Department of Civil Engineering

Indian Institute of Technology Palakkad&nbsp;(IIT Palakkad or IIT PKD) is a public autonomous&nbsp;engineering&nbsp;and&nbsp;research&nbsp;institute located in&nbsp;Palakkad,&nbsp;Kerala. It was&nbsp;one of the five new&nbsp;IITs&nbsp;proposed in the&nbsp;2014 Union budget of India. The campus was inaugurated on 3 August 2015. The institute has 94 faculty, 978 students, and 63 non-teaching staffs.

IT Palakkad currently offers four-year Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) and two years MS programmes in 8 different engineering disciplines including&nbsp;Computer Science, Electrical, Mechanical, Civil among others.

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IIT Palakkad

The study area is the Lower Flint River Basin which is at the center of water conflicts in the southeastern USA. This study focuses on a systematic evaluation and separation of El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) induced droughts and irrigation water withdrawal impacts on flow levels using a novel and powerful statistical technique, called JRFit. JRFit procedure was applied to quantify significant differences in streamflows, baseflows, and low flow statistics during non-irrigation (NI) and irrigation (IR) periods associated with ENSO phases. The results indicate that overall streamflow levels have decreased by approximately 20% after the introduction of irrigation in the study area. Lowering of flow levels mainly occur during La Niña phases which gets exacerbated (decreased by 50%) during growing season of IR compared to NI periods. Flow duration curve analysis showed that the frequency of low flows has increased during IR period impairing aquatic ecosystem. This is the first time an elimination approach is used to separate and quantify the impacts of anthropogenic and climate signals on water resources. This approach avoids the need of using complex and data intensive groundwater/surface water models in studying climate-stream-aquifer interactions which can be replicated easily in other data scarce watersheds. This study provides useful information to policymakers to devise irrigation water withdrawal policies during La Niña growing seasons for maintaining flow levels in the study area. © 2016 The Authors

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Journal of Hydrology: Regional Studies

Climate variability and irrigation impacts on streamflows in a Karst watershed—A systematic evaluation

Transportation Research Board 95th Annual Meeting 1

A Game-Theoretic Model to Identify Critical Links on Urban Road Networks

Journal of Automation and Control Engineering

Development of a New Algorithm to Control Excitation of Particular Mode of a Building

Building Information Modelling (BIM) is currently being adopted around the world with numerous countries mandating its implementation on public projects through legislation. This process has driven the development of BIM standards and specifications to streamline design data prior to collaboration to meet regulatory requirements. Although BIM technologies globally are similar, many countries have developed context-specific BIM specifications to accommodate differences inter alia; design processes, procurement processes and government policies. The South African AEC (Architecture, Engineering and Construction) sector differs markedly from this top-down regulatory model. The government has taken no position on driving BIM practices and consequently there are no government mandated BIM standards or specifications. Likewise, no trade or professional associations have stepped into this gap to standardise local BIM practice. Thus, individual companies grapple with implementation in isolation and there is little transfer of lessons learnt across projects or between organisations. This paper reports on a proposed study to develop a prescriptive framework for South African BIM specifications by surveying the current strategies, policies, processes and standards utilized internationally by AEC designers. It explores possible reasons as to why the South African government and other industry bodies have not yet started to address the challenges encountered while adopting BIM. A conceptual framework will serve as the basis for future research to test whether global practices are applicable to the South African context and where adaptation and modification will be required. This study proposes a theoretical construct through acquiring knowledge from the current literature, collating the literature, building onto the current knowledge and potentially validating the knowledge with the sector, prior to its implementation.

Proceedings of the 1st International BIM Academic Forum (BAF) Conference

Building Information Modelling (BIM) standards and specifications around the world and its local applicability to the South African AEC sector: a critical review

12th International Conferencer on Transportation Planning and Implementation {\ldots}

Study on Recovery Behavior of Crumb Rubber Modified Asphalt Binders

2nd International Road Federation Asia Regional Congress \& Exhibition, Kuala {\ldots}

Statistical Evaluation of Crumb Rubber Modification Procedure in Asphalt Binder Modification

The objective of this study was to conceptualize and develop energy-based algorithm to characterize the comprehensive rheological behaviour of different asphalt binders with and without rubber modification. The scope included advanced asphalt binder characterization and analyses using viscoelastic parametric relationships. A total of thirteen different asphalt binders covering over 5000 data points were utilized, including: three virgin binders, one industrially available crumb rubber modified (CRM), and nine laboratory prepared CRM binders with varying dosages. Dissipated energy parameter tanδ was estimated, which helped in assessing the rutting resistance of asphalt binders. CRM binders produced flatter tanδ master curves and with lower magnitudes compared to the virgin binders indicative of higher rutting resistance with reduced energy dissipation-temperature susceptibility. Further, Weibull distribution function modeling on Multiple Stress Creep and Recovery (MSCR) test data quantified the contributions of various viscoelastic components of the asphalt binders. Rheological modeling and dissipated energy methodologies conceptualized as part of the study indicated that rubber inclusions in asphalt binder would aid in the improvement of the materials’ rutting resistance. Overall, it is envisaged that the algorithm developed in this research pertinent to asphalt binders’ advanced rheological characterization would further the state-of-the-art in designing rut-resistant asphalts. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd

Construction and Building Materials

Conceptualization of permanent deformation characteristics of rubber modified asphalt binders: Energy-based algorithm and rheological modeling

In the present study, a low molecular heterocyclic aminopyrazine (Apy)-reduced graphene oxide (r-GO) hybrid coated carbon cloth (r-GO-Apy-CC) was employed as an active and stable bio-electro catalyst in a microbial fuel cell (MFC). The presence of imine (-NH-) and pyridinic (-NC-) functional groups on the r-GO-Apy-CC electrode plays a critical role in the formation of bacterial colonization and enhanced extracellular electron transfer (EET) over a considerable period. The bacterial colonization over the r-GO-Apy-CC electrode was investigated in a Sacrificial Electrode Mode Reactor (SEMR) in which attached bacterial density with extracellular polysaccharides was monitored over a period. Simultaneously, cyclic voltammetry (CV) was performed in a bioelectrochemical system (BES) reactor, resulting in an increased current density-voltage response from 0.27 mA cm-2 to 1.84 mA cm-2 over a period of time. In addition, when r-GO-Apy-CC was employed as an anode in MFC, the power density was nearly two times (1253 mW m-2) than that of the MFC employed with plain carbon cloth (PCC) (663.7 mW m-2) at a steady state condition. It was proposed that the combined effect of Apy hybridized with nanostructured r-GO provides a large surface area for bacterial colonization. Moreover, the high bioelectrocatalytic activity was attributed to the low molecular nature of the Apy, which incorporated well into the EET pathway of the exoelectrogens by a redox mechanism. © 2016 The Royal Society of Chemistry.

RSC Advances

Heterocyclic aminopyrazine-reduced graphene oxide coated carbon cloth electrode as an active bio-electrocatalyst for extracellular electron transfer in microbial fuel cells

Certain capacity degradation levels increase travel times on road networks, while traffic demand remains met. Resilience of a road network is higher, if it can take-in higher levels of degradation without leaving any part of the demand unmet. It is important for planners to quantify this, and it can be obtained as the output of an optimization problem. The resultant measure of resilience is demand-specific. To generalize the resilience measure, its sensitivity to change in demand should be studied. We observe that irrespective of the difference in network size or network topology, resilience decreases with increase in demand. We perform computational experiments on different network topologies to investigate the relationship between network resilience and traffic demand. Based on this, we introduce the area under the demand-resilience curve as a generalized index of resilience (GIR). We compare the GIR with traditional network indicators and find that it is in certain ways, better. © 2016 World Scientific Publishing Company.

Advances in Complex Systems

Effect of traffic demand variation on road network resilience

The angle of internal friction of sands from direct shear tests and plane strain tests is reported to be higher by about 2–8° compared to the triaxial compression tests. However, information about the comparison for the case of fine grained soils is scarce in the literature. In the present study a comparison of the results of a series of direct shear tests and triaxial compression tests on three fine grained soils is made. The angle of internal friction obtained from triaxial test is found to be more than that obtained from direct shear tests for fine grained soils. The likely reason is attributed to the presence of plate shaped clay sized particles through experiments carried out on sand mixed with plastic discs. © 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.