Mechanical Engineering

The following are the broad areas that our group is currently working on: 

(i)  Design and failure analysis of railway rolling stock: Our group is looking into how track irregularities, bogie design, track layout, operating conditions influence ride quality, rail-wheel contact forces, rail, wheel wear, and vehicle stability. To better understand mechanics at rail-wheel contact a six-degree of freedom rail-wheel simulator is being setup. Our group has also looked extensively into wheel gauge widening from heat dissipated during tread braking.

(ii) Design, fabrication, testing, and evaluation of metal-polymer-metal sandwich panels: A new joining technique has been developed by our group for achieving high interface strength for metal-polymer sandwich panels. We are currently look at effect of sandwich panel geometric parameters, weld parameters, phase properties on strength of the panels and on their formability.

(iii) Mechanics of fluid filled open cell porous elastomeric foams: These foams have applications in superfinishing, vibration isolation, and energy absorption. They are being studied experimentally as well as analytically.

(iv) Machine design: Our group does a lot of in-house design and development for testing equipment (e.g. creep setup, six degree of freedom rail-wheel contact simulator, bi-axial testing setup, etc.) and products relevant for rural development and sustainability (e.g. peanut desheller, electric three-wheeler).

(v) Friction stir welding and processing