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#IP 887, 21 - 27 Sep2009

Workshop on ASTM Digital Library and Standards

“Give the scientist the required information immediately you have fed him for the day,  provide seamless, exhaustive and appropriate information access to his desktop you have fed him for the life time”, so goes the saying.  ICAST in its ever pursuit of providing current and latest information, be it printed or online has always been in the forefront in all its endeavors in catering to its user’s needs.  Thanks to the CSIR consortium, ICAST is reaching out to NAL scientists in providing access to e-resources, >6,000 e-journals from leading publishers, good number of e-books, standards and patents.  Keeping this in view ICAST, through the CSIR consortium organized half a day workshop on ASTM Digital Library (DL) and Standards on 16th September 2009 at KTMD Seminar Hall.  ASTM is one of the most comprehensive and authoritative resources available with its exhaustive coverage and market relevance product s. ASTM’s DL is a veritable information super-store and is one of the important resource sought after.

The program started around 2.00 pm. Dr. Poornima Narayana, Head, ICAST welcomed the gathering and gave an insight about the inception of CSIR consortium which was initiated during 2002 with access to just one publisher Elsevier’s ‘Science Direct’.  She mentioned that over the years this consortium continues its tireless efforts in providing access to many more e-resources and the latest addition was to ASTM DL and standards a year back.  She explained that efforts and negotiations with publishers / vendors at the CSIR level are continuously being pursued to give seamless access to many more products of interest to CSIR and individual laboratories’ scientists.  Mr. Shyam Chetty, Chairman of LAC and Head, FMCD was full of appreciation about ICAST’s services which in his opinion, is always striving hard in making information available to users at their desktops.  He called upon the scientists to make use of the ICAST’s facilities and services for better scholarly communication in turn leading for high quality research and publication in high impact factor journals.  The representative from ASTM Inc, USA Mr. Marty Farrell gave a brief over view of ASTM’s products, the salient and unique features of both digital library and standards through a power point presentation.  He explained that the ASTM DL has access to six peer reviewed high quality, market relevant papers published in journals, nearly 30,000 symposium papers published in book format (Special Technical Publication or STPs), manuals and highly technical monographs from experts in their respective fields.  He also touched upon the browsing features by the alphanumerical standards listing and search facilities in the Standards collection.  Mr. K. Gupta, Head of Book Supply Bureau (BSB), Delhi the exclusive agents for ASTM products in India conducted the workshop online.  He demonstrated live examples by using the browsing features by topic, sub topic, ASTM Committee, symposium and e-books while interacting with the NAL scientists and conducted searches by keyword for both DL and standards.  He showed the unique features of standards like the ‘withdrawn’ and ‘work’ items of standards.  The scientists were very interactive and showed a keen interest in these products.  The response to this workshop was very encouraging and over whelming with scientists not only from NAL also from CFTRI and JNCSAR.  The event concluded around 4.30pm with a vote of thanks proposed by Mr. S.R. Dey of ICAST.

Dr. Poornima Narayana

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#IP 886, 14 - 20 Sep2009

Visualization of supersonic air-intake buzz using high speed digital camera

A supersonic air-intake is designed to convert the total pressure in the free-stream into high static pressure inside the intake with minimum loss of pressure. During supercritical operation, the terminal shock occurs inside the intake downstream of the throat. The corresponding external flow field at the design condition of the intake features an oblique shock which starts from the ramp leading edge and glances the intake cowl at the lip. As the back pressure is increased, the terminal shock starts traveling upstream. At the critical condition, the terminal shock reaches the intake throat where it is close to neutrally stable condition. A small increase in back pressure pushes the normal shock into the upstream convergent flow passage where it is unstable and is pushed out of the air-intake. This sets up a subsonic flow in the intake, accompanied by spillage of the mass flow injected by the intake and consequent pressure loss. The spilled normal shock ahead of the intake tries to re-enter the intake, but the back pressure condition does not permit it to do so. This process is periodic and is popularly referred to as supersonic air-intake buzz.

As part of an internal research project, experiments were carried out on a supersonic air-intake at Mach 3. A PC controlled stepper motor was used to vary the back pressure by operating a butterfly valve at the intake exit plane. At the critical condition, intake buzz started. A high speed camera, borrowed from Prof. K P J Reddy, Dept. of Aerospace Engineering, IISc was used to record the images at 2000 frames per second, with pixel resolution of 800 x 600. Shown in the attached page are the images corresponding to one cycle of oscillation. A video movie of the same is also attached. From the frame count and the time between exposures (500mS) , the periodicity is found to be about 100 Hz. Amazingly, analysis of unsteady pressure signals measured from a Kulite pressure transducer inside the intake also showed a clear and dominant 100 Hz frequency. Correlation between what is visualized and what is measured adds immense value to our understanding of unsteady flows.

G K Suryanarayana

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Dr K Sham Sunder honoured with Eminent Engineer Award

Dr K Sham Sunder, Advisor to Director, ACD, NAL, was honoured with Eminent Engineer Award, at  the Forty Second Engineers Day, celebrated at Institution of Engineers India  on 15 Sep 2009.   He is an Outstanding Scientist and former Project Director (Air-Frame) and Associate Programme Director, ADA (Retd).

At the function, Mr B S Yeddyurappa, Hon’ble Chief Minister of Karnataka, the chief guest unveiled the statue of Bharat Ratna M Visvesvaraya. Prof J Srinivasan, Chairman, Divecha Centre for Climate Change, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, delivered the key note address on the theme Engineering Solutions to Combat Climate Change. Dr L V Muralikrishna Reddy, Chairman, IEI, Karnataka State Centre welcomed and  spoke about the significance of Engineers Day.

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#IP 885, 7 - 13 Sep2009

Fourth Prof. A.K. Rao Memorial Lecture

Professor Akella Kameswara Rao was the Founder President of Indian Society for Advancement of Materials and Process Engineering (ISAMPE). Known for his pioneering contributions in structural sciences, Prof. Rao played a pivotal role in bringing in profound changes in the aeronautical sciences in the country and inspired a galaxy of scientists, engineers and technocrats to work together in a multidisciplinary scenario to meet the need of the hour. His primary fields of interest encompassed various disciplines of structural engineering including Finite Element Methods, Non-destructive Testing and of course, Composite Materials and he is revered as one of the pioneers in each of these fields in the country. He also championed the cause of interdisciplinary research activities towards solving challenges offered by extremely complex engineering systems and was a systems engineer from heart. On his passing away in the year 2005, the then ISAMPE Executive Board unanimously resolved to honour his memory by instituting  ‘Prof. AK Rao Memorial Lecture’, to be delivered by an eminent person (from India or abroad) in the month of September each year, to  commemorate his month of birth. The first lecture in this series was delivered in the year 2006 by Dr. Baldev Raj, Director, IGCAR, Kalpakkam and a former student of the late Professor.

Keeping with the continuing practice, the fourth lecture in this series was delivered on 11th September 2009 by Lt. Gen. (Dr.) VJ Sundaram (Retd.) PVSM, AVSM, VSM, through which he bestowed his respect to the late scientist. The proceedings of the day were flagged off by a welcome address by the President-ISAMPE, Dr. S. Sankaran, DRDO HQ, New Delhi. Dr. AR Upadhya, Director NAL, Bangalore presided over the function and shared his fond memories about Prof. Rao with the members and other invitees.

In own words of General Sundaram, “Prof. A.K. Rao passionately promoted system design”, a fact that motivated him to talk about PRITHVI missile system development and christen the talk as “PRITHVI – CONCEPT TO RETIREMENT”. System Engineering (SE) played a major role in the design and development of PRITHVI, which was incidentally India’s first surface to surface missile (150 km), sanctioned in July 1983 under the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP). General Sundaram  explained about the various possible definitions of SE and went on to add that in the PRITHVI Project, SE encompassed the entire life cycle of the missile-starting with concepts from the user and developer, moving through design, development, training and production and also covering maintenance / upgradation over a lifetime of 20 to 25 years, before final retirement. It covered not only hardcore engineering like aerodynamics, structures, propulsion, control, navigation, guidance, telemetry, warhead and ground systems but also logistics and the management structure. It brought about transparency and team spirit in finding system solutions. He presented how SE was effectively used to make choices between alternate solutions at subsystem level and to improve quality and reliability of the total missile weapon system. PRITHVI had its user trials in June 1994 and was inducted with 95% indigenous content in 1996 for the Army. It was later upgraded for extended ranges to meet the requirements of Air force and Navy as well. Today, PRITHVI stands tall as a classic example of systems engineering success, and the talk stood out to be fitting tribute to the memories of ISAMPE’s Founder President.

The function concluded with a formal Vote of Thanks proposed by Secretary- ISAMPE, Mr D Saji, NAL,Bangalore.

D Saji

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