A construction technique using lightweight geomaterials has many practical advantages because of their light self-weight, which makes it possible to reduce large deformations and differential settlement of soft ground or a foundation with poor bearing capacity. Nowadays expanded polystyrene (EPS) blocks are used with soil to make it lightweight material. Few applications like embankment construction, retaining walls and road construction can be mention. These blocks are manufactured by industry in regular shapes only.

A miniature CBR apparatus was fabricated which is very handy and portable, unlike to that of the standard CBR apparatus which is very heavy and consumes lot of time and effort for conducting the test. This apparatus is very useful in improving the soil properties especially with the new innovative nanotechnology based materials as the apparatus would require lesser quantity in mixing with respect to the lesser size of the mould.

The increase in population and the surge in urbanisation in both the developed and the emerging economies are resulting in a decrease of suitable land for development of infrastructure. Consequently, it can be expected that the need to quarry slag heaps and landfills containing such materials for use in construction, such as earthworks, pavements and buildings, will increase rapidly.

Consolidation of soil by surcharge loading with prefabricated vertical drains is an effective ground improvement technique in saturated cohesive soils such as marine clay. Four types of band-shaped drains made from singlelayer woven and non-woven jute geotextile filter fabric wrapped around a core of coir ropes or mats, designated as natural drains, were developed and fabricated. Laboratory marine clay confined discharge capacity and large-scale consolidation tests were conducted on the natural drains and commercially available polymer-based drains.

Contemporary research on gas turbine is focussed on achieving improved performance with lower emissions while avoiding combustion instabilities. Gas turbine industry is focussing mainly on simulations, for cutting down experimental iterations, cost and development time. In our laboratory, gas turbine combustion is simulated using a real life combustor with working variables of an actual gas turbine engine. An experimental facility is also created using one of the ‘can’ combustors of the gas turbine to imitate the actual scenario found in the engine.

It is well known that the traditional paradigm of the materials science tetrahedron depicts the inter-dependent relationship among the structure, properties, processing, and performance of a material. The demand for high performance structural materials for real world applications has undoubtedly driven scientific efforts for the past few decades due to stringent regulations on efficiency and emissions.

Increasing degree of miniatursation of structures and devices has thrown open new observations in a material's response to different loading environments that are starkly different from that of the bulk. Thin films, nanostructures, MEMS and several other systems belong to this category. The 'smaller is stronger' and 'inverse Hall-Petch effect' are typical size effects that occur when the external surface or internal interface shrinks in size. Brittle materials become more damage tolerant while ductile materials tend to become increasingly brittle at small dimensions.

India is infamously called the ‘diabetes capital of the world’. With over 40 million diabetics in the country, we have a distinction of having the highest number of diabetics for any country. This has huge implications on the country’s healthcare, forcing doctors, scientists and citizens to work together to manage and remediate this condition. Now, researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay) have some sweet news for diabetics. They have developed a polymer based bioartificial pancreas that can be implanted inside the body, thus helping in managing diabetes. 

Study shows how crystallisation can be used to shape materials

Breakthrough in chemical analysis of Intrinsically Conducting Polymers (ICPs) enables easier identification of polymers suitable for different prospective applications. Researchers at IIT Bombay have come up with a novel and much simpler method to quantify their charge storage characteristics.

Researchers develop a highly effective solution for recovering green sand in small and medium foundries.

Researchers from IIT Bombay fabricate highly efficient transistors using graphene nanoribbons

Prof. Vikram Vishal, Assistant Professor at the Department of Earth Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, was recently awarded the prestigious NASI Young Scientist Award - 2018 for his work on unconventional hydrocarbons. He is one of the 20 researchers across the country, to be awarded the annual prize for exceptional research in the field of Electronics, Engineering, Chemical Sciences, Physical Sciences and Plant Sciences. 

Prof Amit Agrawal, Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay), has been awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). This award recognises his outstanding contributions to the area of Fluid Mechanics including experimental, theoretical and numerical work in Microfluidic Devices. 

Prof. Chandra M. R. Volla, an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, has won the NASI Young Scientist Award 2018 for his research in the field of chemical sciences. His work deals with catalysis, the process of accelerating a chemical reaction by the use of an agent referred to as a catalyst. He shares the award with three other recipients. 

Study shows how crystallisation can be used to shape materials

Researchers from IIT Bombay have designed a protein-based carrier for delivering drugs into cancer cells.

We have all felt it—the uncomfortable feeling in our nether regions that has us heading to the nearest washroom to empty our bladder. While many of us can hold it until we reach a toilet, those with urinary incontinence, or the inability to prevent the leakage of urine from the bladder, face a severe social and hygiene issue. This condition can be caused by a variety of factors, such as urinary tract infections, kidney stones or neurological disorders.

Silicon-based electronic circuits are continuously getting smaller. The Taiwanese manufacturer
TSMC currently makes chips with the smallest feature of the circuit measuring just 7
nanometers, with millions of such components packed on a single chip. The process of
manufacturing such ultra-dense circuits is complex. Despite world-class control, there are tiny
fluctuations in the nanoscale dimensions. Thus, each transistor is slightly different from another
across chips and even on the same chip. A circuit designer must account for such variations to

The research in our laboratory is focused on designing and developing novel, inexpensive and stable phosphorus based compounds to study their organometallic chemistry and explore their catalytic and medicinal applications. Our group is also focusing on designing multifunctional phosphorus based ligands for making homoleptic soft-soft metal-organic frameworks for catalytic, material and photophysical applications.