problems with the finite volume and Galerkin finite element approximations so far. We extend the FDM methodology to stabilized formulations and set out to obtain flow fields around a circular cylinder for an Re of 20 and 40. Different case studies for flow past an ellipse at Re-100 are demonstrated. The effect of axis ratio on the onset of Von-Karman vortex street is examined. An array of two elliptical shaped cylinders facing the flow-field is examined and anti-phase mode of vortex shedding is verified as observed in experimental literature. Volume of fluid (VOF) and level set methods (LSET) have been utilized for solving free surface flow problems. We utilize the level set methodology (in a spectral framework) to solve the classical problems of dam break and sloshing of two fluids of different densities in a tank. Stabilized finite element methodology is used in conjugation with the LSET equation to model the free surface evolution in transient. With the volume of fluid method we utilize an L1-L2 projection algorithm to solve an array of free surface flow problems with surface tension effects.

About the speaker:
Dr. Ranjan is currently working as a Research Associate with the Nuclear Engineering and Non-Proliferation Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He obtained his Doctorate from Texas A & M University from the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Subsequently, he worked as a Post Doctoral Research Fellow with the University of Texas, San Antonio, Department of Mechanical Engineering. Prior to that he was working as a Staff Engineer for an Engineering firm in Pennsylvania. He holds Masters and undergraduate degrees from Pennsylvania State University, University Park and the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. His research area has been involved with higher order spectral methods for solving computational fluid dynamics (with least squares finite element and stabilized finite element methods) and structures problems (beams, plates, and large deformation analysis). In CFD he has ventured into solving incompressible Navier-Stokes and free surface flow problems (with both Level Set and Volume of Fluid methods).

Abstract:
The fatigue life and number of cycles to crack nucleation in Ti-alloys exhibit considerable variation. The underlying microstructure has been observed to have significant influence on the scatter and needs consideration for accurate life prediction of these alloys. Such microstructure dependent modeling can provide safe operational limits, optimal design safety factors and prevent premature retirement of components from service. The strong elasto-plastic anisotropy of Ti-alloys cause significant load shedding induced stress concentration near grain boundaries and is perceived to be the primary driver of microstructure-dependent crack nucleation. Though crystal plasticity based finite element method (CPFEM) is fairly successful in capturing these localized stress concentrations, it requires very small time steps for stable numerical integration. Hence, CPFEM based fatigue simulations for large number of cycles till crack nucleation become computationally prohibitive. To alleviate this issue, a wavelet based multi-time scale method was developed, motivated from the dual-time scale evolution of CPFE variables under cyclic loading. A transformation of the CPFE variables to the wavelet space then enabled decoupling and integration in the coarse time-scale with much larger time steps. With the use of this multi-time scale algorithm, huge computational savings were obtained with fairly accurate solutions. A non-local crack nucleation criterion based on the Stroh model was then utilized to predict the cycles to crack initiation. Subsequently, correlations between the microstructural descriptors, load forms and cycles to crack nucleation were developed to provide engineering scale predictions of fatigue life.

Abstract:
The University of Liverpool is internationally recognized for its research, knowledge and innovation. Its pioneering reputation attracts students, experts and partners from around the world. Through its research, teaching and collaborations it seeks to be life changing and world shaping. The University is rated in the world's top 1% of universities and is a member of the UK's Russell Group of research-led institutions, globally recognized for its work in health and life sciences, science and engineering, and humanities and social sciences. The Centre for Materials and Structures in the School of Engineering is home to one of the world's longest established and internationally recognized laser materials processing research groups. The Laser Group's pioneering research, teaching and knowledge exchange has evolved from early roots of laser cutting, welding and cladding of metals to today's pioneering work on ultra short pulse laser optical techniques formicro/nano scale processes, laser ignition for car engines and laser forming. The talk will briefly introduce the University of Liverpool and research areas within its School of Engineering, before presenting an overview and recent highlights of research in laser engineering and advanced manufacture. Current opportunities for new research links with the University of Liverpool will also be outlined.

Abstract:
Lithium-ion batteries (LIB's) are currently at the forefront of electrochemical energy storage technologies. Commercial LIB's use graphite as anode and lithium metal oxide as cathode. Silicon anode offers ~10 times higher capacity than graphite. Thus Si has a great promise to be the next generation electrode. However, electrode mechanical degradation leading to capacity loss is a major concern. Amorphous silicon thin film deposited on copper current collector is a promising candidate for the high capacity lithium-ion battery (LIB) anode. However these systems exhibit a rapid capacity fade, and as a result, poor cyclic performance. Interfacial delamination due to lithium intercalation induced stress is the primary reason behind this capacity fade. For the case of a clean interface, crack blunting resulting from the plastic flow of the metallic substrate will eventually arrest the delamination. However, experimental observations suggest a complete delamination of the thin film from the substrate indicating the existence of interface embrittling mechanisms. Further experiments have revealed the evidence of segregation of lithium into the interfacial region that can potentially embrittle the interface. The focus of the current study is to investigate the role of such irreversible mechanisms at the interface on its delamination response during electrochemical cycling.

Abstract:
This talk will focus on my doctoral and post-doctoral research activities. My doctoral research dealt with analysing surface replacement of the hip joint, particularly the femoral side. Failure mechanisms of the femoral resurfacing implant include femoral neck fracture in the short-term and mechanical loosening in the long-term. The precise relationship between the cause and the effect and the extent to which biomechanical factors may play a role in this process, were not clearly understood. Results of investigations on load transfer, using finite element analysis and experimental technique, within the natural and implanted femur will be presented addressing the risk of femoral neck fracture. The effect of bone remodelling and its relationship with the eventual risk of implant loosening will also be explained. Subsequently, alternative measures for improved designs will be proposed. My post-doctoral research is about the design and development of novel implants for osteoporotic femur and revision knee surgery. Osteoporotic patients have much higher risk of hip fracture than the healthy group. Hip replacement is considered to be the preferred treatment option for fractured femurs. However, currently available designs are not suit able for osteoporotic femur. Background of the proposed design suitable for osteoporotic patients will be discussed. The number of revision total knee replacement is growing. Severe bone-loss is encountered frequently in revision knee surgery. Traditionally, stem extensions of variable lengths are used to achieve stability and alignment of the revised joint. However a long stem is more bone-destructive and increases the risk of stress-shielding and subsequent implant loosening. An overview of the proposed alternative revision knee implant system will be presented.

Abstract:
Under the application of high strain rate loading, like impact of a projectile on a target, shock waves travel through a material. These waves are characterized as a discontinuity propagating through the system across which material properties jump. They can cause materials to reach very high stress states and if transmitted without mitigation, can lead to failure of key components. It is hence important to understand how shock waves propagate in heterogeneous materials. Shock waves are also being used to obtain pulsed currents and voltages of very high magnitude from active materials like ferroelectrics and ferromagnets. So it is important to characterize the large deformation dynamic behavior of active materials. In this talk, I will discuss my work on shock wave propagation in composites and active materials. We start with a plate impact problem on a layered (not necessarily periodic) target. We obtain analytic solution to the entire wave propagation problem and study the influence of different parameters and arrangement of layers on the shock propagation. Next we study a front propagation problem in a stationary ergodic medium. Using the concepts of viscosity solutions and stochastic homogenization, we obtain local probabilistic bounds on the front roughness. Finally we look at the impact problem on a ferroelectric material. We develop a continuum theory of the dynamic large deformation behavior of a ferroelectric material. We derive the driving force and the governing equations of the process.

Abstract:
Structural integrity of pressure-retaining components is important for safe operation of power plants. In-service inspections of many nuclear power plants have revealed that in comparison to base material, weld joint locations are more critical. At present, fracture mechanics based approaches are widely used to analyse the integrity of pressure-retaining components with postulated flaws. The flaws are postulated at critical locations (highest service loads coincident with poorest material properties) in order to meet the regulatory requirements. The existing flaw assessment procedures were essentially developed for macroscopically/nominally homogeneous materials. Since the weld joints exhibit distinct microstructural phases, they lead to significant mismatch in mechanical properties with respect to base material. The focus of present talk is on Plasticity and Fracture aspects of strength mismatched welds. Recent developments in the field of limit analysis, experimental evaluation of fracture toughness, and characterization of crack tip stresses in strength mismatched welds will be presented.

Abstract:
Gas-liquid systems are part of many natural processes and they are widely used in industry. Among the natural processes, the tiny air bubble entrainment in liquid after the impact of a raindrop on the surface of a liquid and the bubbles creation after breaking waves on the ocean become prominent. As such situations, the generated bubbles pulsate at their natural frequency and emit sound. The dynamics of gas bubbles are of great interest for wide range of practical applications in metallurgical industry, sonochemistry, ultrasonic cleaning and biomedical sciences. Recently in biomedical applications such as in medical diagnostics and therapeutics, ultrasound contrast agents (UCAs) composed of gas-filled encapsulated microbubbles play an important role, which motivates our present study. In ultrasound medical therapy, the microbubbles as drug-carriers are used to transport drug inside the blood stream and to release drug to the specific locations. UCAs in medical diagnostics are employed to enhance the medical image of the structures or fluids within the body. In all those natural processes and practical applications, the common feature is the observation of the volume oscillation of the bubbles driven by an external acoustic wave. In view of experimental and theoretical limitations, a numerical methodology for simulating the dynamics of gas bubbles in response to an acoustic pressure, which ranges from low to moderately high pressure amplitudes, in an unbounded quiescent liquid is presented. To study this problem, the axisymmetric Navier-Stokes equations with a coupled level set and volume of fluid (CLSVOF) method are solved by means of a finite difference formulation on a fixed grid. In this method, the liquid phase is assumed incompressible while the gas phase is treated as compressible. The gas bubble is considered to behave isentropically with low Mach number flows. First, the method has been implemented to study the volume oscillation of a spherical bubble and the computed results are compared with the numerical solutions of Rayleigh-Plesset equation. As an illustration of the performance of the present approach, the dynamics of the interaction between two oscillating co-axial bubbles in the presence of imposed acoustic pressure in an ambient liquid are then presented. The two bubbles undergo volume, shape and time periodic translational oscillations, and simultaneously approach each other with time due to the secondary Bjerknes force.

Abstract:
On applying noise near the bifurcation point of a subcritical Hopf bifurcation, the unstable limit cycle seems to be stabilized. In this elementary talk, we shall discuss the phenomenon and the explanation for it.

Abstract:
How does one understand the mechanism of a reaction? This question, dating back to more than a century and predating quantum mechanics, continues to pose challenges even today. Several rate theories have been proposed and each one assumes something about the nature of the underlying intramolecular dynamics. A real "fly in the ointment" has been the phenomenon of intramolecular energy flow which seems to confound theorists and experimentalists alike. So much so that a famous theorist once remarked that a useful definition of intramolecular vibrational energy flow is something that experimentalists do not understand or cannot assign! Why is understanding the energy flow dynamics so difficult? In this talk I will try and answer this question. At the same time, I will argue that there are beautiful connections between studies of celestial mechanics and molecular reaction dynamics. These connections, which exploit the recent developments in Hamiltonian dynamics, are starting to yield insights that just might let us devise intelligent methods to control the intramolecular dynamics.

Abstract:
I will present the design, development, and commercialization of the FlexDex Surgical Technology. FlexDex provides enhanced dexterity, intuitive control, and natural force feedback via a purely mechanical and ergonomic instrument designed for Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS). These features enable complex MIS procedures such as suturing, knot-tying, and fine dissection that require wrist-like articulation at the instrument tip. The patented innovations in FlexDex allow surgeons to perform these complex MIS procedures with minimal training and at an affordable cost. This is expected to increase the adoption of MIS, resulting in faster recovery for patients and revenue benefits for hospitals. FlexDex provides a platform technology that can be adapted for various instrument tips including needle driver, dissector, grasper, scissors, and electro-cautery. This versatility can potentially impact operations in several surgical specialties including gynecology, urology, general, thoracic, colorectal, and pediatric.

Abstract:
How to put the components and sub-assemblies to construct an assembled product constitutes the problem of assembly sequencing. It concerns spatio-temporal, physics, manufacturing tolerances, flexibility, tool, tooling and human-factor issues. Although temporal ordering of the motion of components is the central challenge, many simplistic assumptions on the motion of the components are generally imposed to make the problem computationally tractable. The talk will focus on the synergistic convergence of a few algorithms developed by us in diverse contexts for effectively solving the problem of assembly sequencing using rectilinear and orientation-preserving motions of the components. I shall discuss concepts of slice representation for multi-solid discretization which was originally developed for the fast and robust computation of volume fractions, unit-cube representation for directions which was originally developed for vision modeling of digital human models and later found suitable for representing generic ranges of motion of 3DOF spherical joints as well, and polyhedral-convex-cone representation for collision prediction of convex objects which are fundamentally open solid cones and hence conventional notion of B-rep Boolean cannot be applied on them! What they together enable us is to transform these open cones as polygons on the unit-cube and then perform exact Boolean operations on millions of polygons on it in a fast, robust and stable manner without ever performing an explicit boundary evaluation. For the assembly sequencing problem, the set of components are presumed to be given as tessellated B-reps in the desirable assembled configuration. We compute the pair-wise collision potential and represent them using slice representation on a unit-cube. This step is rather computation intensive; hence, though it is very fast in the context of the state of the art, it cannot be done in real time. Hence we do this offline and save the results. However, the pair-wise unit-cubes can be composed to construct or validate multiple assembly sequences in real-time. The precision of the algorithm is demonstrated using scenarios involving a solid-angle of assembly directions, a sheet of directions and those involving only singular directions.

Abstract:
The thermo-mechanical processing history induces anisotropy of mechanical properties in the cold rolled sheet metals. This texture induced anisotropy influences forming, assembly and fatigue behaviour of sheet metal components. Using phenomenological models of plasticity, the effect of anisotropy is accounted for in the constant amplitude cyclic behaviour of metals. The well-established Coffin-Manson relation for strain-fatigue life relation is modified by introducing the influence of in-plane anisotropy in the fatigue constants. The importance and application of the anisotropic fatigue model will be discussed. Keywords: plastic anisotropy, yield criterion, strain-life, Coffin-Manson relation, Anisotropic hardening.

Abstract:
Dynamic stall on rotor blades severely restricts the flight envelope of helicopters. Dynamic stall is defined as an entire series of events occurring in the flow field, by which the lift is increased beyond the static stall limit in a pitching airfoil. Dynamic mode decomposition (DMD) is applied to investigate the unsteady flow field around an airfoil pitching at a constant frequency. Every DMD mode is associated with a frequency equal to the pitching frequency or its higher harmonics. This enables to identify the spatial dominance of a particular frequency and thereby locate the source of high frequency oscillations. It is proposed that this decomposition is more suited than the existing proper orthogonal decomposition. On the other hand, the laminar to turbulent transition location dictates the performance of the rotor blades. This transition location is identified by temperature sensitive paint, along with the rotating mirror technique to achieve large exposure time for the camera.

Abstract:
In direct injection gasoline engines, stratified mode of combustion increases the fuel efficiency and lowers CO2 emissions. We need a complete understanding of the fundamentals of stratified flame propagation in order to take advantage of the benefits of stratified combustion. An experimental investigation of laminar flame propagation through stratified mixture fields was carried out in order to determine the memory effect of stratification on the enhancement of flame propagation. To realize that, an original PIV algorithm was developed to directly measure the local laminar burning velocity that I will present in the talk. The second part of the talk is an experimental study on thermoacoustic instabilities, which remains one of the biggest problems facing manufacturers of gas turbines. In these devices, the acoustics is usually linear, but the flame's heat-release response to incident perturbations is highly nonlinear. The overall thermoacoustic system is therefore expected to behave as a coupled nonlinear dynamical system. A dynamical systems approach has been used to study the nonlinear interaction between self-excited oscillations and forced oscillations in a combustor containing a swirl-stabilized turbulent premixed flame. Coal thermal power plants provide almost 28% of world's primary energy consumption and emit around 36% of all CO2 pollutants. Oxyfuel coal combustion technology is a possible way to address the pollution problem. My third part of the talk is the implementation of optical diagnostics to a laboratory-scale oxyfuel pulverized coal combustor. The aim of the project is to study the flame structures under various O2/CO2 conditions and to generate database for the support of numerical simulations. I will present some of our findings and the challenges involved in applying the optical diagnostic techniques to the coal combustion.

Abstract:
The talk will discuss guidance and control schemes for autonomous missions. In the first part, a probabilistically robust motion planner for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) will be discussed that combines philosophies of probabilistic approaches that include rapidly-exploring random tree (RRT), chance constraint, and overlapping coefficient. The motion planner takes various forms of uncertainties present in the real world into account while planning the paths. In the second part, the focus will be on coordination of multi-UAV systems. Under coordination problems, I will present cooperative algorithms for formation control, target capturing, and geo-localization. I will also present an optimal control/guidance scheme to solve two point boundary value problems (TPBVPs) efficiently. The algorithm was used to design a robust guidance strategy to address burnout uncertainty in solid motors for long range flight vehicles. Finally, I will discuss a neuro-adaptive approach for control design.

Abstract:
Transport mechanisms of heat, momentum and species under two-phase flow conditions in mini/micro systems are greatly affected by local distribution of the phases or flow patterns in the channel. Taylor slug/bubble flow, a sub-set of slug flows occurring in mini/micro-systems, is typically characterized by a sequence of long bubbles which are trapped in between liquid slugs. This unique intermittent flow pattern requires understanding of transport phenomena on global, as well as on local scales. Over the past years, we have conducted several experiments, incorporating high speed video graphy, Infra-red thermo graphy and PIV, with supporting flow simulations, to discern the subtle mechanisms of heat and momentum transport in (i) Isolated Taylor liquid slugs (ii) Gas-Liquid Taylor bubble flows (ii) Vapor-liquid Taylor slug-bubble systems. Both, steady-state as well as oscillating Taylor flows, have been scruitinized. Many novel and upcoming microfluidic applications involve these unique flow situations. This talk will highlight the main findings and provide an outlook on the unresolved issues.

Abstract:
Propellants are materials having high energy content which can undergo combustion and sustain it in the absence of an ambient oxidizer. Propellants are used in space propulsion systems, guns, automobile air bags and ejection seats of airplanes where generation of high pressure within a very short time is necessary. To make sure that the above mentioned devices are well designed, it is essential to select an appropriate propellant for the particular application under consideration. In addition, it is also essential that the burning characteristics of the selected propellant are understood properly. For example, if a solid propellant is used in a rocket booster, thorough information must be available of its burn rate and specific impulse for the specified operating conditions. The combustion phenomena of a propellant are complex and involve different processes including, among others, decomposition, oxidation, phase conversion, species diffusion, etc. Most of the propellants used in practical applications contain two or more ingredients. Research presented in this seminar is directed towards enhancing the knowledge of combustion behavior of the widely used RDX propellant and that of the high-nitrogen compounds which can be potentially used as propellant additives. These compounds are triaminoguanidinium azotetrazolate (TAGzT) and guanidinium5-aminotetrazole (GA). In first part of this research a detailed model of steady-state combustion of a pseudo-propellant containing cyclotrimethylene trinitramine (RDX) and triaminoguanidinium azotetrazolate (TAGzT) is presented. To improve the predictive capability of such models, it is essential to understand the liquid-phase decomposition chemistry of propellants and their additives. Hence in the second part, the decomposition of liquid-phase RDX was studied using FTIR spectroscopy. Finally in the third part, a detailed reaction mechanism of the decomposition of the high-nitrogen compound guanidinium 5-amino tetrazolate (GA) in the liquid phase is formulated. This compound is chosen because it has a simpler molecular structure as compared to TAGzT.

Abstract:
A brain-Computer interface (BCI), also known as brain-machine interface (BMI), utilizes neuro-physiological correlates of voluntary cognitive tasks to facilitate direct communication between human brain and computing devices without the involvement of neuro-muscular pathways. This emerging research area has the potential to contribute significantly to enhancing the accessibility of ICT systems for the elderly and disabled people. The BCI research is, in general, progressing in two main areas: alternative communication by replacing neuro-muscular pathways and neuro-rehabilitation by helping to activate desired cortical areas for targeted brain plasticity. Current BCI systems however, lack sufficient robustness and the performance variability among users is quite high. One of the critical limitations is because of the non-stationary characteristics of the brain's neurophysiological responses, which makes it very hard to extract time-invariant stable features unique to voluntary cognitive tasks. Under these inherent limitations, devising real-world BCI applications for constant use is a real challenge. In this seminar, the presentation will focus on our recent R&D works towards robust BCI design and practical real-world applications made possible through advances in one or more BCI design phase.