Faculty Publications

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    Characterization of porous friction course mixes for different Marshall compaction efforts
    (2009) Suresha, S.N.; George, V.; Ravi Shankar, A.U.R.
    Porous friction courses (PFCs) are mainly recommended as surface drainage layers on high-speed road-corridors and runway pavements. Permeability and sound attenuation characteristics are considered to be the indices for performance assessment of PFCs. One of the reasons for the loss of permeability in PFCs is densification under heavy traffic. But, resistance to ravelling too, is of main concern in the case of under-compacted PFCs. This paper summarises the details of laboratory investigation on the characterization of PFC mixes corresponding to four different gradations and two binder contents, for three levels of the Marshall compaction. The findings of the investigation suggest that the selection of the compaction level for PFC mix design should be based on the design traffic level, and the gradation selected. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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    Air quality assessment of Dhanbad District, India - A case study
    (2010) Anantharamu, A.; Singh, G.; Venkat Reddy, D.
    Ambient air pollution status in Dhanbad district is studied and presented in this article. The selection of Dhanbad is made considering its importance and the nature of activities taking place around the district. For the assessment of ambient air quality in Dhanbad, the following five locations were chosen: Main Gate of Indian School of Mines(ISM), Dhanbad: It is a site representing purely commercial activities and road traffic. Bankmore: It is one of the busiest marketing centres of the district and is surrounded by residential areas. All the vehicles going to Bokaro pass by this place and thus the traffic density is pretty high. Kusunda: It is a place 10.9 kilometres from Dhanbad Railway Station. It is just beside one of the coal mines, hence, all vehicles going to the mine passes through this place. Steel Gate: It consists of a small market. Trucks and other heavy vehicle are more frequent during night as this road connects to a highway. ISM Admin Block: It can be considered as a sensitive area since it is a very calm place where the usage of vehicles is minimum throughout the day. Monitoring of ambient air quality is done following the standard procedure prescribed in IS: 5182. In addition, the concentration of lead, zinc, cadmium, copper, manganese and iron metals in SPM is also monitored. The ambient air quality assessment was done in the month of June, 2009. The concentration of SPM was higher than the permissible limit in three locations namely ISM Main Gate, Bankmore and Steel Gate, while it was less than the permissible limit in other two locations, ISM Admin Block and Kusunda. Since the generation of SPM was mainly due to vehicular traffic it was expected to cross the limit in the above mentioned three locations as density of vehicular movement is very high. © 2010 CAFET-INNOVA TECHNICAL SOCIETY.
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    A comprehensive assessment of increased iron ore production on the environment - A case study
    (2011) Thimmaiah, S.A.; Rao, Y.; Murthy, C.H.S.N.
    There has been a significant increase in iron ore production in the Bellary- Hospet-Sandur sector of Karnataka, India due to sudden increase in the demand of iron ore from other countries as well as by local steel plants set up in the region. An attempt has been made in this paper to study the effect of increase in the iron ore production on various environmental parameters like air, water, soil and noise. For this purpose a study area of 10 Km radius was taken and the various environmental parameters were monitored before and after increase in iron ore production in the region. Study shows that there is no significant change in the air quality in terms of SPM, RPM, SO2 and NOx in the region. In many locations, there is decrease in the concentrations of these parameters. This is mainly due to improvement of roads by asphalting, effective covering of iron ore trucks by tarpaulin, awareness among mine owners about the protection of environment by following various pollution control measures, dust suppression measures on the public road using water sprinklers and stringent monitoring of the environmental protective measures by various regulatory authorities. The concentration of SO2 and NOx was found to increase due to increase in traffic by movement of tippers in the public/village road. The deployment of heavy earth moving machinery at mine site also contributed for increase of SO2 and NOx. The surface water quality parameters were found to be within the acceptable limits in the study area. There is no possibility of disturbing/altering ground water table due to mining operations as the mining is being carried out on hill top which is above the general ground level. In agricultural soil, except that of potassium and electrical conductivity, variations in other parameters are insignificant as the agricultural lands are located 2 to 3 Kms away from the active mining area. Increase in noise level is found at most of the locations of the study area. Therefore, serious attempts should be made by mine owners as well as statutory bodies to reduce the sound level at various locations for increasing the quality of life in these locations in terms of sound level. © 2011 CAFET-INNOVA technical society. All right reserved.
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    Vertical dynamic analysis of a quarter car suspension system with MR damper
    (Springer Verlag service@springer.de, 2017) Hemanth, K.; Kumar, H.; Gangadharan, K.V.
    This paper presents ride comfort and road holding analysis of passive and semi-active suspension system using quarter car model. Semi-active suspension system with magnetorheological (MR) damper was modeled as non-parametric model-based magnetic flux density in the fluid flow gap. The skyhook control strategy was used to analyze semi-active control performance. The simulation of passive and semi-active suspension system was carried out under random road profile for different velocities. The result shows that semi-active suspension has significant improvement in terms of ride comfort and road holding of vehicle than passive suspension system. Experimental studies have been conducted to characterize MR damper and a good match is observed between results with simulation results obtained using non-parametric model. © 2016, The Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering.
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    Passenger car unit estimation at signalized intersection for non-lane based mixed traffic using microscopic simulation model
    (Budapest University of Technology and Economics office@pp.bme.hu Budafoki ut 4 Budapest H-1111, 2017) Asaithambi, G.; Mourie, H.S.; Sivanandan, R.
    In India, traffic on roads is mixed in nature with widely varying static and dynamic characteristics of vehicles. At intersections, vehicles do not follow ordered queue and lane discipline. Different vehicle types occupy different spaces on the road, move at different speeds, and start at different accelerations. The problem of measuring volume of such mixed traffic has been addressed by converting different vehicles categories into equivalent passenger cars and expressing the volume in terms of Passenger Car Unit (PCU) per hour. The accurate estimation of PCU values for different roadway and traffic conditions is essential for better operation and management of roadway facilities. Hence, the objective of the present study is to estimate the PCU values at signalized intersection in mixed traffic and to study the influence of traffic volume, traffic composition and road width on PCU values. For this purpose, a mixed traffic simulation model developed specifically for a signalized intersection was used. The model was calibrated and validated with the traffic data collected from a signalized intersection in Chennai city. Simulation runs were carried out for various combinations of vehicular composition, volume levels and road width. It was observed that presence of heavy vehicles and increase in road width affects the PCU values. The obtained PCU values were statistically checked for accuracy and proven to be satisfied. The PCU values obtained in this study can be used as a guideline for the traffic engineers and practitioners in the design and analysis of signalized intersections where mixed traffic conditions exist.
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    Modeling free-flow speeds on undivided roads in mixed traffic withweak lane discipline
    (SAGE Publications Ltd, 2018) Chathoth, V.; Asaithambi, G.
    In developing countries like India, transportation systems are characterized by limited roadway infrastructure and lack of operation and management experience. Hence, there exists a need to evaluate a performance indicator that reflects the current level of service (LOS) of a road facility. Free-flow speed (FFS) is a key parameter used to express LOS assessment. The objective of this study is to develop FFS prediction models for undivided roads with mixed traffic conditions in both urban and rural settings in India. Traffic data were collected from two-way two-lane undivided roads in southern India during freeflow traffic conditions using videographic method. Various class-specific and site-specific characteristics, such as vehicle class, subclass, carriageway width, link length, number of side roads, lateral clearance, land use type, and area type, were investigated and their influence on FFS evaluated. Statistical tests assessed the variations of obtained FFS with different vehiclespecific and site-specific factors. Free-flow prediction models were developed using linear regression method. The developed models show that FFS increases with greater carriageway width, lateral clearance, and link length, and decreases with increase in number of side roads. In general, FFS is higher in rural areas than urban areas. Similarly, open areas have higher FFS than residential, institutional, and commercial areas. The model can be used to predict FFS of undivided roads if site-specific and vehicle-specific data are known. This study finds interesting applications in capacity and LOS analysis, accident analysis, and before-and-after studies of road improvement schemes. © National Academy of Sciences: Transportation Research Board 2018.
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    Dense refinement residual network for road extraction from aerial imagery data
    (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc., 2019) Eerapu, K.K.; Ashwath, B.; Lal, S.; Dell’Acqua, F.; Narasimha Dhan, A.V.
    Extraction of roads from high-resolution aerial images with a high degree of accuracy is a prerequisite in various applications. In aerial images, road pixels and background pixels are generally in the ratio of ones-to-tens, which implies a class imbalance problem. Existing semantic segmentation architectures generally do well in road-dominated cases but fail in background-dominated scenarios. This paper proposes a dense refinement residual network (DRR Net) for semantic segmentation of aerial imagery data. The proposed semantic segmentation architecture is composed of multiple DRR modules for the extraction of diversified roads alleviating the class imbalance problem. Each module of the proposed architecture utilizes dense convolutions at various scales only in the encoder for feature learning. Residual connections in each module of the proposed architecture provide the guided learning path by propagating the combined features to subsequent DRR modules. Segmentation maps undergo various levels of refinement based on the number of DRR modules utilized in the architecture. To emphasize more on small object instances, the proposed architecture has been trained with a composite loss function. The qualitative and quantitative results are reported by utilizing the Massachusetts roads dataset. The experimental results report that the proposed architecture provides better results as compared to other recent architectures. © 2019 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.. All rights reserved.
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    Study the dynamic behaviour of seven DOF of full car model with semi-active suspension system
    (Inderscience Publishers, 2021) Hemanth, H.; Shamanth, S.; Devaraj, D.; Kumar, H.; Gangadharan, K.V.
    This paper presents an investigation on the ride comfort and road-holding performance of a vehicle equipped with the semi-active suspension system. The full car semi-active suspension model with 7 degrees of freedom (7 DOF) system is adopted for the study and a fuzzy-logic control strategy is considered for minimising the effect of road disturbance on vehicle performance. The responses of a vehicle have been analysed under the Indian average random road profile (ISO8608) against the conventional passive suspension system. The performance of the semi-active suspension system is evaluated by heave, roll and pitch acceleration of the vehicle body around its centre of gravity. The performance of a vehicle with the semi-active suspension system has been compared with the response conventional passive suspension system. The result specifies that, the semi-active suspension system with a fuzzy-logic controller reduces around 43% of vibration amplitude at the resonance frequency of vehicle than the passive suspension system. © © 2021 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.
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    Impact of Side Friction on Travel Time Reliability of Urban Public Transit
    (Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH, 2021) Harsha, M.M.; Mulangi, R.H.
    Travel time reliability is the key aspect that indicates the quality of urban public transit service. The studies on travel time reliability of the public transit system in Indian traffic conditions are few. Also, the impact of side friction elements on travel time reliability has not been considered in the previous studies. Hence, the present study aims to quantify the different types of side friction elements and analyse their impact on the travel time reliability of the public bus transit system. The field data consisting of side friction elements, traffic volume, and travel time of public bus transit have been collected and extracted at two different road sections (divided and undivided) in the Mysore city (Karnataka, India) during weekdays and weekends. The data are grouped into static and dynamic side frictions. An approach has been proposed to represent different types of side friction elements with a single index called the Side Friction Index (SFI) using relative weight analysis. Travel time reliability is represented using measures such as Buffer Time Index (BTI), Planning Time Index (PTI), Travel Time Index (TTI) and Reliable Buffer Index (RBI). The impact of side friction on travel time reliability was found to be sensitive to traffic volume, and hence the thresholds for different traffic volume levels have been determined using K-means clustering method. It was observed from relative weight analysis that the static side friction has a higher weightage (0.509 and 0.327 for the undivided road and divided road respectively) than the dynamic side friction elements in describing the variation of travel time. The impact of side friction on reliability measures at different traffic volume levels has been studied and found to have a non-linear (exponential) relationship. The impact of SFI has been observed to be higher on TTI and PTI in comparison with BTI. The study outcomes show that the impact of side friction on TTI and PTI is sensitive to traffic volume, especially at higher traffic volume level and impact of side friction on BTI is less, especially at medium traffic volume level. The inference from the study shows that the impact of side friction elements varies with respect to the type of road (divided and undivided), traffic volume levels, different days of week (weekday and weekend), and different time periods of day. © 2021, Iran University of Science and Technology.
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    Characterization and quarter car analysis with magnetorheological fluid damper using modified algebraic model (mAlg)
    (Elsevier Ltd, 2022) Kumbhar, S.; Puneet, N.P.; Kumar, H.
    Magnetorheological (MR) dampers have received the ever-increasing attention of many researchers considering their wide range of applications ranging from large seismic control of structures to prosthetics in the medical field. One such application is in semi-active vehicle suspension with MR damper. Modeling the dynamic behavior of MR damper is an intriguing challenge and many mathematical models are put forth to address this task. In this work, the MR damper is initially developed and characterized using in-house prepared MR fluid. This study aims at using a modified algebraic model (mAlg) for modeling the hysteretic behavior of the MR damper using experimental force data. Also, the study uses a Genetic algorithm toolbox to find optimal parameters for the mAlg model, and the accuracy of mAlg is visualized with various plots. The work also aims at analyzing the response of the quarter car model with MR damper to three kinds of road excitations using Simulink. © 2022