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

Mechanical

The waste heat available from the engine exhaust has potential to recover and utilise the thermal energy available. In the era of global warming it is mandatory to concentrate on the waste heat recovery. In this research article a waste heat recovery device was fabricated, to provide process heat in the form of hot water. An attempt was made to augment the rate of heat transfer between the exhaust gases and the heat transfer fluid by providing tube inserts in particular twisted tapes. The heat exchanger tube and the twisted tapes are made of copper, with multipass design. Twisted tapes are well known passive heat transfer enhancement technique. © IAEME Publication.

World University root node

School of Mechanical Engineering

Chennai Campus

International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Technology

Heat transfer augmentation on ic engine waste heat recovery system

The performance of traditional serial robots and parallel robots are compared in the terms of accuracy, stiffness and payload capacity; which lead to the conclusion that, though the parallel manipulators (PMs) have better dynamic performance than serial robots but the complexity in their configuration and limitations in workspace are the areas where improvisation are required. This work aims to develop aT-RRR (T-3R) manipulator with delta configuration and to introduce the additional 3600 rotation to the conventional architecture to enlarge its workspace. The inverse and forward kinematic equations for the proposed manipulator have been developed by using a geometric method. The MATLAB software is used to generate the workspace of the T-3Rmanipulator is generated in MATLAB software. The developed manipulator can be used for pick and place application. © 2018, Institute of Advanced Scientific Research, Inc. All right reserved.

Journal of Advanced Research in Dynamical and Control Systems

Kinematic analysis of a T-3R manipulator for material handling applications

The serial manipulators have been developed for industrial applications over past few decades. Now research focus on household or domestic applications. The articulated manipulator matches the requirement of house hold applications and low cost of it makes it more suitable for these applications. The articulated manipulator can used for many house hold applications such as pick and place. There are many 4 DOF manipulator available in market for hobbyist. But the under-actuation of 4 DOF creates problem to find inverse kinematics, as there is no closed form solution for these manipulators. Here study is conducted to find inverse kinematic solution for 4 DOF The combinational method to find inverse kinematic solution is proposed. The forward kinematics is also calculated using D-H parameter method. Based on inverse and forward kinematics trajectory planning is also developed for 4 DOF manipulator. The manipulator moves in any two points in straight line within its work space. A conceptual 4 DOF manipulator design is proposed. A prototype is also developed. The research also validates the results numerically and experimentally. In future household applications can be developed using the manipulator. © 2018, Institute of Advanced Scientific Research, Inc. All right reserved.

Kinematic analysis and trajectory planning of 4 DOF articulated manipulator

The evolution of the flow field inside a homogenous charge compression ignition (HCCI) diesel engine during the intake stroke is studied using a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model. The conditions of air and fuel at different inlet pressures and temperatures are modified to study the suitability in an HCCI engine. These sets of conditions correspond to the simulation of turbocharging and preheating systems involved in the development of a homogeneously charged compression ignition engine. Two-phase flow is assumed between air and fuel. The fuel used here is diesel. The Reynolds stress model is used to close the Navier-Stokes equations due to turbulent flow field. The SIMPLE algorithm is used in the solution convergence in which the residuals of the governing equations are reduced with second-order convection schemes. Mesh scales are changed to arrive at grid-independent results of velocity in the intake stroke. Time steps are reduced to less than a degree of crank angle in obtaining a time-independent solution. The inlet pressure of air is varied from 0 to 1 bar (gauge) for modeling the turbocharging operation. Fuel injection at different flow rates is attempted to maintain the identical air-fuel ratio. Fuel at elevated temperatures (less than flash point) is employed for better mixing with air. The condition of preheated air with fuel at room temperature is also explored. The effect of air-fuel mixing due to different inlet pressures and temperatures is studied in this work. © 2018 by Begell House, Inc.

Department of Automotive Engineering

Vellore Campus

Computational Thermal Sciences: An International Journal

CFD SIMULATION OF FLOW FIELD AND HEAT TRANSFER IN A SINGLE-CYLINDER HCCI ENGINE AT DIFFERENT BOUNDARY CONDITIONS

This paper highlights the fatigue life prediction and interactions between weld design parameters and their effect on doubler plate weld joint by using the virtual strain gauging validated through experimental testing and also applied to off-highway vehicles welded components. The finite element analysis was applied on doubler plate weld joint to understand the effect of weld geometry parameters, load condition and constraint. In order to evaluate the Fatigue Life (Lf), the statistical technique known as Response Surface Method was used with the help of three weld joint parameters, Plate thickness (Pt), Prep Angle (Pa) and Load (Ld) on Fatigue life (Lf). Prep angle shows to have an effect on fatigue life only up to 45 degree while fatigue life is detrimental at 48 degree and 60 degree prep angle, whereas the load increases, the fatigue life decreases. The experimental results show that the presence of a secondary bending affects the experimental values of fatigue life. Virtual strain gauging methodology has been applied to off-highway vehicle machine dynamic event of the machine and to fatigue life successfully. © 2018 Praise Worthy Prize S.r.l.-All rights reserved

VIT Unitversity

International Review of Mechanical Engineering (IREME)

Fatigue Life Prediction of Doubler Plate Weld Joint Using Virtual Strain Gauge, Validation through Experiments and Its Application

Natural fiber reinforced sandwich composites have been of keen interests to researchers as a result of their low cost, moderately good mechanical properties, and biodegradability. The main attention of the present work lies on the eco-friendly honeycomb structures for sandwich panels. This paper investigates the mechanical characteristics of flexural and fracture strengths of the sandwich panels involving polypropylene as its core and treated flax fabric fiber reinforced polymer matrix composites as face sheets. Taguchi's design of experiments is implemented in the experimental analysis. The influence of fabric orientation and surface treatment on the properties is reconnoitered. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) is employed to study the influences of different parameters on flexural and fracture strengths of sandwich panels. © 2018 Praise Worthy Prize S.r.l. - All rights reserved.

Experimental Investigations on Flexural and Fracture Behaviors of Flax Fiber Reinforced Sandwich Panels

Aluminum alloy AA2219-Graphene/MWCNT composites with near theoretical density have been successfully processed through high energy ball milling followed by spark plasma sintering. Effectiveness of varying content of Graphene and MWCNT as reinforcements was studied on different aspects of processing of the composites. The particle size increased during milling due to agglomeration but presence of reinforcement restricted the agglomeration process. Significant change in particle size of milled composite powders was not observed for the type (Graphene/MWCNT) or content (0.5–2 wt%) of the reinforcements. The increase of reinforcement (Graphene/MWCNT) content above 0.5 wt% resulted in lower hardness for spark plasma sintered composites. Further, both AA2219-Graphene and AA2219-MWCNT composites revealed similar hardness values. Finally, different aspects of processing (mechanical alloying, densification) and characterization (microstructure, hardness, electrical conductivity) revealed similar results irrespective of type of reinforcement i.e. Graphene or MWCNT. © 2017, The Indian Institute of Metals - IIM.

Transactions of the Indian Institute of Metals

On the Comparison of Graphene and Multi-Wall Carbon Nanotubes as Reinforcements in Aluminum Alloy AA2219 Processed by Ball Milling and Spark Plasma Sintering

Nano composites are finding increased focus and their influence on improving the matrix properties are very attractive. But the success is fully dependent on the uniform distribution and dispersion of nano reinforcements in the matrix. Manufacturing process was found to have greater role in distribution of the reinforcements. The liquid processing and solid processing like SPS and hot coining found to have different effect on the matrix due to the nature of reinforcements. Current study focussed on the microstructure study using Back scattered images and the microhardness with and without reinforcements. MWCNT was occupying the particle boundary. Hot coining was found to distribute MWCNT on the particle surface as well as on the particle boundary. Clustering was absent and resulted in improved hardness in comparison with casting as well as spark plasma sintering.

Materials Science Forum

Influence of Manufacturing Process on Distribution of MWCNT in Aluminium Alloy Matrix and its Effect on Microhardness

The present paper studies, the progress in the research of nature inspired swarm robotics. Swarm robotics is a robotic technology inspired from the nature (natural swarms). In this, an artificial intelligence aided coordination approach is used for the self-organization and decentralization of multiple robots. Being a promising centralized approach with fault tolerance, redundancy and scalability potentials, they can even work when it is technically infeasible to set up the infrastructure required to control the robots in a centralized way. But the design of individual robot level practice to achieve a desired collective behavior is really difficult as it is hard to predict the simultaneous interactions between large numbers of individual robots. In order to explore the possibilities to make a better progress in this technology, the existing modeling, analysis methods and the challenges has to be studied first. Followed by this, a study on swarm communication and the hardware units including sensors and actuators was done. Further the existing swarm platforms are compared based on hardware detailing, advantages and limitations. This comparative study can pay way to a better design of a multi-robot system for the applications like rescue operation, surveillance, oil spills, military applications etc. © 2018 The Author(s).

Electronics

School of Electronics Engineering

Fulltext

Procedia Computer Science

A Survey on Swarm Robotic Modeling, Analysis and Hardware Architecture

Roller burnishing is one of the surface finishing processes without removing of a material, where a roller rolls over the machined surface under high pressure and flattens, the roughness peaks into valley. It will improve surface finish, as well as enforces favorable compressive residual stresses and raises hardness in functional surfaces. Aluminium alloys find attractive alternate for high strength applications. In this experimental work, burnishing operation is carried out on various Aluminium alloys, such as Al 2014 and Al 6063 using different burnishing parameters, such as cutting speed, feed, no of passes and depth of cut using burnishing tool. Through this experimental work, parameter that affects the surface roughness and surface hardness, on Al 2014 and 6063 material was identified and its influence on these responses was discussed. Also, the studies include the application one of the machine learning techniques is fuzzy logic, in the aspects of modeling and optimization of various process parameters applied, with roller burnishing process. This would give the comprehensive idea on choosing an optimum burnishing condition. © TJPRC Pvt. Ltd.