Faculty Publications
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Item Delamination analysis in drilling process of glass fiber reinforced plastic (GFRP) composite materials(2007) Mohan, N.S.; Kulkarni, S.M.; Ramachandra, A.Machining processes are generally used to cut; drill, or contour composite laminates for building products. In fact, drilling is one of the most commonly used manufacturing processes to install fasteners for assembly of laminate composites. The material anisotropy resulting from fiber reinforcement heavily influences the machinability during machining. Machining of fiber reinforced plastic (FRP) components is often needed in spite of the fact that most FRP structures can be made to near-net shape and drilling is the most frequently employed secondary machining process for fiber reinforced materials. Therefore, the precise machining needs to perform to ensure dimensional stability and to obtain a better productivity of the component. The drilling parameters and specimen parameters evaluated were speed, feed rate, drill size and specimen thickness. A series of experiments were conducted using TRIAC VMC CNC machining center to machine the composite laminate specimens at various cutting parameters and material parameters. The measured results of delamination at the entry and exit side of the specimen were measured and analyzed using commercial statistical software MINITAB14. The experimental results indicated that the specimen thickness, feed rate and cutting speed are reckoned to be the most significant factors contributing to the delamination. A signal-to-noise ratio is employed to analyze the influence of various parameters on peel up and push down delamination factor in drilling of glass fibre reinforced plastic (GFRP) composite laminates. The main objective of this study is to determine factors and combination of factors that influence the delamination using Taguchi and response surface methodology and to achieve the optimization machining conditions that would result in minimum delamination. From the analysis it is evident that among the all significant parameters, specimen thickness and cutting speed have significant influence on peel up delamination and the specimen thickness and feed have more significant influence on push down delamination. Confirmation experiments were conducted to verify the predicted optimal parameters with the experimental results, good agreement between the predicted and experimental results obtained to be of the order of 99%. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Item Experimental investigation on slurry erosive behaviour of biodegradable flexible composite and optimization of parameters using Taguchi's approach(Lavoisier, 2018) Mahesh, V.; Joladarashi, S.; Kulkarni, S.M.In the present study, the emphasis is on analysing the slurry erosive behaviour of novel green flexible composite made from jute fiber and natural rubber of ribbed smoke sheet (RSS) grade. The bonding gum made of natural rubber is used to bind the fiber and RSS rubber. Three different stacking sequences namely jute-rubber-jute (JRJ), jute-rubber-rubberjute (JRRJ) and jute-rubber-jute-rubber-jute (JRJRJ) are considered. Erosive studies are carried out on the prepared composites under three different rotation speeds (500, 1000 and 1500 rpm) and three different sand concentration (50, 75 and 100 gms) with silica sand as the abrasive medium dispersed in tap water. Design of experiments (DOE) is carried out using Taguchi's L9 orthogonal array on slurry erosion test to find out the effect of the stacking sequence, rotation speed and sand concentration on the weight loss of the composite. Through ANOVA, it was concluded that sand concentration is the main factor affecting the weight loss of composite. Regression model is developed and it was found that the developed model is adequate and feasible to predict the weight loss due to slurry erosion within the range of experimental conditions. © 2018 Lavoisier. All rights reserved.Item Influences of dielectric and conductive fillers on dielectric and mechanical properties of solid silicone rubber composites(Springer London, 2019) Manohar Shankar, B.S.; Kulkarni, S.M.Dielectric elastomers are materials being used for electromechanical transduction applications. Their electromechanical response depends on permittivity, Young’s modulus and electric breakdown strength. A factor that limits its application is high operating voltages that can be reduced through improvement in permittivity. One of the methods is by incorporating high permittivity fillers into polymer matrix to obtain dielectric–dielectric composites (DDC).These composites show high permittivity at the cost of reduced flexibility. An alternative solution is development of composites by incorporating organic or inorganic conductive fillers into polymer matrix. These composites show high permittivity with high dielectric loss and low breakdown strength. To overcome both the above limitations both dielectric and conductive fillers are incorporated into dielectric polymer matrix to obtain conductor–dielectric composites (CDC). In this study, high temperature vulcanized solid silicone rubber as matrix has been used to prepare DDC composites with barium titanate (BT) filler and CDC composites with both BT as dielectric and ketjenblack as conductive fillers, using Taguchi design of experiments. The effect of factors such as amount of fillers and curing agent, mixing time in roll mill and curing temperature on the dielectric and mechanical properties are reported. Lichtenecker model predicts the permittivity of the DDC composite more accurately. For the CDC composites permittivity increased by 390%, effective resistivity decreased by 80%, Young’s modulus increased by 368% and Shore A hardness increased by 90% as compared to those of reference matrix. Important interaction effects are observed among both the fillers that are uniformly dispersed without any aggregation. © 2019, Iran Polymer and Petrochemical Institute.Item Influence of thickness and projectile shape on penetration resistance of the compliant composite(China Ordnance Industry Corporation, 2021) Mahesh, V.; Joladarashi, S.; Kulkarni, S.M.The present study deals with development of conceptual proof for jute rubber based flexible composite block to completely arrest the projectile impacting the target at high velocity impact of 400 m/s through numerical simulation approach using finite element (FE) method. The proposed flexible composite blocks of repeating jute/rubber/jute (JRJ) units are modelled with varying thickness from 30 mm to 120 mm in increments of 30 mm and impacted by flat (F), ogival (O) and hemispherical (HS) shaped projectiles. All the considered projectiles are impacted with proposed flexible composite blocks of different thicknesses and the penetration behaviour of the projectile in each case is studied. The penetration depth of the projectile in case of partially penetrated cases are considered and the effect of thickness and projectile shape on percentage of penetration depth is statistically analyzed using Taguchi's design of experiments (DOE). Results reveal that the though proposed flexible composite block with thickness of 90 mm is just sufficient to arrest the complete penetration of the projectile, considering the safety issues, it is recommended to use the flexible composite with thickness of 120 mm. The nature of damage caused by the projectile in the flexible composite is also studied. Statistical studies show that thickness of the block plays a prominent role in determining the damage resistance of the flexible composite. © 2020 The AuthorsItem Optimization of process parameters for ballistic impact response of hybrid sandwich composites(Springer-Verlag Italia s.r.l., 2023) Mohan Kumar, T.S.; Joladarashi, S.; Kulkarni, S.M.; Doddamani, S.The low-cost, eco-friendly ballistic impact resistance materials are gaining more importance in defense applications. The present work investigates the findings of ballistic impact behavior of a Jute-Rubber-Jute-Epoxy (Sand)-Jute-Rubber-Jute (JRJ-ES-JRJ) hybrid sandwich composite for different core thicknesses (10, 15, 20 mm) and different filler composition (0, 20, 40%) subjected to impact at 350 mps using different shaped projectiles like flat (F), conical (C), and hemispherical (H) using a numerical and parametric approach. Hybrid JRJE(%S)JRJ sandwich composites is modeled and simulated using commercially available dynamic explicit software, with the projectile as a rigid body and the target as a deformable material. Simulations are performed as per Taguchi's design of experiments approach for the L27 orthogonal array. The results show that filler composition and core thickness are the most critical factors determining ballistic behavior for the proposed hybrid sandwich composite structure. The Hybrid JRJ-ES-JRJ sandwich composites impacted with a conical-shaped projectile absorb the maximum energy, but the composite impacted with a flat-shaped projectile suffers more severe and immediate damage. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag France SAS, part of Springer Nature.Item Investigation of mechanical properties of luffa fibre reinforced natural rubber composites: Implications of process parameters(Elsevier Editora Ltda, 2024) Gurjar, A.K.; Kulkarni, S.M.; Joladarashi, S.; Doddamani, S.Natural fiber-reinforced composite materials are highly beneficial due to their excellent strength-to-weight ratio, and the compression molding process is frequently used to prepare natural fiber composites. The primary objective of the present work is to optimize the process parameters of the compression molding method to prepare luffa fiber-reinforced natural rubber composite and investigate the influence of process parameters on mechanical properties. Pre-processing parameters, specifically oven-dry temperature and time, processing parameters such as soaking temperature, time, and compression pressure, and post-processing parameters, such as oven-dry temperature and time, were considered to optimize. Natural rubber in its latex phase is utilized as a matrix material, and luffa fiber is used as reinforcement. The Plackett-Burman screening design technique was employed to identify the impact of different processing parameters on the mechanical properties of the luffa fiber-reinforced natural rubber (LNR) composite, and based on Taguchi's design of experiments, several process parameters were utilized to create L27 orthogonal array and the mentioned composites prepared accordingly. The ASTM standard is followed while testing the composite samples to determine their density, shore A hardness, and tensile strength. The density of the composite is unaffected by the process parameters; however, the shore A hardness of the composite is significantly affected. All the processing parameters most significantly impacted the tensile strength of LNR composites. The optimized process parameters for preparing LNR composite are the pre-oven temperature of 65 °C and time of 150min, the soaking temperature of 75 °C and time of 5min, compression pressure of 1.5 MPa, and the post-oven dry temperature of 55 °C and time of 45min. LNR composite can absorb energy due to its rubber matrix, making it useful for high-impact applications. © 2024 The AuthorsItem Experimental and Numerical Investigation of the Performance of Luffa Fiber-Reinforced Natural Rubber Composites with Process Parameter Optimization using DOE(Korean Fiber Society, 2025) Gurjar, A.K.; Kulkarni, S.M.; Joladarashi, S.; Doddamani, S.Composite materials have gained significant attention due to their high strength-to-weight ratio and sustainability. In particular, natural fiber-reinforced composites are increasingly investigated as environmentally friendly alternatives to synthetic counterparts. This study focuses on fabricating lightweight and biodegradable luffa fiber-reinforced natural rubber (LNR) composites using compression molding, emphasizing optimizing key processing parameters—temperature, curing time, and compression pressure. Latex-form natural rubber was selected as the matrix owing to its biodegradability, low cost, and compatibility with natural fibers. In contrast, luffa fiber served as reinforcement due to its favorable mechanical properties. The Design of Experiments (DOE) approach, specifically Taguchi’s method, was employed to systematically analyze the influence of processing parameters on physical and mechanical performance. Experimental evaluation of mechanical properties was conducted according to ASTM standards. The rule of mixture was used to evaluate the mechanical properties analytically. The multiscale material modeling finite element (FEM) methods were used to assess the orthotropic properties using the representative volume element technique. Results showed that density was only marginally affected by processing conditions, with ROM and FEM generally overestimating values; however, FEM provided closer agreement to experimental data. Shore A hardness and longitudinal modulus highly depended on curing temperature and time, with optimal properties obtained at 100 °C for 15 min under 1.0 MPa pressure. Similarly, the maximum ultimate tensile strength (0.40 MPa) was achieved under the same conditions, attributed to enhanced fiber–matrix bonding and crosslinking. Statistical analysis (ANOVA) confirmed temperature as the most influential parameter, followed by pressure and curing time. Optimized processing conditions significantly improved fiber–matrix adhesion, resulting in superior mechanical performance. These findings provide reliable processing guidelines for developing high-performance, environmentally sustainable LNR composites, making them suitable for high-impact applications in defense and consumer sectors. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to the Korean Fiber Society 2025.