EXPERIMENTAL STUDY ON BEHAVIOUR OF COLD FORMED STEEL LIPPED ANGLE COLUMNS

This article reports the experimental work on the behavior of cold formed steel lipped angle columns performed with pinned end conditions under axial compression. In this work three different types of equal and unequal plain and lipped angle sections were chosen with a total of 12 specimens. The column lengths were taken as 1200 mm. The material properties of these sections were found by conducting Tensile Coupon test. The section geometries were selected in order to take account of all types of buckling modes. The column strengths determined from the experiment was examined with the design strength attained from Direct Strength Method in North American Specification and with the Numerical results (ABAQUS) for Cold formed steel structures. Finally, an appropriate design proposal was suggested for DSM to forecast the ultimate strength of cold formed steel columns

ANTHROPOMETRIC SURVEY OF NIGERIAN FARM WORKERS

Anthropometric data of agricultural farm workers of Ebonyi State (central senatorial zone) of Nigeria was surveyed. The study was carried out to develop data bank for agricultural machinery design. Twenty-two dimensions were measured on 250 male and 200 female subjects with age ranges of 22-60 years old. The mean values and standard deviations of stature and weight of the male subjects were found to be 149.1(±13.3) cm and 60.4 (± 14.3) kg; whereas female mean stature and weight were 158.1(±11.3) cm and 58.8 (± 15.7) kg respectively. A T-test comparison between male and female body dimensions of agricultural farm workers of the zone shows that knee height was statistically significant (p< 0.05), those of male were larger. The comparison of dimensions of male and female agricultural farm workers of the zone with South eastern Nigerian agricultural farm workers, South western Nigerian passengers in buses and other ethnic populations of the world indicate that various body dimensions do not vary considerably within same geopolitical zone in Nigeria ; but differ greatly across different geopolitical zones and other ethnic populations

REVIEW ON THERMAL ENERGY STORAGE MATERIALS FOR SOLAR COOKING

In this 21st century world, the requirement for energy is very high and cooking is the important process for the people to prepare food. It consumes more share of energy in developing countries. So, there is a critical need for the invention or development of alternative, suitable and economical methods of cooking. To reach the demands for further need of energy, solar is the best energy source to accomplish the energy requirements with eco-friendly to nature. The solar thermal collectors using heat storage materials absorb the solar energy and delivers constant heat for the cooking application. This review covers the various solar cooking techniques with different heat storage materials

EFFECT OF SALINITY GRADIENT SOLAR POND UPON ADDITION OF CaCO3

This study involves the experimental optimisation of the performance of with and without adding CaCO3 in solar pond. The experiment was carried out at Government College of Engineering, Salem, India. Readings were taken for a period of 10 days. The temperature distribution and the amount of heat energy stored were evaluated. For comparison of ambient temperature and three convective zones temperature, the solar pond of volume 0.176 m3 and height of 0.45 m was constructed. The shape of the solar pond is trapezoidal and the inclination angle of the pond is 56º. The temperatures of the solar pond with and without adding CaCO3 were obtained as 50.7º C and 46º C respectively. The solar pond at lower convective zone (LCZ) indicated an increase of 10.2% in temperature. The difference between the amounts of heat energy stored is 12.6 kJ. From the result it is concluded that by adding CaCO3 increases the temperature of lower convective zone (LCZ) and also increases the amount of heat energy stored in the solar pond

STUDY OF THERMAL STABILITY OF SOLAR POND INTEGRATED WITH SOLAR COLLECTOR

In this study, heat supply to LCZ of a salinity gradient solar pond was evaluated. The dimensions of the rectangular solar pond are 45 cm height, 90 cm length and volume of 0.18225 m3. The main aim is to evaluate the heat storage capacity of the solar pond and to increase its heat storage capacity by using flat plate collectors for a period of 10 days. An in-pond heat exchanger covering the bottom wall area of the pond was installed, and its performance was compared with the traditional in-pond without heat exchangers. Temperature at the LCZ was observed as 48ºC with the bottom heat exchanger and 42.5ºC without exchanger. This indicates an increase in the solar pond efficiency of 12.94 % .The difference between the amount of heat energy stored is 14.44 kJ. The results demonstrate that efficiency of solar pond increases with bottom heat exchanger, when compared to the efficiency of solar pond without bottom heat exchanger

PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF SOLAR WATER HEATER INTEGRATED WITH SODIUM ACETATE TRIHYDRATE AS PHASE CHANGE MATERIAL

The Solar Water Heater (SWH) has an important place among solar heating collectors due to the fact that construction of the water heater requires less material than others. The Solar water heater may be used for space heating and drying. The main objectives of this paper are to increase the efficiency of flat plate collector solar water heater. The efficiency of Solar Water Heater is increased with decreasing, the thermal losses. To overcome the high thermal losses due to conduction, convection and radiation in the flat plate collector, PCM materials are used. To improve the efficiency of the flat plate collector, it is integrated with the Sodium Acetate Trihydrate as PCM. To enhance the heating rate of the solar water heater, the PCM is integrated and stored directly in flat plate collector. The performance of the flat plate collector is measured with and without using PCM. The Experimental result were taken for the area of 0.42 m2. The efficiency of the flat plate collector is increased up to 5 to 7% while compared to with and without using PCM

A REVIEW ON NATURAL COMPOSITES

Natural fibers have attracted the interest to engineers, researchers, professionals and scientists all over the world as an alternative reinforcement, because of its superior properties such as high specific strength, low weight, low cost, fairly good mechanical properties, non abrasive, eco-friendly and bio-degradable characteristics. A brief review has been carried out to make use of the natural fibers (such as abaca, jute, cotton, coir, Glass fiber etc) abundantly available in India. This paper presents a review on the mechanical properties of Abaca, Jute, Glass fibre

AN INVESTIGATION ON DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF ARECANUT TREE CLIMBER

The people in rural areas of Karnataka and Kerala mainly depend on agriculture for their livelihood. The main crops grown are Arecanut and coconut. For harvesting the nuts, and for spraying and applying insecticides on the crown, skilled labourers have to climb manually up the tree. Such a process looks easy, in reality it is a laborious and dangerous task. It requires skill to climb a arecanut tree. Skilled arecanut tree climbers have become scarce and farmers are finding it difficult to harvest the nuts. There are many equipments/ machines in the market to help the farmers in this regard. But they are not successful as the input for them is muscular power of the labour and it requires a person to physically climb the tree. There is no 100% safe arecanut harvesting device currently in the market. There is a need to invent a machine to address both efficiency and safety. The design of the device has to be simple enough for villagers to operate, yet work efficiently to appeal to the majority. Here we are designing and fabricating motorized arecanut tree climber. The tree climber has a base on which the drive system is mounted. The power from the motor to the rollers is transmitted by using sprocket and chain drive. To obtain the required speed of the rollers a reduction gear box is used in between the motor and the rollers. The machine is placed around the tree and clamped to it using a swivel opening on one side of the base. Due to the weight of the motor, gear box and some extra mass concentrated on one end of the base the machine locks itself to the tree. Now the motor is switched ON to drive the rollers. When the rollers rotate gripping the tree, the whole setup is lifted along the length of the tree. After reaching the required height the motor is switched OFF. By having suitable auxiliary equipments for spraying pesticides, plucking the nuts on the setup and suitable controlling methods for those equipments the required job can be performed. Once the job is done the motor is made to rotate in the reverse direction to descend down the tree

DESIGN OF THREE FINGER GRIPPER WITH FSR

Technological advancement is widening up by the advent of new inventions. Robots are going to be an integral part of the completely automated industries. There are many instances where profile detection. In this paper, discussed about the three finger gripper has the abilities with this dexterous electric gripper. Three fingers gripper is extreme changeability and fixable gripping control. Its finger has several positions of geometrics and dimensions. Its specific control of crossing point allows orthodox forward motion on the finger location, rapidity and force. These fingers design in CREO 3.0 software and produced by RPT. Fingers are evaluated to check if the finger is flexible motion. The force is measured by a force sensitive resister (FSR). A force sensor is measure a grasping object whose confrontation difference between before and after force is applied. The Arduino mega controller is used for controlling the servo motor and FSR in gripping motion. This servo motor is 180Ëšrotation angle, Control loop response mechanism is extensively used for accurate control. The Controlled gripper finger is sensed and gripped with force which is being analyzed in the data

AN INVESTIGATION ON ADVANCED WELDING TECHNIQUES

This paper deals with advanced welding techniques with use of friction stir welding. This type of welding carried out by aluminium 6063 alloy practically. When compared to conventional welding techniques it is not possible to weld, such type of aluminium alloy, because of some limitations. Friction stir welding is one such non-melting joining technology that has produced structural joints superior to conventional arc welds in aluminium. Friction stir welding can be conducted on a milling machine. While doing the experiment with change in variation of rotational speed and feed rate, with that experiment we chose five trials. In between five trials, the trials from one to four gives as different types of welds obtained. At the end of fifth trial, successful weld was obtained with very good surface finish on both ends and better tensile strength at types of welds obtained. At the end of fifth trial , successful weld was obtained with very good surface finish on both ends and better tensile strength at 1400rpm and 22.4 mm/rev. Tests were also performed to determine the susceptibility of FSW aluminium 6063 alloy to corrosion. The various test performed on the welded specimen are as follows tensile test and microstructure study. During tensile test, the maximum tensile strength obtained from two specimens was approximately 75% of the parent metal. Whereas the microstructure analysis is carried out to decrease the flow of material and change in the microstructure and grain size of measurement. By using this factor we present the paper that FRICTION STIR WELDING as a advanced welding techniques