Faculty Publications
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Item Soil water fluxes under different land covers - A case study from Western Ghats, India(2011) Venkatesh, B.; Nandagiri, L.; Purandara, B.K.Knowledge of soil water fluxes is essential in hydrologic studies related to infiltration, runoff, ground water recharge and water uptake by vegetation. Previous studies have investigated the role played by soil and atmospheric factors on soil water fluxes in the unsaturated zone, but few studies have investigated the role played by vegetation or land cover. The present study was taken up understand the effect of land cover on soil water fluxes through long-term field measurements made in three experimental watersheds located in Western Ghats mountain ranges covering a portion of Uttara Kannada District, Karnataka State, India. Soil and climatic conditions were the same for the selected watersheds but they possessed different land covers - natural forest, degraded forest and acacia plantation. In addition to measurements of hydro-meteorological parameters, soil matric potential measurements were made at 4 locations in each of the watersheds up to a depth of 150 cm at an interval of 50 cm. Measurements were made for a period of 2 years (2007-2008) at weekly time intervals Depth-wise soil matric potential measurements were used to estimate soil water fluxes using Darcy's equation for unsaturated porous media. The estimated values of soil water fluxes were analyzed for their temporal distribution and stability. Results indicated that there is an improvement in soil moisture holding under the acacia plantation in comparison to degraded watershed. The estimated deviation of the soil water flux from the field average values indicate that the points located on milder slopes are representative of watershed mean soil water flux. Results also indicated the temporal persistence of soil water fluxes. © 2011 CAFET-INNOVA technical society. All right reserved.Item Determination of interfacial heat transfer coefficient for the flow assisted mixed convection through brass wire mesh(Elsevier Masson SAS 62 rue Camille Desmoulins Issy les Moulineaux Cedex 92442, 2019) Kotresha, B.; Gnanasekaran, N.In this work, a numerical investigation of Darcy?Forchheimer mixed convection from a heated vertical flat plate embedded in a brass wire mesh porous medium is carried out to determine the coupled effects of flow and thermal diffusion. The numerical model consists of a two dimensional computational domain in which conjugate heat transfer analysis is performed to predict the hydrodynamic and thermal performance of the brass wire mesh in a vertical channel using Local Thermal Non-Equillibrium (LTNE) model. The novelty of the present study is to acquire the interfacial heat transfer coefficient, an as yet another challenging task, of the wire mesh porous medium so as to provide a quick and feasible solution to modeling of fluid flow and heat transfer through brass wire mesh porous media. The results of heat transfer through brass wire mesh are reported in terms of Colburn j factor, performance factor and are compared with other porous mediums available in literature. The present study not only opens up new vistas for more parametric studies but also provides practical and cost effective assessment to design new porous materials. © 2018 Elsevier Masson SASItem Artificial intelligence approaches for spatial modeling of streambed hydraulic conductivity(Springer International Publishing, 2019) Naganna, S.R.; Deka, P.C.Saturated hydraulic conductivity (Ks) describes the water movement through saturated porous media. The hydraulic conductivity of streambed varies spatially owing to the variations in sediment distribution profiles all along the course of the stream. The artificial intelligence (AI) based spatial modeling schemes were instituted and tested to predict the spatial patterns of streambed hydraulic conductivity. The geographical coordinates (i.e., latitude and longitude) of the sampled locations from where the in situ hydraulic conductivity measurements were determined were used as model inputs to predict streambed Ks over spatial scale using artificial neural network (ANN), adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) and support vector machine (SVM) paradigms. The statistical measures computed by using the actual versus predicted streambed Ks values of individual models were comparatively evaluated. The AI-based spatial models provided superior spatial Ks prediction efficiencies with respect to both the strategies/schemes considered. The model efficiencies of spatial modeling scheme 1 (i.e., Strategy 1) were better compared to Strategy 2 due to the incorporation of more number of sampling points for model training. For instance, the SVM model with NSE = 0.941 (Strategy 1) and NSE = 0.895 (Strategy 2) were the best among all the models for 2016 data. Based on the scatter plots and Taylor diagrams plotted, the SVM model predictions were found to be much efficient even though, the ANFIS predictions were less biased. Although ANN and ANFIS models provided a satisfactory level of predictions, the SVM model provided virtuous streambed Ks patterns owing to its inherent capability to adapt to input data that are non-monotone and nonlinearly separable. The tuning of SVM parameters via 3D grid search was responsible for higher efficiencies of SVM models. © 2019, Institute of Geophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences & Polish Academy of Sciences.Item Compressive behavior of fly ash based 3D printed syntactic foam composite(Elsevier B.V., 2019) Patil, B.; Bharath Kumar, B.R.; Doddamani, M.Syntactic foams are widely used in damage tolerance and low-density applications. In present work compressive behavior of 3D printed three-phase syntactic foams under quasi-static strain rates (0.001, 0.01 and 0.1 s?1) are investigated. Extruded filaments of High density polyethylene (HDPE) with environmentally pollutant fly ash cenospheres (0, 20, 40 and 60 vol%) are used for 3D printing. Micrography reveal that syntactic foam filament and 3D printed samples are three phase systems comprising matrix, cenosphere and porosity. Matrix porosity of about 7% makes these foams lightweight and suitable for buoyant applications. The compressive properties are extracted from the stress-strain plots. It is observed that modulus and specific modulus increases with strain rate and cenosphere content. Specific compressive strength increases with strain rate and decrease with cenosphere content. © 2019 Elsevier B.V.Item Combustion aided in situ consolidation of high strength porous ceramic structures with a minimum thermal budget(Elsevier B.V., 2020) Pujar, P.; Pal, A.; Mandal, S.The exothermic reaction between a pair of combustible pore formers (urea-ammonium nitrate) is the driving force in realizing low-temperature consolidation of hydroxyapatite (HA) particles. The particles are allowed to sinter in the proximity to the combustible pore formers. The exothermic (?H°rea = -898 kJ/mol) redox reaction between combustible pore formers is successfully utilized in deriving high compressive strength (~24 MPa) of HA at 300 °C. The evolution of gaseous products of combustion results in an interconnected porous network of HA. The estimated compressive strength of sintered HA at 300 °C is comparable with high temperature (1100 °C) conventionally sintered HA, at a fixed open porosity (~40%); which depicts nearly ~82% achievement with a reduction of sintering temperature by ~72%. Also, the pellets sintered at 600 °C have shown ~90% achievement in compressive strength of sintered HA. Further, the saturated pore area of 15% requires a sintering time of 9.58 h at a sintering temperature of 600 °C. Thus, combustion-assisted sintering is an alternative technique proves its potentiality in achieving remarkable compressive strength and paves the way for low-cost porous ceramics. © 2020 Elsevier B.V.Item Numerical investigation on the wave dissipating performance due to multiple porous structures(Taylor and Francis Ltd., 2021) Venkateswarlu, V.; Karmakar, D.Gravity wave interaction with porous structures is investigated under the assumption of linearized wave theory. Multiple porous blocks of finite thickness with finite spacing are investigated under the action of oblique ocean waves considering leeward unbounded region and confined region. The eigenfunction expansion method is employed to analyse the effect of multiple-confined regions in the trapping of oblique waves. The study outcomes are validated with numerical and experimental results available in the literature. The friction factor and the inertia effect of the porous medium are considered and different porosity conditions are adopted to determine the wave reflection coefficient, transmission coefficient, wave dissipation and wave force impact on the leeward wall. The functional efficiency of multiple fully extended porous structures is studied for different values of porosity, water chamber length, angle of incidence, friction factor and spacing between the porous blocks. The seabed is assumed to be uniform impermeable bottom and uneven bottom (step approximation is adopted). The study demonstrates that the better wave blocking is achieved with the increase in the series of porous structures and the confined regions can be used effectively for the trapping of oblique waves. The present study will be helpful in the design of porous structures for security of coastal facilities and coastal structures in offshore environment. © 2019 Indian Society for Hydraulics.Item A Parametric Study on Mixed Convection in a Vertical Channel in the Presence of Wire Mesh(Taylor and Francis Ltd., 2021) Kotresha, B.; Gnanasekaran, N.A numerical study on mixed convection is carried out through a partially filled brass wire mesh in a vertical channel. A heater embedded with aluminum plates is placed at the center of the vertical channel. The aluminum heater assembly is wrapped with brass wire mesh to facilitate more heat transfer. The vertical channel that consists of aluminum heater assembly with the brass wire mesh is considered as the numerical model. Local thermal non-equilibrium and Darcy extended Forchheimer models are used to accomplish the numerical simulations for thermal and flow characteristics of the considered domain. The aim of the study is to find out the optimum filling of the brass wire mesh in the channel which gives a higher heat transfer rate with low pumping power of the fluid. In the present analysis, three different filling conditions of wire mesh are considered: (i) fully filled channel, (ii) 70% filled channel, and (iii) 40% filled channel. From the results, it is inferred that the vertical channel partially filled with 70% of wire mesh porous medium predicts 89% of heat transfer of the completely filled channel with 41% reduced pressure loss. As a result, the proposed parametric study is good enough to prove that the partly filled wire mesh can be used in the thermal applications where augmentation of heat transfer is required with less pressure drop. © 2020 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.Item Compressive cyclic response of PEM fuel cell gas diffusion media(Elsevier Ltd, 2021) Koorata, P.K.; Bhat, S.D.The fuel cell gas diffusion media (GDM) is a highly porous carbon-fiber-reinforced thin composite layer. The experimental response of these materials is observed to be highly nonlinear at low-stress levels. The cyclic mechanical response of GDM is investigated in terms of stiffness and damage parameters. The prediction of the state of deformation in GDM is vital in relating GDM's properties to ohmic and transport losses. To this end, a compressible form of the phenomenological model is proposed to capture the experimental cyclic response accurately. The model is constituent dependent; that is, the cumulative cyclic stress-strain response of GDM is a function of individual constituent phases present in the material. These individual constituents are porous matrix and reinforced fibers. The model hence derived for a typical GDM material, can predict residual strain, hysteresis, and damage quotient associated with the stress softening. This advanced model is implemented in the numerical domain to evaluate the response of the polymer electrolyte fuel cell (PEFC) unit cell. The stress-strain distribution fields are analyzed and compared with those of conventional GDM models. The results point to a remarkable deviation from the conventional notion of structural analysis. © 2020 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLCItem Freeze casting of lamellar-structured porous lead-free (Na0.52K0.48)(Nb0.95Sb0.05)O3 piezoceramic with remarkable enhancement in piezoelectric voltage constant and hydrostatic figure of merit(Springer, 2021) Dixit, P.; Seth, S.; Rawal, B.; Kumar, B.P.; Panda, H.S.The study reports the development of lamellar-structured, porous lead-free (Na0.52K0.48)(Nb0.95Sb0.05)O3 ceramics, abbreviated as NKNS, using the freeze-casting method with water as pore-forming agent. The effect of directional porosity on the microstructure, dielectric, and piezoelectric properties of the lead-free porous material is investigated. Furthermore, the effects of conventional and microwave sintering on microstructure and piezoelectric properties have also been analyzed. In addition, the study compares conventional and corona poling too. The results depicted no deterioration of piezoelectric properties (d33:130 pC/N), despite being ~ 50% porosity, along with reasonably good hydrostatic piezoelectric strain coefficient (dh: 60pC/N). The samples exhibited hydrostatic piezoelectric voltage coefficient (gh) of 58.70 mV.m/N providing a significant value of the hydrostatic figure of merit (HFOM = dh?gh: 3522 × 10–15 Pa?1) for the porous NKNS ceramic which is nearly 39 times more than the dense ceramic. Considering its unique advantages such as environmental friendly, less dense, wide performance range with enhanced figure of merit, the lamellar-structured NKNS ceramic is a promising material for sensor and transducer applications. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC part of Springer Nature.Item A proposal for a correlation to calculate pressure drop in reticulated porous media with the help of numerical investigation of pressure drop in ideal & randomized reticulated structures(Elsevier Ltd, 2021) Rambabu, S.; Kartik Sriram, K.; Chamarthy, S.; Parthasarathy, P.; Velamati, V.This paper presents a numerical investigation to estimate pressure drop in fluid flow through reticulated ideal and randomized porous structures. The 3D open-cell foam geometries are constructed using an in-house code along with the use of visualization tool kit (VTK) libraries. In this study, the ideal and randomized Kelvin structures with different porosities and pore densities are generated. These structures have been used to perform direct pore level simulations (DPLS) with the aid of a commercial CFD software. The simulation results are used to acquire the pressure drop across the structures. The pressure drop variation with respect to pore density, porosity, specific surface area, and randomization are analyzed and a pressure drop correlation for reticulated structures with new values of viscous and inertial coefficients is proposed. The validity of the proposed correlation is compared against the experimental and numerical data of the real structures that are available in the literature. © 2021 Elsevier Ltd