Fault Detection and Prognostic Health monitoring of Towed array sonars

Sonars are used to detect underwater targets and are especially important in maintaining naval superiority. Towed array sonars can operate at very low frequencies thus giving larger ranges and can be deployed to any desired depth of operation. Towed array sonars offer long range surveillance capability and is the sensor of choice for sustained surveillance operations. Reliable operation and maintenance of towed array sonars need effective methods of health monitoring and reliability prediction. For any prognostic health monitoring to be done we need to identify certain parameters which can be observed and will give system health status in the present condition. This paper proposes some metrics which are easily measurable in-situ and which offer insights into the health of the sonar system. These metrics give direct measureable impact for each of the failure modes and offer insights into the current health of an operational towed array sonar. Simulation results are shown to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed metrics and detailed trial data results from different towed array trials are analysed to validate them in operational scenarios

Plan@Earth- NGO for turning waste as a resource

Plan@Earth is a Voluntary organisation registered as a charitable trust under the Travancore-Cochin Literary, Scientific and Charitable Societies Act (Reg No ER-313/09). It works in the area of environment conservation by offering solutions for waste management. Plan@Earth believes that “waste is not a trash but a resource” and proper waste management is the vital part for sustainable development of society. The activities of Plan@Earth are directed towards the 6 Rs namely, Reduce, Reuse, Refuse, Restructure, Remove and Recycle. The first 3 Rs are achieved through awareness classes, campaigns, street-plays. The other 3 Rs are achieved by training the community to segregate waste at source followed by door to door collection of waste from over 20000 households using push carts and directing clean and dry waste collected for recycling. The dry waste that cannot be recycled are washed and made into bags, file-folders, items of home décor using the method of up-cycling. With the help of the mechanical engineering dept of SNGCE College, Kolenchery, Plan@Earth has also developed a machine to make “Eco-Bricks” using discarded plastic packaging and sand. Every year Plan@Earth carries out nearly 200 awareness classes and uses mimes, skits, street plays and dramas performed by student volunteers to get the message across to the public. Each project in this NGO can support 20-25 women from poorer backgrounds as means for poverty alleviation

Study the effect of intermediate and closer stiffener on the behaviour of the cold - formed steel lipped channel section under axial compression

Cold-Formed steel built-up columns are commonly used as compression member in the industrial roof and long span bridge structures to carry larger load. To improve the strength and stiffness of the cold-formed section, the built-up column with additional stiffeners and lacings are used. This paper reports the results of experimental tests conducted on built-up cold-formed columns, composed with the combination of intermediate and closer stiffeners with pin-ended condition under axial compression. Totally twelve columns with or without intermediate and closer stiffeners were tested to failure. The experimental results aim to quantify the effect of cross-section, intermediate and closer stiffener on the overall performance, including strength, strain and failure modes for the built-up column. The Finite element model was developed by ANSYS software and the model is validated with the experimental results. The built-up column strength predicated by recommended design equations of American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) exhibited good agreement with the ultimate load of built-up columns obtained both by experimental and numerical. Based on this study a recommendation is proposed to DSM for the CFS built -up columns with intermediate and closer stiffeners

REASONS BEHIND MAJOR ACCIDENTS ON ROADS AND SUGGESTIONS

According to statistics there assumed to be 400 deaths per day in India, and the major cause for this disaster is road accidents, which is caused by ignorance, technical fault and many more defaults, in this paper we will discuss about some of the reasons behind these accidents and possible solutions

Study the effect of intermediate and closer stiffener on the behaviour of the cold - formed steel lipped channel section under axial compression

Cold-Formed steel built-up columns are commonly used as compression member in the industrial roof and long span bridge structures to carry larger load. To improve the strength and stiffness of the cold-formed section, the built-up column with additional stiffeners and lacings are used. This paper reports the results of experimental tests conducted on built-up cold-formed columns, composed with the combination of intermediate and closer stiffeners with pin-ended condition under axial compression. Totally twelve columns with or without intermediate and closer stiffeners were tested to failure. The experimental results aim to quantify the effect of cross-section, intermediate and closer stiffener on the overall performance, including strength, strain and failure modes for the built-up column. The Finite element model was developed by ANSYS software and the model is validated with the experimental results. The built-up column strength predicated by recommended design equations of American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) exhibited good agreement with the ultimate load of built-up columns obtained both by experimental and numerical. Based on this study a recommendation is proposed to DSM for the CFS built -up columns with intermediate and closer stiffeners

Design and Perception of a Social Robot to Promote Hand Washing Among Children in a Rural Indian School

We introduce “Pepe”, a social robot for encouraging proper handwashing behaviour among children. We discuss the motivation, the robot design and a pilot study conducted at a primary school located in the Western Ghats mountain ranges of Southern India with a significant presence of indigenous tribes. The study included individual & group interviews with a randomly selected sample of 45 children to gauge their perception of the Pepe robot across various dimensions including gender, animacy & technology acceptance. We also discuss some HRI implications for running user studies with rural children

Influencing Hand-washing Behaviour with a Social Robot: HRI Study with School Children in Rural India

The work presented in this paper reports the influence of a social robot on hand washing behaviour on school children in rural India with a significant presence of indigenous tribes. We describe the design choices of our social robot to cater the requirements of the intervention. The custom built wall mounted social robot encouraged 100 children to wash their hand at appropriate time (before meal and after toilet) using the correct handwashing technique via a poster on a wall. The results indicate that the intervention using the robot was found to be effective (40% rise) at increasing levels of hand washing with soap and with a better handwashing technique in ecologically valid settings

Abdominal catastrophe secondary to paraduodenal hernia

An Internal hernia is a protrusion of abdominal viscera through the opening in the peritoneum or mesentery. We report the case of a left paraduodenal hernia (LPDH) combined with a small bowel obstruction in a 50-years-old male with pain abdomen and vomiting and no previous abdominal surgeries. An anteroposterior abdominal radiograph showed a clustered small bowel loops towards the left side of the abdomen and few air-fluid levels suggestive of obstruction. CECT abdomen showed a focal crowding of small bowel loops noted in the left anterior pararenal space with crowding of mesenteric vasculature and displacement of ascending left colic artery and inferior mesenteric vein anteriorly. The surgical intervention provided definitive diagnosis and treatment for LPDH. A paraduodenal hernia is a relatively rare cause of acute abdomen, and its diagnosis is often incorrect or delayed owing to its variable clinical manifestations. Therefore, it is important for the clinicians to recognize this condition, diagnose it early, and avoid making a wrong diagnosisowing to its high overall mortality rate