In the present study, an attempt has been made to understand the behavior of railway embankment through three-dimensional Plaxis software. The numerical modeling analysis was carried using four different backfill materials such as natural soil, 70% steel slag with 30% soil mixture, fly ash, and expanded polystyrene (EPS) geofoam with three different densities 12, 15 and 20 kg/m3. The comparative investigation of natural soil, steel slag-soil mixture, fly ash, and EPS geofoam as an embankment backfill materials were carried out based on stability and displacement conditions.

Fly ash is nothing but a pozzolanic material formed from thermal power plants during combustion of coals all over the world using crushed coal to generate electricity, which also results in approximately 1 MT (million tons) of annual production of the by-product fly ash that cannot be assimilated to the geo-environment while being disposed and becomes a major threat for environment pollution and land scarcity. Fly ash in bulk quantity has usually been used extensively for the construction of embankments in highways and railways.

Construction of roadway or railway embankments on soft foundation soil such as marine clay is always a major issue due to poor load carrying capacity and excessive settlements. In such conditions, two major remedies are available. One is ground improvement technique by enhancing the engineering properties of foundation soil and second is reduction in the overburden pressure of structure on foundation soil.

Expanded polystyrene (EPS) geofoam is an interesting area in the fields of geotechnical engineering from past four decades. It is rapidly growing and becoming popular due to its large number of applications as a compressible inclusion, lightweight fill and barrier in various structures. An alternative method for compression and tensile testing of EPS geofoam has been proposed which is comparatively easy in terms of fabricating the test assembly and preparation of test specimens than suggested in other test specifications.

In India, steel industry produces 8 million tons (MT) of waste for generation of 25 MT steel annually. An attempt has been made to utilise the steel slag as embankment fill material. Comparative study of embankment modelled with different fill materials such as soil-steel slag mix and natural fill material, using finite element method based software PLAXIS 3D has been carried out. The highway embankment of width 8 meters and 2:1 side slope was modelled using PLAXIS 3D. As the embankment is symmetric with respect to the centre line, only half portion of the embankment was modelled.

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.

Nano organosilane for pavement applications

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.

This study narrates the use of post-consumer waste plastic water bottles for developing a new type encasement to confine the fly ash columns fully penetrated in soft clay. Geocell reinforced fly ash beds along with a jute geotextile separator were also placed over the fly ash columns, while the cellular mattresses were also made of same type plastic water bottles.

The study presents reinforcement parameters for a 300m high artificial sand mountain. It is first attempt to design such huge structure with geogrid reinforced soil in the world. Limit equilibrium method is used in this study. Hit and Trial method is then used to optimize the reinforcement parameters and achieve desired factor of safety. The obtained reinforcement details can be helpful in designing high rise reinforced soil structures. The reinforced soil structure is stable, economic and easy to construct as compared to unreinforced one.

Expanded polystyrene (EPS) geofoam is an interesting area in the field of geotechnical engineering and its service life is comparable to other construction materials. With different geotechnical applications of EPS geofoam involving submergence, underlying compacted soil and higher structural loads, creep deformation under compression pressure have been occurring. In this study, an attempt was made to investigate the behavior of compression creep of EPS geofoam through Plaxis 3D software.

Pipelines are lifeline structures that provide essential services to communities by transporting water, liquid wastes,oil and gas, andpetroleum products over long distances. Nowadays, nearly 75% of the oil and petroleum products aretransported yearly by pipelines. Likewise, majority of water and gas to world’s urban centers and communitiesare transported by pipelines.

Study reveals how detrimental the use of mobile phones is while driving in India

A study by researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB) has shown how using mobile phones while driving can distract drivers and affect their ability to handle hazardous situations. The results of the study has shown that both calling and texting while driving degrades the performance of a driver.

Efficient tracking and maneuvering of Chandrayaan is crucial for the success of the mission. An efficient and low cost tracking algorithm from IIT Bombay could be a solution to this.

Researchers from IIT Bombay are working on methods to ease the machining of titanium through annealing

Study proposes an improved additive manufacturing method to restore damaged components

Study uses digital processing of archived satellite images to study the growth patterns in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region.

Supply chains are distributed and decentralised in nature, with multiple player operating in a dynamic and stochastic environment. Activities and decisions are becoming increasingly customer-centric, and there is a deluge of data. However, extracting meaningful information and prescribing effective real-time decision using the data is non-trivial.Our current works are as follows:

System dynamics methodology, discrete-event simulation, and agent based models are powerful techniques to model, understand and analyse complex stochastic and dynamic systems. Hybrid methods that combine simulation with optimisation approaches assist evidence-based robust policy decisions. The applications range across supply chain, transportation, socio-economic and healthcare systems.

Our current research activities are described below:

Our group is developing new techniques for solving difficult mixed integer nonlinear and combinatorial optimisation problems (MINLPs). These problems arise in a wide variety of scientific, engineering and business applications ranging from portfolio optimisation to design of logistic networks of a supply chain, scheduling of industrial operations and optimal layout of industrial facilities. Many of these problems are provably hard – all known algorithms to solve these problems take exponential amount of time in the size of the input.