Diagnosis of Damages in Beam Structures using Vibration Parameters and Artificial Intelligence Techniques

In the present analysis, special attention has been focused for detecting the damages present in Al, composite and steel beam structures by comparing the characteristics of damaged and undamaged state of the structures. In the current research, damage detection of damaged cantilever and fixed-fixed beam is carried out using numerical, Finite element analysis (FEA), fuzzy logic and neural network techniques. Numerical analysis has been performed on the cantilever beam & fixed-fixed beam with damage in the transverse direction to obtain the vibration parameters of the beam members utilizing the expression of strain energy release rate and stress intensity factor. The presence of damage in a structural member introduces local stiffness that affects its dynamic characteristics. The local stiffness matrices have been determined using the inverse of local dimensionless compliance matrix for finding out the deviations in the vibrating signatures of the damaged beam structures from that of the intact beams. Finite Element Analysis has been carried out to derive the vibration indices of the damaged structures using the overall stiffness matrix, total stiffness matrix, stiffness matrix of the intact beams. It is concluded from the conducted research that the performance of the damage diagnosis techniques depends on several factors for example, the material type, the number of sensors used for acquiring the dynamic response, position and severity of damages. Different artificial intelligent model based on fuzzy logic, neural network have been designed using the estimated vibration signatures for damage diagnosis in beam structures with higher precision and remarkably low calculating time

Physics Potential of the ICAL detector at the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO)

The upcoming 50 kt magnetized iron calorimeter (ICAL) detector at the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) is designed to study the atmospheric neutrinos and antineutrinos separately over a wide range of energies and path lengths. The primary focus of this experiment is to explore the Earth matter effects by observing the energy and zenith angle dependence of the atmospheric neutrinos in the multi-GeV range. This study will be crucial to address some of the outstanding issues in neutrino oscillation physics, including the fundamental issue of neutrino mass hierarchy. In this document, we present the physics potential of the detector as obtained from realistic detector simulations. We describe the simulation framework, the neutrino interactions in the detector, and the expected response of the detector to particles traversing it. The ICAL detector can determine the energy and direction of the muons to a high precision, and in addition, its sensitivity to multi-GeV hadrons increases its physics reach substantially. Its charge identification capability, and hence its ability to distinguish neutrinos from antineutrinos, makes it an efficient detector for determining the neutrino mass hierarchy. In this report, we outline the analyses carried out for the determination of neutrino mass hierarchy and precision measurements of atmospheric neutrino mixing parameters at ICAL, and give the expected physics reach of the detector with 10 years of runtime. We also explore the potential of ICAL for probing new physics scenarios like CPT violation and the presence of magnetic monopoles.Comment: 139 pages, Physics White Paper of the ICAL (INO) Collaboration, Contents identical with the version published in Pramana - J. Physic