Dry wear of al-graphite particle composites

Under lubricated conditions, Al-graphite particle composite is a good antiseizure bearing and antifriction material possessing properties which inhibit excessive temperature rise in bearings. The present study characterizes the dry wear properties of the composite. The dry wear characteristics of the Al-(2.7%–5.7% graphite particle) (50–200μm) composite were found to deteriorate with the addition of graphite, load and sliding distance. Both micro structural and microhardness studies of the worn subsurfaces and analysis of wear debris show that the reductions in strength and ductility of the composite due to graphite addition are the most likely causes of deterioration in the wear properties of the composite.     

Adaptable and Energy Efficacious Routing using Modified Emperor Penguin Colony Optimization Multi-faceted Metaheuristics Algorithm for MANETS

Wireless Personal Communications - In the field of computer science, the metaheuristics is a top level approach that is configured to discover, to yield or to pick a biased searching algorithm that...     

A modified colorimetric method for the estimation of β-cyclodextrin using phenolphthalein

The binding equilibrium between β-cyclodextrin and phenolphthalein has been used to develop a method for the estimation of β-cyclodextrin in solution. From logarithmic plots of amounts of β-cyclodextrin against absorbance at 554 nm, a relation log X  = (log A  − log Y )/ B was found, which gave an estimate of β-cyclodextrin in the concentration range 0.0045 mg mL⁻¹ (3.96 μm) to 4.7 mg mL⁻¹ (4.14 mm), where X =  intercept and B  = slope. This method was found to be highly reproducible and reliable.     

Evolution of and preconditions for generation of corrugations on a plane surface in rolling contact

A hard roller under normal load is driven by the flat surface of a soft disc. Corrugations are generated on the disc when certain surface morphological, load, speed and mechanical property-oriented conditions are met. The evolutionary process of corrugation generation and the preconditions necessary for it are investigated morphologically and mechanically for four disc materials: mild steel, brass, PTFE and PMMA.     

Isolation,process optimisation and characterisation of the protein from the de‐oiled cake flour of Madhuca latifolia

This work reports the isolation of the protein from the flour of an underutilised agro waste, a de‐oiled cake of Madhuca latifolia using the bis (2‐ethylehexyl) sodium sulfosuccinate salt reverse micelle and the characterisation of the protein through various techniques. The experimental conditions for the extraction were optimised using Box–Behnken design. The highest yield of the protein was achieved when the extraction parameters, i.e. KCl concentration, KCl amount, and pH of the medium, were 0.5 M, 1.25 ml, and 9.02, respectively. The experimental yield (75.56%) obtained under the optimised conditions matched extremely well with the predicted yield (75.19%). The analysis of the biochemical composition envisaged the occurrence of 2S albumin, 7S globulin, and 11S globulin as the major components in the protein. The X‐ray diffraction pattern supported the β‐sheets structure of the protein. The imaging of the protein through a scanning electron microscope revealed the shape and surface of the protein to be spherical and smooth, respectively. Thus, the protein isolate of the de‐oiled cake flour of Madhuca latifolia could be utilised towards food product development and relevant fields.Inspec keywords: scanning electron microscopy, food products, proteins, pH, chemical engineeringOther keywords: process optimisation, de‐oiled cake flour, underutilised agro waste, Madhuca latifolia, 2‐ethylehexyl, Box‐Behnken design, protein isolate, KCl     

Mechanical and tribological studies of polymer hybrid nanocomposites with nano reinforcements

Developments of nanoparticle reinforced plastics are of growing interest towards the emergence of new materials which enhance optimal utilization of natural resources and particularly of renewable resources. The effects of nanoparticles as fillers in glass-epoxy composite systems on the mechanical and tribological properties have been discussed in this article. The mechanical properties such as tensile strength, impact strength, flexural strength, and hardness have been studied in accordance with ASTM standards. The composites employed in the study have been fabricated using hand lay-up technique. By varying notch radius impact strength is studied. The clay and silica used in the present system were treated with 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane. The effect of variants in sliding speed, time and applied load on the wear behavior of polymer nanocomposites is studied by measuring the weight changes and observing the surface features using scanning electron microscope. In the experiments with wear test pin having flat face in contact with hardening rotating steel disc, sliding speed, time and loads in the range of 640–1000 RPM, 300–900 s and 5–25 N respectively was used. It is observed that wear rate increases with increasing applied load, time and sliding speeds.     

A rapid ultrasound-assisted production of biodiesel from a mixture of Karanj and soybean oil

Karanj oil having high free fatty acid was neutralized with a dilute alkali solution and then mixed with soybean oil in different ratios in order to reduce the free fatty acid content significantly. The mixture of the oils was then transesterified with methanol to produce fatty acid methyl ester. The transesterification was carried out using ultrasonication energy of 20 kHz in pulse mode. It was found that up to 60% Karanj oil in the blended mixture could produce good quality biodiesel that met the ASTM standards. However, the lesser content of Karanj oil in the mixture, the lesser the reaction parameters viz. alcohol to oil molar ratio, catalyst concentration, and reaction time. About 99% yield of methyl esters was obtained when the Karanj oil content in the mixture was 20% with a reaction time of 30 min, catalyst concentration 1 wt%, and a temperature of 55°C.     

Anxiety-based affective communication for implicit human-machine interaction

An implicit human-machine interaction framework that is sensitive to human anxiety is presented. The overall goal is to achieve detection and recognition of anxiety based on physiological signals. This involves building an anxiety-recognition system capable of interpreting the information contained in physiological processes to predict the probable anxiety state. Since anxiety plays an important role in various human-machine interaction tasks and can be related to task performance, the presented anxiety-recognition methods can be potentially applied to the design of advanced machines and engineering systems capable of intelligent decision-making while interacting with humans. Regression tree and fuzzy logic methodologies have been investigated for the above task. This paper presents the results of applying these two methods and discusses their comparative merits. Three human participant experiments were designed and trials were conducted with five participants. The experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed anxiety-recognition methods. To the best of our knowledge, our work is the first consolidated effort at fusing multiple physiological indices for robust, real-time detection of anxiety using pattern recognition methods such as fuzzy logic and regression trees.     

Extracting watermarks from printouts captured with wide angles using computational photography

Thus far the research of print-cam robust watermarking methods has focused on finding new methods for embedding and extracting the watermark. However, the capturing process itself, has been neglected in scientific research. In this paper, we propose a solution for the situation when the watermarked image has been captured in a wide angle and the depth of focus of the camera is not deep enough to capture the whole scene in-focus resulting in unfocused areas. The solution proposed here relies on a subfield of computational photography, namely all-in-focus imaging. All-in-focus images are generated by fusing multiple images from the same scene with different focus distances together, so that the object being photographed is fully in focus. Traditionally, the images to be fused are selected by hand from the focal stack or the whole stack is used for building the all-in-focus image. In mobile phone applications, computational resources are limited and using the full focal stack would result in long processing times and the manual selection of images would not be practical. In addition, we propose a method for optimizing the size of the focal stack and automatically selecting appropriate images for fusion. It is shown here that a watermark can still be recovered from the reconstructed all-in-focus image accurately.