Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT) is a private university located in&nbsp;Tamil Nadu, India. Founded in 1984, as Vellore Engineering College, the institution offers 20 undergraduate, 34 postgraduate, four integrated and four research programs. It has campuses in Vellore, Amravati, Bhopal and Chennai.

VIT is one of the top ranked private universities in India according to NIRF, THE and QS Rankings.&nbsp;Govt. of India has recognized&nbsp;VIT, Vellore as an&nbsp;Institution of Eminence. This has allowed VIT to take independent quality initiatives and move up in world ranking.

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VIT University

Department of Manufacturing Engineering

World University root node

School of Mechanical Engineering

Vellore Campus

Materials Today: Proceedings

Present knowledge and perspective on the role of natural fibers in the brake pad material

European Physical Journal Plus

Nanomaterials for automotive outer panel components: a review

The passive film mainly consists of oxides and hydroxide and is a key for corrosion protection of metallic materials. It increases the durability and performance of engineering components by spontaneous formation of effective, adherent barrier between the corrosive environment and a substrate. Herein, influence of plastic strain and after heat treatment on austenitic stainless steels was compared with the focus on stability of the passive film. The following materials were used in this study: Sanicro 28™, AISI 316 L, and AISI 304 L. These specimens were subjected to a true strain of 0.58. The conventional three-electrode cell was used to record the anodic potentiodynamic polarization curves. The grain size and other misorientation parameters were extracted using electron backscattered diffraction (EBSD). Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR)-imaging was used for capturing chromium oxide (Cr2O3) peaks for all specimens. The average area of Cr2O3 peaks was compared with deformed and after heat treatment of 700 °C 30 min specimens. It was found that heat-treated specimens exhibited slightly higher average area of Cr2O3 than deformed. © 2021, The Society for Experimental Mechanics, Inc.

Experimental Techniques

The Effects of Strain on Stability of Passivation in Austenitic Stainless Steels: Comparison with Heat Treatment

With the emergence of advanced manufacturing and Industry 4.0 technologies, there is a growing interest in coordinating the production and distribution in supply chain management. This paper addresses the production and distribution problems with sequence dependent setup time for multiple customers in flow shop environments. In this complex decision-making problem, an efficient scheduling approach is required to optimize the trade-off between the total cost of tardiness and batch delivery. To achieve this, three new metaheuristic algorithms such as Differential Evolution with different mutation strategy variation and a Moth Flame Optimization, and Lévy-Flight Moth Flame Optimization algorithm are proposed and presented. In addition, a design-of-experiment method is used to identify the best possible parameters for the proposed approaches for the problem under study. The proposed algorithms are validated on a set of problem instances. The variants of differential evolution performed better than the other compared algorithms and this demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The algorithms are also validated using an industrial case study. © 2021 Elsevier Ltd

Computers and Industrial Engineering

Flowshop scheduling with sequence dependent setup times and batch delivery in supply chain

Robots are extensively used during the era of Industry 4.0 to achieve high productivity, better quality and lower cost. While designing a robotic assembly line, production managers are concerned about the cost involved in such a system development. Most of the research reported till date did not consider purchasing cost while optimizing the design of a robotic assembly line. This study presents the first attempt to study the cost-oriented robotic assembly line balancing problem with setup times to minimize the cycle time and total purchasing cost simultaneously. A mixed-integer linear programming model is developed to formulate this problem. The elitist non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) and improved multi-objective artificial bee colony (IMABC) algorithm are developed to achieve a set of Pareto solutions for the production managers to utilize for selecting the better design solution. The proposed IMABC develops new employed bee phase and scout phase, which selects one solution in the permanent Pareto archive to replace the abandoned solution, to enhance exploration and exploitation. The comparative study on a set of generated instances demonstrates that the proposed model is capable of achieving the proper tradeoff between line efficiency and purchasing cost, and the proposed NSGA-II and IMABC achieve competing performance in comparison with several other multi-objective algorithms. © 2020, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.

Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing

Cost-oriented robotic assembly line balancing problem with setup times: multi-objective algorithms

The non-traditional machining process is highly recommended for machining difficult-to-cut materials with increased hardness, toughness, work hardening effect, and poor thermal diffusivity, etc. Wire electrical discharge machining (Wire-EDM) is one of the above said processes used to machine material which are electrically conductive. One of the variants of Wire-EDM process is wire electrical discharge hybrid turning (WEDHT) process, in which, the work material is made to rotate during material removal resulting in cylindrical components manufacturing. This process follows the principle of sparking and erosion for material removal with moving wire as a tool electrode. In the present study, WEDHT process is performed on Ti-6Al-4V alloy, which has applications in the areas of biomedical, marine, chemical, aerospace, etc. 27 experiments are performed using diffusion annealed zinc coated brass wire as the tool electrode by varying servo feed, pulse ON time and wire feed rate at three different levels to study the surface quality and material removal as the output performances. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) technique gives a 3D profile of the machined surface and measures the surface roughness. These measured 3D results are validated once again in 2D surface profile meter. The factor effects of all three input parameters are analyzed individually and analysis of variance (ANOVA) for all the performance responses are studied to know the most contributing factor in deciding the surface roughness (SR) and material removal, respectively. The regression analysis is performed for the response measures and the model parameters are analysed for goodness of fit using residual plot. Pulse ON time contributes more in deciding the SR and material removal rate (MRR) of the component followed by servo feed and wire feed rate. The interaction effects of the parameters are found to be insignificant. © 2021, Indian Academy of Sciences.

Sadhana - Academy Proceedings in Engineering Sciences

Statistical modelling and analysis of material removal rate and surface roughness during wire electrical discharge hybrid turning (WEDHT) process

Multiagent system (MAS) is gaining popular attention in various applications especially with the rapid expansion of internet and computing. In general, MAS considers the collaboration of several agents working in the same environment together to achieve common objectives and also plays a critical role in supporting humans for attaining a comfortable life. Multiagent systems are used in numerous applications such as robotics, cloud computing, e-health, military, etc. Under such circumstances, trust among agents is crucial to ensure successful completion of a task especially when the task could only be completed through sharing of information and resources among the agents. This paper presents for the first time a study on the development of trust estimation models as a part of a decision-making framework that empirically computes and evaluates the trustworthiness of agents in MAS where the agent could choose to cooperate and collaborate only with the other trustworthy agents. The novelty of this study lies in the incorporation of beta reputation system into the Markov Games-based temporal difference learning framework and the development of a novel heuristic computation techniques adapted based on averaging methods. These models function as the integral part of the proposed MAS decision-making framework that chooses agents to collaborate with based on trustworthiness. The developed models and the framework are tested for their accuracy, efficiency and effectiveness using several analyses such as the time steps analysis, root-mean-square analysis and interaction analysis. The performances of the proposed models were better than the performances obtained using the trust models reported in the literature. Further real-world experiments are carried out to test the viability of the developed models in real-world applications. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.

Soft Computing

Trust-based decision-making framework for multiagent system

Patient satisfaction in the service quality of orthopedic hospitals is considered as a prospective performance criterion in evaluating the medical services of a healthcare system. In this research, the most critical and crucial risk factors in service quality are identified by using relevant literature survey and inputs from hospital experts, these factors are tough to control. To solve this issue, the combined risk-based decision-making method for identifying and ranking the risk factors regarding service quality performance is proposed. The objective of this paper is to recognize the best one between five orthopedic hospitals in the service quality performance by using Interval-Valued Fuzzy Modified (IVFM) TOPSIS. Here, a contextual case is conducted in five south Indian orthopedic hospitals for verifying the efficiency of the suggested framework. To arrive at the best decision, Interval-valued fuzzy set theory is used in the IVFM TOPSIS for controlling subjectivity and ambiguity in fuzzy risk scores. The outcomes will help hospital managers implementing the performances of service quality. © 2021, The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Lecture Notes in Mechanical Engineering

A Multi-criteria Decision-Making Method to Analyze Service Quality Risks in Healthcare Industries

Polymer based nanocomposites are gaining attention in various fields of science and technology due to its tunable properties. In this work, we report for the first time, the preparation and study on electrical and mechanical properties of standalone poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) based graphite nanoplatelet (GnP) composite films using modified film casting technique. Our modified tape casting method can produce films with uniform thickness, and uniform dispersion of filler deprived of pinholes. This technique is scalable for the mass production of polymer composite films for device application. We have obtained a significant enhancement in the electrical conductivity of 9 orders of magnitude and a maximum value of 0.143 S/m using PVA–GnP composites. To the best of our knowledge, this increase is the highest among the reported values for PVA–GnP composite films. However, a reduction in crystallinity and tensile strength can be seen with the addition of GnP fillers. The maximum tensile strength obtained for PVA–GnP composite films was 15 MPa and is adequate for use in electronic applications and devices. The effect of filler addition in PVA is discussed in detail. © 2020 Wiley Periodicals LLC

Department of Physics

School of Advanced Sciences

Journal of Applied Polymer Science

Enhanced electrical conductivity and structural, mechanical characterization of standalone poly(vinyl alcohol)-graphite nanoplatelets composite films

In this work, fabrication of aluminium metal matrix composites reinforced with electroless coated SiC particles is carried out through stir-squeeze casting process. Composite is developed using scrap aluminium alloy wheel as matrix material and SiC as reinforcement. The SiC particles are coated with Ni-P using electroless coating process to improve the wetting and to promote the interfacial bonding strength between the matrix and reinforcement. For the purpose of testing and analysis of the results, composite specimens are prepared in four ways, i.e., scrap Al alloy, scrap Al alloy with uncoated SiC (5 wt%), scrap Al alloy with coated SiC (5 wt%) and scrap Al alloy with coated SiC (2.5 wt%) &amp; coated Al2O3 (2.5 wt%). Using scanning electron microscope, energy dispersive X-ray analysis, optical microscope and X-Ray diffraction, metallurgical properties are studied. Further, mechanical properties such as porosity, hardness, tensile strength, and compressive strength are analysed. Results revealed that porosity is very less in the substrate produced with coated reinforcement compared to uncoated reinforcement. Also, hardness, tensile strength, compressive strength and bonding strength of the composite are increased significantly. © 2021, Springer Nature B.V.