Development of an ergonomic evaluation facility for Indian tractors

The design of tractors manufactured in low-income countries like India has not changed much in the past two decades, especially from an ergonomic point of view. Moreover, in these countries tractors are used for transportation purposes in addition to farming operations. Therefore, the design criteria for these tractors need to be different from those in high-income countries. This paper describes the development of an ergonomic facility for improvement of tractor design. An ergonomic evaluation facility has been developed consisting of a work place envelope for the Indian population, a layout measuring device and an ergonomic rig. This facility can be used for comparative evaluation of the display and control layouts of different tractors in order to develop an optimum layout. The ergonomic rig has the facility to simulate the improved layout for subjective evaluation.     

TV shearography: quantitative measurement of shear-magnitude fields by use of digital speckle photography

Digital speckle photography combined with TV shearography is developed for precise measurement of the magnitude of the shear field in a linear shear configuration. As an application the method is implemented to determine the slope-change variations of a three-dimensional object with TV shearography in which the shear magnitude is obtained with the digital speckle photography technique.     

Optical configuration for TV holography measurement of in-plane and out-of-plane deformations

A novel TV holography method is proposed for parallel evaluation of in-plane and out-of-plane deformation fields. The method permits a trade-off between in-plane and out-of-plane measuring sensitivity. A four-exposure, four-frame phase shifting technique is used in the experiments; the experimental results for an aluminum specimen subjected to both rotation in its own plane and a bending couple load at the center are presented.     

A frictional Cosserat model for the flow of granular materials through a vertical channel

Summary A rigid-plastic Cosserat model has been used to study dense, fully developed flow of granular materials through a vertical channel. Frictional models based on the classical continuum do not predict the occurrence of shear layers, in contrast to experimental observations. This feature has been attributed to the absence of a material length scale in their constitutive equations. The present model incorporates such a material length scale by treating the granular material as a Cosserat continuum. Thus, localized couple stresses exist, and the stress tensor is asymmetric. The velocity profiles predicted by the model are in close agreement with available experimental data. The predicted dependence of the shear layer thickness on the width of the channel is in reasonable agreement with data. In the limit of small (ratio of the particle diameter to the half-width of the channel), the model predicts that the shear layer thickness scaled by the particle diameter grows as ^-1/3.     

High-frequency dielectric behaviour of polycrystalline zinc substituted cobalt ferrites

The dielectric constant () and complex dielectric constant () of zinc substituted cobalt ferrites have been measured at room temperature in the high frequency range 100 kHz to 1 MHz. The values of dielectric loss tangent (tan ) have been computed from and . Plots of dielectric constant () versus frequency show a normal dielectric behaviour of the spinel ferrites. The frequency dependence of dielectric loss tangent (tan ) is found to be abnormal, giving a peak at certain frequency for all the ferrites under investigation. A qualitative explanation is given for the composition and frequency dependence of the dielectric constant and dielectric loss tangent. The dielectric constant for these mixed ferrites is approximately inversely proportional to the square root of the resistivity. A plot of dielectric constant versus temperature shows a transition near the Curie temperature. An attempt is made to explain the possible mechanism for this observation.     

Modeling of Nonlinear Surface Impedance of High-Tc Superconductors Using an Exponential Vortex Penetration Model

We have modeled surface impedance of YBa₂Cu₃O_7– thin films, using an exponential dependence on an applied rf magnetic field. For verification of the model we compared simulation results with experimental data of Nguyen et al. [2] and of Hein [14] at differing temperatures, frequencies and rf power levels. Obtained temperature dependence of the model fitting coefficients exhibited the same character in both cases.     

Regulation of insulin-like growth factors I and II and their binding proteins in human bone marrow stromal cells by dexamethasone

Müller cells are highly permeable to potassium ions and play a major role in maintaining potassium homeostasis in the vertebrate retina during light-evoked neuronal activity. Potassium fluxes across the Müller cell's membrane are believed to underlie the light-evoked responses of these cells. We studied the potassium currents of turtle Müller cells in the retinal slice and in dissociated cell preparations and their role in the genesis of the light-evoked responses of these cells. In either preparation, the I-V curve, measured under voltage-clamp conditions, consisted of inward and outward currents. A mixture of cesium ions, TEA, and 4-AP blocked the inward current but had no effect on the outward current. Extracellular cesium ions alone blocked the inward current but exerted no effect on the photoresponses. Extracellular barium ions blocked both inward and outward currents, induced substantial depolarization, and augmented the light-evoked responses, especially the OFF component. Exposing isolated Müller cells to a high potassium concentration did not cause any current or voltage responses when barium ions were present. In contrast, application of glutamate in the presence of barium ions induced a small inward current that was associated with a substantially augmented depolarizing wave relative to that observed under control conditions. This observation suggests a role for an electrogenic glutamate transporter in generating the OFF component of the turtle Müller cell photoresponse.     

Electrochemical removal of chromium from wastewater by using carbon aerogel electrodes

A study has been carried out to determine the feasibility of electrochemical removal of chromium ions from industrial wastewater using carbon aerogel electrodes. In this work the effect of key variables including pH (2-7), concentration 2-8 (mg/l), and charge 0.3-1.3 (A h) was determined. The metal ion removal was significantly increased at reduced pH and high charge conditions. The metal concentration in the wastewater can be reduced by 98.5% under high charge (0.8A h) and acidic conditions (pH 2). The effect of the independent parameters--pH, effluent concentration and charge on the percentage removal was depicted by a quadratic equation obtained using Box-Behnken model. The regression analysis gave a R2 value of 0.9469 shows a close fit between the experimental results and the model predictions. The model was further used to optimise the parameters to maximise the percentage Cr-removal to more than 98%.