(SoE) School of Engineering

<p>Shiv Nadar University is a comprehensive, multidisciplinary, research-focused, and student-centric University offering a full range of academic programs at the undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral level. With state-of-the-art infrastructure, the University comprises of academic wings, sophisticated labs, international standard sports facilities, amphitheaters, auditorium, conference rooms and smart classrooms. The University&rsquo;s goal is to become internationally recognized for the quality of its research and creative endeavors and their applicability to improving quality of life, generating new insights and expanding the boundaries of human knowledge creativity. Committed to excellence in teaching, research and service, the University aims to serve the higher education needs of India and the world beyond.</p>

Shiv Nadar University

<p>To investigate the seasonal and spatial variations of ion chemistry of fine particles in Northern Zhejiang Province (NZP), China, one year-long field sampling was conducted at four representative sites (two urban, one suburb, and one rural sites) in both cities of Hangzhou and Ningbo from December 2014 to November 2015. Twelve water soluble inorganic ions (WSII) were characterized in this comprehensive study. The annual average of PM2.5 concentration in NZP as overall was 66.2&nbsp;±&nbsp;37.7&nbsp;μg&nbsp;m−3, and urban sites in NZP were observed with more severe PM2.5 pollution than the suburban and rural sites. The annual average concentration of total WSII at four sampling sites in NZP was 29.1&nbsp;±&nbsp;19.9&nbsp;μg&nbsp;m−3, dominated by SO4 2− (10.3&nbsp;μg&nbsp;m−3), and followed by NO3 − (8.9&nbsp;μg&nbsp;m−3), NH4 + (6.6&nbsp;μg&nbsp;m−3), Cl− (1.3&nbsp;μg&nbsp;m−3) and K+ (0.7&nbsp;μg&nbsp;m−3). Among all cations, NH4 + was the predominant neutralizing ion with the highest neutralization factor (NF), while the remaining cations showed limited neutralization capacity. The highest and lowest sulfur oxidation ratio (SOR) values in this region were found in summer and winter, respectively; while the seasonal patterns for nitrogen oxidation ratio (NOR) were opposite to that of SOR. Principal component analysis (PCA) showed that the significant sources of WSII in NZP were industrial emissions, biomass burning, and formation of secondary inorganic aerosols. In addition, contribution from transboundary transport of polluted aerosols was also confirmed from the assessment through air mass backward trajectory analysis. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd</p>

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Civil Engineering

Fulltext

Chemosphere

Temporal and spatial variation in major ion chemistry and source identification of secondary inorganic aerosols in Northern Zhejiang Province, China

Renewable energy has a huge potential in the upcoming era due to the scarcity of fossil fuels. Taking this into account a 2D numerical simulation has been carried out to predict the performance of a five-bladed Darrieus H-type vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT). To this aim, a computational setup is built on a finite-volume method discretization of two-dimensional unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations (RANS), with k-ε turbulence modelling. The analysis is carried out adopting sliding mesh technique and validated against the experimental results. Using this approach the proposed model is solved to predict the lift and drag coefficients, the torque generated, the power coefficients at different tip speed ratios (TSR). Finally, the investigation concludes by validating the overall performance and the power output of the five-blade (NACA 0018) vertical axis wind turbine in freestream condition. The performance efficiency of the current analysis is compared with experimental three bladed (NACA 0018) wind turbine. The turbine achieves a maximum peak power coefficient (Cp) at higher wind speed and tip speed ranging from 2.5 to 3.5. This research advances on understanding the design optimization of small or medium scale VAWT with associated power rating. © 2017 Int. J. Mech. Eng. Rob. Res.

Mechanical Engineering

International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Research

Parametric sensitivity analysis of vertical axis wind turbine

Amorphous metallic alloys are widely used in bulk form and as coatings for their desirable corrosion and wear behavior. Nevertheless, the effects of heat treatment and thermal cycling on these surface properties are not well understood. In this study, the corrosion and wear behavior of two Zr-based bulk metallic glasses were evaluated in as-cast and thermally relaxed states. Significant improvement in wear rate, friction coefficient, and corrosion penetration rate was seen for both alloys after thermal relaxation. A fully amorphous structure was retained with thermal relaxation below the glass transition. There was an increase in surface hardness and elastic modulus for both alloys after relaxation. The improvement in surface properties was explained based on annihilation of free volume. © 2017, The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society.

Amorphous Metallic Alloys: Pathways for Enhanced Wear and Corrosion Resistance

Friction and adhesion becomes extremely important at nano and micro length scales, modulating the durability of several nano/micro electromechanical systems (NEMS/MEMS). Bio-mimicking the surface texture of different living organisms has helped improve the tribological performance of many such systems. In this study, we examined the friction and wetting behaviour of textured surfaces derived by mimicking the surface morphology of butterfly wing. Three different derivatives of mimicked structure with similar solid/air fraction but different contact aspect ratios were fabricated on Si wafer using photolithography and deep reactive ion-etching techniques. The textured surfaces patterns were subsequently coated with polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), diamond-like carbon (DLC), and fluorine incorporated diamond-like carbon (F-DLC) using plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) technique. Atomic force microscope was used to investigate the friction behaviour of the coated and un-coated samples at different applied normal load. Wetting behaviour of the textured and control surfaces was measured using sessile-drop method. Results showed that both wettability and friction were significantly influenced by the shape, orientation and surface chemistry of the textured structure. The PTFE and F-DLC coatings helped reduce the friction compared to Si control surface. The developed patterned displayed dual character with wetting and friction being function of the texture shape. The increase in aspect ratio of textured geometry enhanced directional wettability and friction. The wetting was controlled by the contact-line pinning phenomenon modulated by the texture geometry. The friction behaviour of the textured geometry varied in direct correlation with the contact area. Further, the edge-effect showed prominent influence leading to an increase in friction force in lateral direction. The effect of surface chemistry and texture geometry is explained on basis of intermolecular forces and contact mechanics. The directional friction and wetting characteristics of the developed surface would be of potential use for transport applications in different systems. © 2017 Elsevier B.V.

Wear

Nanotribological behavior of bioinspired textured surfaces with directional characteristics

This study reports the performance of 23 Electrical Distribution Divisions (EDD's) of an Indian state, Uttarakhand for the period of 2005-2006 using the concepts of Additive Model (AM), Slack Based Modelling (SBM) and Two-stage Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Slack Based Modelling helps in quantifying the slacks, which is a hidden source of inefficiency that might be present in BCC efficient DMU's. Following the slack quantification, a two-stage DEA is applied. The results obtained from AM and SBM indicate that numerous EDD's have scope for improvement in overall efficiency by incorporating the slacks that have been identified in the particular EDD. Further the two stage DEA modelling suggest that the inefficiency is primarily due to the intermediate measures. © 2016 IEEE.

Electrical Engineering

International Conference on Electrical Power and Energy Systems, ICEPES 2016

Performance evaluation of uttarakhand electric utility data using slack based measure and two-stage DEA modelling

This paper presents a two stage solution methodology for deterministic unit commitment problem. In the first stage the ON/OFF status of units is determined by priority list method while in the second stage the economic load dispatch has been solved by Particle swarm optimization technique. The proposed technique is applied in MATLAB environment on two different cases comprising of four and ten generating units respectively. It is observed that for both the cases the overall production cost obtained through the proposed technique is better than the results reported thus far. © 2016 IEEE.

2016 IEEE Uttar Pradesh Section International Conference on Electrical, Computer and Electronics Engineering, UPCON 2016

A two stage solution methodology for deterministic unit commitment problem

The self-assembly and deposition mechanisms of nanoparticles in droplets on a substrate are of significant importance in many inkjet printing-based industrial applications such as microelectronics, display systems, and paint manufacturing. However, a comprehensive investigation into the velocity field of fluid and its accompanying particle transport behavior in injected droplets undergoing immediate evaporation has not been conducted. In this study, we describe the underlying mechanisms of the self-assembly and deposition behavior of nanoparticles in inkjet-printed, evaporating droplets by visualizing the internal fluid flows. We additionally characterize the relationship between the internal fluid flows and nanoparticle patterns by changing not only the wettability and temperature of the substrate, but also the chemical composition of nanoparticle suspensions. We verify that Marangoni flow generated on a hydrophobic PDMS substrate with a contact angle (CA) of >90° helps the formation of dome-shaped nanoparticle structures, while radially outward flow generated on a hydrophilic glass substrate with a CA of <10° produces either mono-layered and flat, or ring-shaped nanoparticle structures, depending on the number density of the suspension. The presented characterization results provide not only valuable mechanistic insights, but also practical guidelines for inkjet printing-based nanoparticle applications. © 2017 Elsevier B.V.

Chemical Engineering

Sensors and Actuators, B: Chemical

Characterizing self-assembly and deposition behavior of nanoparticles in inkjet-printed evaporating droplets

We present a high precision lumped parameter model for efficient prediction of the resonant frequencies and coupling of cantilevered piezoelectric energy harvesters in absence of tip mass. Correction factors for the existing lumped parameter model are derived by comparing with the highly accurate distributed parameter model of cantilevered harvesters. First, a correction factor is defined for uncoupled lumped parameter model to predict the natural frequencies. Finally, the coupled lumped parameter model is subjected to a unified correction factor to accurately predict both the resonant frequencies and electrical outputs. The unified correction factor is derived by unifying the frequency and amplitude correction factors. The calculated outputs are in good agreement with the experimental results available in the literature. © 2001-2012 IEEE.

IEEE Sensors Journal

A High Precision Lumped Parameter Model for Piezoelectric Energy Harvesters

Rotating biological filter (RBF), which provides higher oxygen mass transfer has been developed for treating gaseous volatile organic compounds (VOCs) such as BTEX (Benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene) at higher concentrations. The screening of enriched cultures has been done initially to enhance the performance of RBF for treating xylene, toluene and xylene, and BTEX at various loading rates. The removal efficiency of BTEX was maximum (82%), higher than toluene and xylene (79%), and xylene (72%). The presence of xylene enhanced the removal of toluene in the mixture. In the BTEX, toluene was found to be highly biodegradable followed by ethylbenzene, benzene and xylene. The RBF also removed nutrients from wastewater along with VOCs. The stability study of RBF showed that supply of nutrient media influenced the RBF performance more. Further, the predominant strain identified in the mixed culture was Enterobacter cloacae SP4001, responsible for biodegradation of BTEX. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd

Bioresource Technology

Treatment of gaseous volatile organic compounds using a rotating biological filter

This paper proposes an energy efficient instrumentation set-up for pulse-compression thermal-wave imaging with a low-power LED excitation source. The set-up consists of three different subsystems that are synchronised in time. The individual systems consist of a LED modulation circuitry, reference signal measurement circuitry, and an IR camera trigger signal generation circuitry for frame capture. A separate reference acquisition circuitry is useful in quantifying defect depth resolution. This paper also proposes a nonuniform frame capture technique to reduce the memory allocation space of the recorded video. The technique is based on varying the sampling rate with a change in instantaneous frequency and is specifically useful for frequency modulated excitation signal. The proposed technique is implemented on a carbon fiber reinforced polymer test-piece. The variation of pulse compression parameters with different defect dimension is studied, and the results are verified with an electro-thermal simulator. Further, an objective comparison of pulse compression experiment for different experiment duration is presented. © 2017 IEEE.