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

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to numerically investigate the effect of various parameters such as density ratio, surface wettabilities and Weber number on the droplet dripping and detachment process. Design/methodology/approach: By using algebraic volume of fluid method, the governing equations are solved using a collocated finite volume approach in two-dimensions. Findings: The results indicate that, for small densities of droplet, it adheres to the surface except when the surface is hydrophobic, while an increase in Weber number or presence of an additional droplet in the vicinity led to detachment. Originality/value: The paper explores various characteristics of a droplet when two competing forces, namely, gravity and surface tension, act simultaneously. The detachment is observed for a given initial droplet size, as it becomes denser in an uniform gravitational field. The effect of droplet affinity for two droplets is also presented using the simulations. © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited.

World University root node

Department of Mechanical Engineering

Engineering Computations (Swansea, Wales)

A parametric study on the droplet detachment process from the ceiling under the effect of gravity

In the present work, a tool holder design has been modified and fabricated, which act as a jet stream tool holder for supplying the cryogenic coolant (liquid nitrogen) to both rake and flank faces of cutting tool simultaneously in a novel way. The present work investigated the effect of cryogenic coolant and turning process parameters on cutting temperature (T), tool flank wear (Vb), material removal rate (MRR) and surface integrity (surface roughness (Ra), surface topography (ST) and microhardness (H)) when it is supplied through the modified tool holder (Mode-I) while machining of 17-4 precipitated hardened stainless steel (PH SS) material and results were compared with the cryogenic coolant supplied at the machining zone with one external nozzle (Mode-II) respectively. Experimental results revealed that Mode-I (proposed cooling approach) significantly reduced the T and Vb wear to a maximum of 61% and 29% respectively when compared to cryogenic cooling with Mode-II approach. It was also found that cryogenic cooling with Mode-I approach affected the surface and subsurface characteristics positively over the cryogenic cooling with the Mode-II approach, which leads to substantial improvement in the final product performance respectively. © 2018, Springer Science+Business Media B.V., part of Springer Nature.

Silicon

The Effectiveness of a Novel Cryogenic Cooling Approach on Turning Performance Characteristics During Machining of 17-4 PH Stainless Steel Material

Reactions of two N-heterocyclic silylenes with a boron azide have given the first N-boryl substituted silaimines, (HCNR)2SiN{B(DipNCH)2} (R = Dip or But, Dip = 2,6-diisopropylphenyl) which are either monomeric or dimeric in the solid state. The compounds shows divergent reactivity with CO2, in that the bulkier silaimine undergoes a [2+2] cycloaddition with CO2 to form (HCNDip)2Si{OC(O)N[B(DipNCH)2]} under mild conditions, while the smaller silaimine undergoes a bond metathesis reaction with CO2, affording the boron isocyanate, (HCNDip)2B(NCO) and a known oxo-bridged silicon(iv) system. Both silaimines add H2O across their SiN bonds to give the boryl-aminosilanols, (HCNR)2Si(OH)-(H)N{B(DipNCH)2}. The larger silaimine does not react with the bulky boron azide (HCNDip)2BN3, whereas the smaller system undergoes a [3+2] cycloaddition reaction with the azide to give spirocyclic borasilatetrazoline, (HCNBut)2Si{[(HCNDip)2B]NN}2. Overall, the reactivity of the prepared N-boryl substituted silaimines is similar to that reported for other silaimines. However, the steric differences between the two SiN bonded compounds plays a definitive role in the outcomes of their reactions with the small molecule substrates studied. © 2019 The Royal Society of Chemistry.

Department of Chemistry

Dalton Transactions

Synthesis and reactivity of boryl substituted silaimines

Soil pollution by cadmium (Cd) is a global threat for plants and animals. Exogenous auxin application reduces the Cd stress on plants. Moreover, IAA production by rhizospheric bacteria can play a key role in plant growth and development by promoting cell division, cell elongation, cell differentiation, flowering and lateral root formation. The present study was to evaluate the efficiency of IAA producing, Cd tolerant plant growth promoting rhizobacteria for plant (Brassica nigra L.) growth under Cd stressed condition comparing with the external synthetic auxin application. Lysinibacillus varians and Pseudomonas putida were isolated previously as IAA producing PGPR and selected in this study for their exploitation in plant growth development under Cd stressed condition. The impact of external synthetic IAA application significantly increased the plant growth under Cd amended soil. Whereas, PGPR inoculation also showed significant (p<0.05) elevation in germination percentage, root and shoot length, chlorophyll content and other growth parameters of Cd stressed Brassica plants which were comparative to synthetic IAA application. So, these selected PGPRs (L. varians and P. putida) can be used as biofertilizer which ameliorate the adverse effect of cadmium.

Department of Physics

PLANT SCIENCE TODAY

Exploitation of IAA Producing PGPR on mustard (Brassica nigra L.) seedling growth under cadmium stress condition in comparison with exogenous IAA application

Precise control over the monomer sequence of a polymer backbone, resulting in a sequence-defined polymer (SDP), is a crucial parameter for tuning the structures, properties, and functions. Examples of natural SDPs are the proteins and nucleic acids that possess the structural and functional complexity to support life. Highly sophisticated machinery has evolved in living organisms for the de novo synthesis of natural SDPs. However, gaining absolute control of the monomer sequence in a non-natural polymer is still challenging. In comparison to biopolymers, non-natural SDPs have an even wider scope of unlimited functional side-chains, as well as backbone diversity. Hence, SDP is a perfect platform for generating extensive structural complexity such as self-assembly into nanostructures, folding, the formation of stimuli-responsive sites, catalytic sites, and so on. In this review, the current status of the SDPs that have tremendous potential for future research and development are discussed. This review seeks to draw attention to the development of non-natural SDPs via innovative synthetic routes established recently. After synthesis and characterization, the next obvious step to move the field forward is to explore SDPs for their potential applications. Hence, this review is divided into two parts: (i) diversified synthetic strategies for SDPs, and (ii) applications of SDPs in materials and biomedical sciences. This field is progressing rapidly; there are immense possibilities for exploring different chemical reactions to develop novel classes of SDPs, and there are many potential application opportunities via pre-determined sequences in synthetic polymers. © The Royal Society of Chemistry.

Polymer Chemistry

Sequence-defined non-natural polymers: Synthesis and applications

Nearly 80% of the processes involved in the chemical production of bulk or fine chemicals employ heterogeneous catalysts that are typically solids. The heart of the heterogeneous catalyst is the surface active site which must be highly active, selective and stable during several hundred cycles of reaction. Although it is not always possible to determine the structure of an active site in a heterogeneous catalyst, the emphasis of modern day research has not only been to understand the structure of an active site but also synthesize and study them. The article will describe some of the challenges from this perspective with examples from the authors research. © 2019 Indian National Science Academy. All rights reserved.

Proceedings of the Indian National Science Academy

New opportunities in heterogeneous catalysis

Use of Iron oxyhydroxide (γ-FeO(OH)) as a robust catalyst for the synthesis of important intermediates like pseudoionones and their analogues through the C-C bond formation reactions like knoevenagel and aldol condensation is explored. These motifs are the building blocks for the construction of the sesquiterpenes as well as the diterpenes such as retinoic acid, Vitamin A etc. Iron oxyhydroxide (γ-FeO(OH)) was synthesized and well characterized using XRD, FT-IR, TEM, XPS and adsorption studies to establish the catalytic activity. A thorough investigation on the nature of basic sites and the role of water as a promoter was explored based on dye adsorption, in situ methanol dissociation and CO2 adsorption studies. The catalyst also showed a wide range of substrate scope with active methylene groups involving various functional groups such as cyanides, esters and acetophenones along with its stability and reproducibility. © 2019 Elsevier Inc.

Journal of Catalysis

Water-promoted surface basicity in FeO(OH) for the synthesis of pseudoionones (PS) and their analogues

In this paper, we consider a multi-input driftless bilinear system evolving on the n-dimensional sphere Sn. We first provide examples drawn from rigid body mechanics that provide the motivation for the control of bilinear systems on Sn. For the general framework, we establish the global controllability on Sn and propose two linear control laws on Sn that achieve asymptotic stabilization of an equilibrium point with an almost global domain-of-attraction. Further, the asymptotically stable closed-loop system trajectories are shown to be arcs on the geodesics of Sn for a particular choice of the equilibrium point. Next, we propose two linear time-varying control laws to achieve trajectory tracking on Sn and show the asymptotic stability of the tracking error. A distributed control is designed for the consensus of multiagent bilinear systems on Sn with an undirected tree as the communication graph. The consensus manifold is shown to have an almost global domain of attraction. © 2019 IEEE.

Department of Electrical Engineering

IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control

Control of a Driftless Bilinear Vector Field on n-Sphere

Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics

Concurrent rendezvous control of underactuated space manipulators

Automatic removal of lung sounds from a phonocardiogram (PCG) signal is most essential for accurately detecting and recognizing the fundamental heart sounds such as the first heart sound (S1) and second heart sound (S2). In this paper, we propose an automated lung sound removal method using the empirical wavelet transform (EWT). The proposed method consists of three major stages: the EWT based signal decomposition; the frequency based mode selection; and the signal reconstruction. The proposed method is evaluated by synthetically adding the different lung sounds available in Littmann lung sound library with the real-time recorded PCG signals from 20 volunteers. The quality of the reconstructed signals is assessed by using both objective quality assessment metrics and subjective quality test such as mean opinion score (MOS). For the performance comparison, two lung sound removal methods have been implemented based on the ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD) and frequency selective filtering techniques. The objective and subjective evaluation results and the heart sound segmentation results demonstrate that the EWT based lung sound removal method outperforms the other methods. The proposed method based heart sound segmentation scheme achieves an average sensitivity (Se) of 100%, positive predictivity (Pp) of 99.22%, and overall accuracy (OA) of 99.22%. © 2019 IEEE.