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 effective width method (EWM) for calculating the ultimate strength of cold-formed steel (CFS) members assumes simply supported boundary conditions along the plate edges. Unstiffened plates, simply supported along three edges and unsupported along one longitudinal edge buckle in a single half-wave equal to plate length when subjected to uniform compression. It has been observed from the finite element analysis results that the simply supported unstiffened plates with large length to width ratios (L/ b≥ 10) the deformation pattern changes from a single half-wave to a combination of three half-waves corresponding to the ultimate load. One of the possible reasons for this is the nearly same elastic buckling stresses in the first few modes leading to the interaction of higher buckling modes. At larger L/b ratios the interaction of the third buckling mode with fundamental mode was observed causing the reduction in the ultimate strength. A similar reduction in the ultimate strength due to buckling mode interactions are also found in CFS plain equal angle sections, as such sections composed of only unstiffened plates which buckle simultaneously. In sections like plain channels, where additional rotational restraint along the supported longitudinal edge is present, such mode interactions are found to not influence the strength of unstiffened elements in sections. © 2021, The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

World University root node

Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering

Interaction of Higher Buckling Modes in Uniformly Compressed Simply Supported Unstiffened Plates

Humanity experienced one of the worst crises in recent history due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The spread of the disease and the lockdown announced by the government of India created an emergency, disrupting the supply of essential commodities and creating panic and anxiety among the people. This paper aims at capturing the behavior of consumers purchasing essential commodities before and during the lockdown using an online questionnaire. Responses from 730 households covering 20 states in India were used. The data analysis revealed that consumers made a lesser number of trips during lockdown but purchased excess commodities considering the future uncertainties. The local family grocery stores, called kirana shops served well during the pandemic. During the lockdown, consumers made shorter trips by vehicles and walked extensively. Income was found to influence purchase behavior. The disruptions at the organized retail stores for in-store as well as online purchases were identified using factor analysis. Out of the three factors identified each for in-store and online purchases, perceived risk and vendor distrust had major influence respectively. The findings of this study give pointers to many infrastructure and policy initiatives that target tackling such emergencies in the future. © 2021 Elsevier Ltd

Research in Transportation Business and Management

Consumer responses towards essential purchases during COVID-19 pan-India lockdown

Journal of the Geological Society of India

Stability Analysis of Failed Slope in Tindharia Region, West Bengal, India—A Case Study

Structures

Deformation behavior of D-Shaped shallow tunnels under dynamic loading conditions

Experimental and numerical investigation of the dynamic response of tunnel in soft rocks

Large tracts of soft clay deposits are present in many world nations especially along their shore lines and estuaries. These deposits are characterised by their high compressibility with low shear strength making them unsuitable to serve as foundation bed. However, in view of enormous economic activity along the coasts, large-scale infrastructure development becomes inevitable. In view of this, the soft clay deposits are to be improved by suitable methods of stabilization. In this direction, stone columns, preloading with or without vertical drains, deep lime or cement mixing and electro-osmosis have been popularly used across the world. In the recent years, efforts are being made to use geopolymer technology as an alternative to lime/cement mixing as an attempt to reduce the carbon footprint. Besides carbon footprint reduction, several researchers (Duxson et al. in J Mater Sci 42(9):2917–2933, (2007) [1]; Majidi in Mater Technol 24(2):79–87, (2009) [2]; Neupane et al. in Mech Mater 103:110–122 (2016) [3]) reported the technical advantages of high early strength, extraordinary durability, resistance to chemical attack and ability to immobilize toxic atoms for geopolymer compared to conventional lime/cement. Keeping in view these recent trends in geopolymer technology, an attempt is made to study the influence of ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBS) binder with different molarity of activator, the sodium hydroxide (NaOH). The soft clay is simulated by preparing the clay paste at 0.75, 1.0 and 1.25 times the liquid limit water content. At these initial clay consistencies, the influence of GGBS and NaOH is studied. From this study, it is revealed that the unconfined compressive strength of stabilised clay increases with increase in activator to binder (A/B) ratio and curing period for any binder content. Increased molarity of activator has little influence on the strength gain. The strength gain is observed to be higher at higher initial consistency of clay. © 2021, Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Geopolymer Stabilization of Soft Clays—An Emerging Technique

The current work presents a formulation of stochastic B-spline wavelet on the interval (BSWI)-based wavelet finite element method (WFEM) for analysis of beams incorporating von Kármán nonlinear strains. The spatial variation of the modulus of elasticity is modelled as a homogeneous random field. The proposed formulation is given for both Euler–Bernoulli beam theory and Timoshenko beam theory. For the discretization of both random field and response, BSWI scaling functions are used. A set of three nonlinear equations is derived based on the perturbation approach for evaluating the derivatives of the field variable with respect to random variables. Numerical examples under different boundary conditions based on the proposed formulations are solved and compared with solutions obtained from Monte Carlo simulation (MCS). The effect of the coefficient of variation and correlation length parameter on the response statistics is examined. In addition, a comparison of normalized computational times obtained from the perturbation approach and MCS is carried out. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Austria, part of Springer Nature.

Acta Mechanica

A perturbation-based stochastic nonlinear beam element formulation using the B-spline wavelet on the interval finite element method

Eighth Indian Young Geotechnical Engineers Conference 2021

Performance of compacted lateritic soil embankments during extreme rainfall

The interface of freshwater and saltwater plays an important role in the economic and social dynamics along the coast and estuaries. Droughts in coastal areas have ecological impacts and affect socioeconomic dynamics and public health. In this study, we developed a bivariate and multivariate drought index that can quantify and indicate drought conditions in coastal, bay, and estuarine areas by integrating the meteorological and hydrological drought variables. The bivariate coastal drought index (BCDI) was developed using copula theory, which includes streamflow and salinity levels in the bay areas. Further, the entropy-weighted Euclidean distance method was used to develop the multivariate coastal drought (MCDI) index using precipitation, salinity, and streamflow datasets. Both the BCDI and MCDI were able to capture the major drought events occurring in the southeast region (2000, 2007, and 2011-2012) of the United States. Correlation analysis showed that both the BCDI and MCDI were highly correlated with the standardized univariate drought indices. One of the better features of the MCDI was that it was able to capture the dynamics and trends of the variables involved and, thus, was a better indicator of droughts in the coastal regions. Hit rates and false alarm ratios showed that both the indices were able to capture the droughts in coastal regions. The coastal drought indices developed in the study can be used by the National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) and other agencies as drought indicators for coastal regions, along the coastal regions, estuaries, and bays in the United States. © 2020 American Society of Civil Engineers.

Journal of Hydrologic Engineering

Comprehensive Drought Assessment Tool for Coastal Areas, Bays, and Estuaries: Development of a Coastal Drought Index

As stated in the European Commission’s waste framework directive, the geographic proximity of wastes to the potential recovery/disposal site is of paramount importance in attaining an effective resource recycling paradigm. The global interest in achieving an end-of-waste scenario encourages the recovery of useful products/secondary raw materials from locally available waste materials. Sugarcane bagasse ash is an abundantly available waste (44,200 tonnes day–1) from sugar plants in India which has the potential to be used as a partial replacement to cement in ready-mix concrete plants. Although pozzolanic performance of sugarcane bagasse ash and its ability in reducing the carbon emissions associated with concrete production have been reported in earlier research studies, its use in concrete is hindered due to the lack of availability and accessibility data. In this study, the geographical distribution of sugar plants and the available quantity of sugarcane bagasse ash in India have been determined. In addition, a detailed network analysis using a geographic information system was conducted to quantify the geographic proximity of bagasse ash, fly ash and slag sources to ready-mix concrete plants. The study results indicate that for most of the ready-mix concrete plants in India, the probability of having a bagasse ash source in proximity is higher than the probability of encountering slag/fly ash sources. © The Author(s) 2020.