A remotely operated ground vehicle (RoVeR) was designed and developed for use in counter terrorism and counter-insurgency operations by the Indian Army.The RoVeR can traverse difficult terrain, extreme slopes, inspect suspicious objects (e.g. improvised explosive devices) with a robotic arm (even when hidden under a bridge) and give visual feedback to an operator away at a safe distance of 0.5 km.

Features 

Understanding impact dynamics of bouncing and non-bouncing droplets on hydrophobic and superhydrophobic surfaces is useful in several technical applications. These surfaces exhibit low wettability and this property may be leveraged in the applications such as pesticide spray coating, drag reduction, anti-snow adhesion surfaces, self cleaning surfaces, and surface cooling via spray evaporative cooling and on spatially varying wettability surfaces.The effect of pitch of the pillars and impact velocity are studied for the impact dynamics of a microliter

On a fine morning, if you take a tiny droplet of coffee and dry it on a table top, a ring like pattern of dried coffee particles forms. This problem is known as coffee ring problem and the mechanism of the ring formation was firstproposed by Deegan et al, 1997. This seems to be an efficient way pattern micro or nanoparticles on solid surfaces. For example, in bioassays and ink-jet printing. In our lab, we have established new ways to self-assemble particles by evaporating sessile droplets.

Due to growing push towards miniaturisation, microscale manufacturing is gaining prominence in biomedical, diagnostic, strategic and electronics applications.

India is planning to implement BS (Bharat Stage) VI emission norms by the year 2020. With this, advanced technologies are necessary to reduce emissions in IC engines by a large percentage. Several technologies have been tried to reduce emissions in our lab; some of them are:
Ultra-cooled EGR (UCEGR)
Exhaust gas is cooled, using a counter flow heat exchanger, to less than 5 o C and recirculated back to the engine.
Oxidised EGR (OEGR)

Lifted flame is a very complicated turbulence flame; difficult to model thelift-off height. Conditional moment closure (CMC) is an advanced combustion model but it too cannot predict the lift-off height accurately. We have successfully proposed a new model based on extinction criteria (CMCE). CMCE has predicted lift-off heights accurately for a wide range of jet velocities and coflow temperatures in a lesser CPU time. This proposed model helps in modeling gas turbine combustion accurately.

This is the age of smart coatings – which means the coating will act its designated function as per the pre-defined stimulus. Multi-storey glass buildings, ACP facades, solar panels, sophisticated furniture, etc. all gather dust or stains which spoil them. In order to make them stain / dust free, it is advisable to provide the self-cleaning ability.

A novel route to achieve 2D carrier confinement in a wedge shaped wall structure made of a polar semiconductor has been demonstrated. Our theory reveals that the wedge shape leads to the development of charges of equal polarity on the two inclined facades of the wall. Polarisation induced negative (positive) charges on the facades can push the electrons (holes) inward for a n-type (p-type) material which results in the formation of a 2D electron (hole) gas at the central plane and ionised donors (acceptors) at the outer edges of the wall.

Modern gun-battles are rarely waged on open ground where enemies face each other, and the origin of unfriendly and friendly fire are easy to locate. Instead, most combats are now staged in obstacle-dense situations like cities, forests and mountain valleys, where the location of a shooter may be difficult to pinpoint aurally due to reverberations. More importantly, our security forces may not even be present within audible range of all gunshots at all times, due to the highly mobile nature of modern combat.

Composites have been extensively used in the manufacturing of wind turbine blades over the past two decades. Significant expertise and field experience has been accumulated in the design, manufacturing and repair / maintenance of these wind turbine blades. However, with the increasing blade length, the design imperatives have pushed the materials used for the blade construction from conventional E-glass to carbon fiber based polymer composites. This shift also leads to design shift from stiffness limited design to strength limited design.

Particle image velocimetry (PIV) technique is used for measurement of fluid velocity. It involves seeding micron-size particles in a flow, illuminating the particles with a laser pulse, capturing the position of the particles using a camera, and finally interrogating two such time elapsed images to obtain the displacement (and velocity) of the particle (or flow). The technique provides information at numerous points simultaneously and is non-intrusive; these advantages make PIV score substantially higher than conventional techniques (such as Pitot tube).

In current scenario, environmental pollution has become a greater challenge for the whole mankind. Main source of the pollutant includes industrial applications, air and land based traffic. These emissions are mainly CO, NO x and UHC (unburned hydro carbon) causing many harmful effects like acid rain, smog and haze resulting in global warming. It is expected that emissions norms will become stricter in near future. It is reported that by 2025, NO x , CO and UHC should be reduced by 80%.

Combustion driven power sources offer astounding advantages over conventional chemical batteries, such as higher energy densities, lower weight, short recharging time, limitless number of rechargeable cycles and environment friendly operation. These devices have wide applications in micro satellite thrusters, MEMS, chemical sensing,and micro air vehicles (MAV).

The cleaner and higher efficiency burning of syngas mixtures in integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) have made syngas the most promising alternative to conventional fossil fuels for power generation. The burning velocity is an intrinsic property of a combustible mixture that characterises the overall reaction rate of the flame. We determined the laminar burning velocities of multi-component mixtures experimentally at elevated temperatures. The combustion characteristics of practical syngas mixtures is vital for efficient use of lean premixed mode of syngas-air mixtures in IGCC.

Identification of small-scale combustion based devices as high energy density source and development of modern microfabrication techniques has led to many opportunities in the area of development of micro-power generation devices. These combustion based micro power devices are expected to feed the portable micromechanical, communication, sensing biomedical systems, UAVs, micro-thrusters and various micro-scale industrial applications.

The interest of the automotive and aviation community in biofuels has surged in the past decade primarily due to a shift in global awareness towards cutting greenhouse gas emissions. This has translated into stringent policies for fuel usage and emission norms. In this context, the research community has shifted its focus towards biofuels as a part of the larger renewable plan for the planet.

TMT (Thirty Meter Telescope) is one of the world’s largest ground based telescope project. The telescope’s primary mirror is 30 meters in diameter and is comprised of hundreds of hexagonal mirror segments. Each mirror segment is mounted on a critical support component known as the central diaphragm.

Precision machining is perhaps one of the most essential and widely performed manufacturing processes in several industries today, particularly in the aerospace and automotive sectors. It is amongst the few conventional manufacturing processes which ensure that raw materials are converted efficiently into functional components within the tolerance limits set by design. This is crucial in order to ensure optimal system performance.

The Avionics equipments are integrated on various aircrafts using mounting trays. Modern day aircrafts are designed with avionics bays where the avionics equipments are mounted. The mounting tray is an interface between the avionic equipment and the aircraft frame.

These mounting trays should withstand all the dynamic loading conditions like random vibration, Sine on random vibration, gun fire vibration, shock & arrestor landing shock, etc. depending on the aircraft requirements.

Product development activities in the 21 st century face several challenges such as shorter product life cycles, frequent design revisions and need for shortest time to market. Globalisation has added a new dimension to this scenario forcing manufacturers to look for solutions to automate and integrate product life cycle activities. Internet has emerged an excellent tool providing interoperability among designers, manufacturers, suppliers and end users for distributed global product development.