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

Apart from Tamil, Malayalam is the only Dravidian language that still retains a fifth liquid in its inventory denoted as , a sound that can be traced back to Proto-Dravidian. The phonetic and phonological status of this sound has been the subject of considerable debate, both in terms of its rhotic versus lateral status and its phonetic realisation. Studies to date have been impressionistic, so this is the first acoustic study of all five liquids in Malayalam. Production data from 8 male speakers reveal that while is realised as a central post-alveolar approximant, its ambiguous phonotactic patterning and mixed acoustic profile are contributors to its mixed identity. An understanding of the complex patterning of this sound, which straddles the rhotic/lateral divide, requires an appreciation of the role of secondary acoustic resonance in distinguishing members of a crowded liquid system and in preventing a merger. © 2014 S. Karger AG, Basel.

Department of Humanities and Social Sciences

World University root node

Fulltext

Phonetica

The contested fifth liquid in Malayalam: A window into the lateral-rhotic relationship in dravidian languages

While boron nitride (BN) substrates have been utilized to achieve high electronic mobilities in graphene field effect transistors, it is unclear how other layered two dimensional (2D) crystals influence the electronic performance of graphene. In this Letter, we study the surface morphology of 2D BN, gallium selenide (GaSe), and transition metal dichalcogenides (tungsten disulfide (WS2) and molybdenum disulfide (MoS2)) crystals and their influence on graphene's electronic quality. Atomic force microscopy analysis shows that these crystals have improved surface roughness (root mean square value of only ∼0.1nm) compared to conventional SiO2 substrate. While our results confirm that graphene devices exhibit very high electronic mobility (μ) on BN substrates, graphene devices on WS2 substrates (G/WS2) are equally promising for high quality electronic transport (μ∼ 38000 cm2/V s at room temperature), followed by G/MoS 2 (μ∼ 10000 cm2/V s) and G/GaSe (μ∼ 2200 cm2/V s). However, we observe a significant asymmetry in electron and hole conduction in G/WS2 and G/MoS2 heterostructures, most likely due to the presence of sulphur vacancies in the substrate crystals. GaSe crystals are observed to degrade over time even under ambient conditions, leading to a large hysteresis in graphene transport making it a less suitable substrate. © 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.

Department of Physics

Applied Physics Letters

Electronic transport in graphene-based heterostructures

The post-cyclic behaviour of a clayey soil after subjecting to cyclic loading is presented in this paper. Tests were carried out on the samples both by allowing the cyclic pore pressure developed during cyclic loading to dissipate and without dissipation. While the samples subjected to post-cyclic monotonic loading without dissipation of cyclic pore pressure exhibited a highly overconsolidated behaviour, the samples after dissipation of cyclic pore pressure exhibited a lightly overconsolidated behaviour. All the samples subjected to cyclic loading exhibited a higher undrained strength during post-cyclic monotonic tests, when compared to the samples without prior cyclic loading history. Post cyclic consolidation tests depicts that the samples show signs of apparent over-consolidation. © 2013 Indian Geotechnical Society.

Department of Civil Engineering

Indian Geotechnical Journal

Post-Cyclic Behaviour of Clayey Soil

APS March Meeting Abstracts 2014, A4.

Influence of non-magnetic dilution in honeycomb-lattice iridates A2IrO3 (A=Na,Li)

Rapid population growth, urban sprawl, and increased agricultural production in the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) river basin are threatening the availability of freshwater resources and greatly affecting the supply of freshwater to Apalachicola Bay, which supports a struggling shellfish industry. As a result, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida have been fighting over the allocation of ACF river basin water for the past three decades. The water conflict heats up every time there is drought in the basin. In the Southeast U.S., droughts are mainly caused by the La Niña phase of the seasonal-to-interannual climate variability phenomenon known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Understanding and quantifying the impact of ENSO-induced climate variability on precipitation, soil moisture, streamflows, and groundwater levels can provide valuable information for sustainable management of water resources in this region. This study was undertaken to quantify the impact of ENSO on groundwater levels in the lower ACF river basin, an area highly dependent on groundwater for agricultural water use. Twenty-one observation wells with 30 years of monthly groundwater level data were used to study the ENSO-groundwater level relationship. Wavelet analysis techniques were used to study the teleconnection between ENSO and groundwater levels, while Mann-Whitney tests were conducted to quantify the impact. The effect of prolonged La Niña events on groundwater levels and their corresponding recovery periods were also studied. Results indicate a strong relationship between groundwater level fluctuations and ENSO. This relationship was found to be stronger during the recharge season (December-April) as compared to the non-recharge or agricultural irrigation season (May-November). The results obtained can be used to develop procedures for forecasting groundwater levels, which can then be used to better manage the groundwater resources of this region. © 2014 American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers.

Transactions of the ASABE

Effect of ENSO-induced climate variability on groundwater levels in the lower apalachicola-chattahoochee-flint river basin

This study addresses the dynamic modelling and control of a novel three degrees of freedom (3-DOF) planar parallel robotic motion platform in the presence of parameter uncertainties and external disturbances. The proposed planar parallel motion platform is a guide way free manipulator and has two legs both with a revolute-prismatic-revolute (RPR) configuration located in the same plane connecting a moving platform. Of the two, one leg comprises of only one active prismatic joint, while the other leg consists of an active prismatic and an active rotary joint. The dynamic model has been derived using Euler-Lagrangian energy based formulation method. The proposed controller is based on computer torque control integrated with a disturbance observer. The disturbance vector comprising of disturbances due to parameter uncertainties, payload variations, frictional effects and further disturbances is estimated using a nonlinear disturbance observer incorporated with an extended Kalman filter (EKF). The observer uses only position and orientation measurements. Simulations with a typical trajectory are presented and compared with traditional controllers such as proportional integral derivative (PID) controller and computed torque controller and the results show that superior tracking performance is achieved in the presence of parameter uncertainties and external disturbances.

Department of Mechanical Engineering

Procedia Materials Science

Dynamic Modellingand Control of a 3-DOF Planar Parallel Robotic (XY$\theta$Z Motion) Platform

In the present study, a detailed visualization of the transport of fuel film has been performed in a small carburetted engine with a transparent manifold at the exit of the carburettor. The presence of fuel film is observed significantly on the lower half of the manifold at idling, while at load conditions, the film is found to be distributed all throughout the manifold walls. Quantitative measurement of the fuel film in a specially-designed manifold of square cross section has also been performed using the planar laser-induced fluorescence (PLIF) technique. The measured fuel film thickness is observed to be of the order of 1 mm at idling and in the range of 0.1 to 0.4 mm over the range of load and speed studied. These engine studies are complemented by experiments conducted in a carburettor rig to study the state of the fuel exiting the carburettor. Laser-based Particle/Droplet Image Analysis (PDIA) technique is used to identify fuel droplets and ligaments and estimate droplet diameters. At a throttle position corresponding to idling, the fuel exiting the carburettor is found to consist of very fine droplets of size less than 15 μm and large fuel ligaments associated with length scales of the order of 500 μm and higher. For a constant pressure difference across the carburettor, the fuel consists of droplets with an SMD of the order of 30 μm. Also, the effect of liquid fuel film on the cold start HC emissions is studied. Based on the understanding obtained from these studies, strategies such as manifold heating and varying carburettor main jet nozzle diameter are implemented. These are observed to reduce emissions under both idling and varying load conditions. © 2014 Indian Academy of Sciences.

Sadhana - Academy Proceedings in Engineering Sciences

Study of liquid fuel transport in a small carburetted engine in the context of cold-start HC emission control

Herein we report a study combining metabolomics and mass isotopomer analysis used for investigation of the biochemical fate of γ- hydroxybutyric acid (GHB). Using various 13C incorporation labeling patterns into GHB, we have discovered that GHB is catabolized by previously unknown processes that include (i) direct β-oxidation to acetyl-CoA and glycolate, (ii) α-oxidation to 3-hydroxypropionyl-CoA and formate, and (iii) cleavage of C-4 to yield 3-hydroxypropionate and CO2. We further utilized the unique attributes of our labeling patterns and the resultant isotopomers to quantitate relative flux down the identified pathways. © 2014 American Chemical Society.

Department of Chemistry

ACS Chemical Biology

Modular isotopomer synthesis of γ-hydroxybutyric acid for a quantitative analysis of metabolic fates

The paper presents a decision tree (DT) induced fuzzy rule-based intelligent differential relaying scheme for transmission lines including unified power flow controller (UPFC) and wind-farms. The conventional distance relaying scheme fails miserably in protecting transmission lines including flexible AC transmission systems controllers such as UPFC and further, the protection issues become more challenging when wind-farm is integrated. The proposed protection scheme extracts features from the instantaneous voltage and current signals from both ends of the transmission line using discrete Fourier transform based pre-processor and computes corresponding differential features. The differential features are used to build the fault classification tree using a data-mining algorithm known as DT. Further, the fuzzy membership functions are drawn using the DT thresholds and the corresponding fuzzy rule-base is developed for final relaying decision. The proposed technique has been extensively tested (in MATLAB environment) for single circuit and double circuit transmission lines including UPFC and wind-farms with wide variations in operating conditions. The test results indicate that the proposed DTinduced fuzzy rule-based relaying scheme is highly reliable and robust for protection of complex transmission line including UPFC and wind-farm. © The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2014.

Department of Electrical Engineering

IET Generation, Transmission and Distribution

Decision tree-induced fuzzy rule-based differential relaying for transmission line including unified power flow controller and wind-farms

In contemporary wideband orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems, such as Long Term Evolution (LTE) and WiMAX, different subcarriers over which a codeword is transmitted may experience different signal-to-noise-ratios (SNRs). Thus, adaptive modulation and coding (AMC) in these systems is driven by a vector of subcarrier SNRs experienced by the codeword, and is more involved. Exponential effective SNR mapping (EESM) simplifies the problem by mapping this vector into a single equivalent flat-fading SNR. Analysis of AMC using EESM is challenging owing to its non-linear nature and its dependence on the modulation and coding scheme. We first propose a novel statistical model for the EESM, which is based on the Beta distribution. It is motivated by the central limit approximation for random variables with a finite support. It is simpler and as accurate as the more involved ad hoc models proposed earlier. Using it, we develop novel expressions for the throughput of a point-to-point OFDM link with multi-antenna diversity that uses EESM for AMC. We then analyze a general, multi-cell OFDM deployment with co-channel interference for various frequency-domain schedulers. Extensive results based on LTE and WiMAX are presented to verify the model and analysis, and gain new insights. © 2014 IEEE.