SYNC V by Publication MESA

MESSAGE FROM THE EDITOR Words create our world. They ignite the torch of our knowledge in order to light up the world. Like shadows, they have always been with us. They have helped mankind glide through centuries spreading the wings of wisdom. Like a mirror, literature reflects the world. This edition of SYNC Magazine is an attempt to synchronise the minds of the readers with this mirror of creativity. Maintaining the equilibrium between the technical world and real life world had been the sole aim of this magazine. An attempt has been made to assimilate the science behind real life experiences so that we can envisage a plethora of achievements in times to come. We, as a part of MESA, present to you this edition of Sync. We have delved into the world of technologies to bring to you these articles. F1 car design, 3D Printing, Rocket science, Robotics and Swarm Intelligence are the attraction of this edition. I take this opportunity to thank the Head of the Department and Faculty Advisor for lending their constant support for the all the activities of the association. I am grateful to the members of the writing and editing team for their valuable contribution. I feel deeply thankful to the designers who fabricated the magazine to its current form. We have just ignited the flame and will leave it to the readers to supply continuous fuel to this journey of knowledge. With great delight and anticipation, we present to you Sync, Volume V.

MESA

SYNC TEAM

Faculty Adviser Dr. Sashindra K. Kakoty

Publication Secretary Navdeep Sharma

President Tushar Mane

Editors Angshuman Kashyap (Editor in chief) Nitin Khola

Vice President Manish Kumar Agarwal

Designers Tushar Chhabra (NID) Dukhishyam Soren

Members Ramnath Vijaykumar Deepak Paramkusam Shashank Saxena Konduri Vamshi Benjamin Varughese Johnson Siddhartha Nambiar Saurabh Singh Vivek Chowdary Rajat Tiwari Abhinav Yadav Mansimran Singh

CONTENTS ROCKET SCIENCE

AN INTERESTING OVERVIEW

GAMEPAD

THE HANDS AND LEGS OF MODERN GAMING

MAGNETIC REFRIGERATION

F1 CAR DESIGN 9 FALCON HTV-2 11

HYPERSONIC AIRCRAFT

AUTOMATONS

FLYING ROBOTS

SOLAR TOWERS

3D PRINTER

MICRO-FACTORY ANYWHERE ANYTIME

FUTURISTIC ECO-HOMES

SAE CLUB IIT GUWAHATI

BAJA 2012

MIMICKING SWARM INTELLIGENCE

FROM BIRDS AND FISH

Rocket Science - An Interesting Overview j by Ramnath Vijaykumar

“Rocket Science and interesting? Are you kiddin’ me? It’s just a tall kinda thingy that sort of carries stuff like satellite and other stuff with it!!! What’s to write an article about? LOL SYNC!”. -Le Sarcarstic-IITians

Fun Fact:

Well, conventionally starting, according to Wikipedia (the secret’s revealed) a rocket is a missile, spacecraft, aircraft or other vehicle that obtains a thrust from a rocket engine. Rockets were first built for the purpose of military and recreation and later expanded to launch satellites; space probes to explore the solar system, setting up space based telescopes and very recently, even to launch the Autobots into outer space!

common propellants in use today are LOX (Liquid oxygen) and liquid Nitrogen or hydrogen peroxide, hydrazine and nitrous oxide. The tank can store 53488 cubic feet of fuel. External tank is the “backbone” of the shuttle during launch, providing structural support for attachment with the solid rocket boosters (SRBs) and orbiter.

mass concept and the amount of force required as up thrust in order to launch the rocket into outer space! I need not explain all these things! The rocket is assembled in what is known as a Vehicle Assembly building or VAB, one of the prominent ones in NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The rocket is assembled vertically within this building. Vertical assembly allows the preparation of the spacecraft in a ready-for-launch position, and avoids the additional step of lifting or craning a horizontally-assembled vehicle onto the Launchpad. The various parts of a rocket are shown in the diagram.

earth to the desired orbit. The orbiter generally contain a large number of heat resistant plates throughout its surface in order to resist the heat generated when the orbiter re enters the earth’s atmosphere during landing. The failure is this function resulted in the tragic “Kalpana Chawla tragedy”.

The crawler Orbiter transporters In normal terms the orbiter is what peohave featured Assembling of a rocket ple commonly refer to as “space ship”! It is in television Building a rocket that can send tens of the space probe that actually does the purand movies like thousands of pounds of cargo into space is pose and orbits around a planet. It is genno easy task! To quote an IIT cliché used erally attached to the side of the external Transformers: by profs- you guys have cleared the JEE. tank vertically on the surface of the rocket. Dark of The You have an idea about the escape velocity The purpose of the rocket is merely to put of the earth. You know about the variable the transfer the orbiter from the surface of Moon.

External Tank

The largest part of the rocket is the propellant tank which stores the fuel. The most

Solid Rocket Boosters

This is the so called “cool stuff ” in the rocket which actually makes all the light and sound effects during the launch of the rocket. The SRBs may also be considered as the engines of the rocket. This is the part which is finally attached to the rocket in the Vehicle Assembly building. Rocket engines as a group have the highest exhaust velocities, are by far the lightest, but are the least propellant efficient of all types of jet engines. It uses only propellant mass for forming its high speed propulsive jet. Rocket engines are reaction engines and obtain thrust in accordance with Newton’s third law. Then an obvious question arises “If the so called fuel and engine are highly efficient, then why do we see a hell lot of smoke during the launch?” We’ll get back to that in a short while.After all the parts of a rocket are assembled, they are then taken to the launch pad. The rocket is transported vertically with the help of a specially designed vehicle known as the crawler. Living upto its name, the crawler moves with a speed of 1.6 kmph when loaded and a speed of 3.2kmph when unloaded. The alarmingly low speed is to maintain the balance of the mounted rocket and to ensure the stability. . A team of nearly 30 engineers, technicians and drivers operate the vehicle. The average trip time from the VAB along the Crawlerway to the launch pad is about 5 hours to the Mobile Launch Platform.Now the rocket has arrived at the Launchpad, but not yet ready for the actual launch. It is in this Launchpad that the payload and propellants are loaded into the rocket. All the above events are carefully synchronized and is strictly set according to time to the accuracy of a few nanoseconds by the conventional method – countdown.

The Final Countdown

A countdown is a carefully devised set of procedures ending with the ignition of a rocket’s engine. Depending on the type of vehicle used, countdowns can start from 72 to 96 hours before launch time. But what we actually observe on the television is only the last 10 seconds of the countdown. What we

don’t know is the part that each and every second of the countdown denotes a specific procedure. During countdown: • Aerospace personnel bring the rocket vehicle to the launch site and load it with payload and propellants. • Launch-center computers communicate with sensors in the rocket, which monitor important systems on the launch vehicle and payload. • Launch personnel monitor the weather and wait for the launch window. The procedures for each launch are written carefully. Proceeding with the countdown depends on several factors, such as the proper launch window, weather that permits a safe launch, and the rocket and payload working properly.Now we some back to the unanswered question about “If the so called fuel and engine are highly efficient, then why do we see a hell lot of smoke during the launch?” Water is released onto the mobile launcher platform on Launch Pad 39A at the start of a rare sound suppression system test in 2004. During launch, 300,000 US gallons (1,100 m3) are poured onto the pad in only 41 seconds. The giant white clouds that billow around the shuttle at each launch are not smoke, but water vapor generated as the rocket exhaust boils away huge quantities of water. The suppression system reduces the acoustic sound level to approximately 142dB. The rocket is now ready for launch. The last 10 seconds of the countdown are the most crucial where a final check is done before launch. At the count of zero the parts of the Launchpad tower that is attached to the rocket are blown up with small explosives and the rocket is launched. If the launch gets delayed even by the slightest amount as one second (that’s a very huge amount of error in this case) the entire project is dropped and is declared as a “failed” operation. The next part of the launch is what you all know and have probably seen on the television. Rocket science has a long way to go in terms of error elimination, as they have a greater reputation for failed launches than a successful one!

Fun Fact 2 :

During the countdown the number “Five” is deliberately omitted as it sounds very similar to “Fire”.

3 Gamepad : The Hands and Legs of Modern Gaming by Deepak Paramkusam

“Giggs passes the ball to Chicharito ….back to Rooney…nice volley by Rooney and over to Nani…AND HE SCORES !!! ManU 3 - 0 Arsenal !!! ”

laying FIFA’12 using a gamepad is a different experience altogether. The 360 degree movement using the dual analog sticks, handy controls right near the thumb and access to wider variety of feints…Nothing beats FIFA on gamepad! I’m sure a lot of professional gamers would disagree but according to me, the gamepad, AKA the joystick, has brought about a huge change in the gaming industry. A change to the extent that without it there would be no gaming consoles at all! Can you imagine that?

User comfort and number of buttons were the most important factors in the evolution of gamepads.

Everyone knows what a gamepad does. Everyone has played with one or the other type of gamepad. Be it the third generation Nintendo and Atari “joy pads” or the eighth generation Wii U controller, all gamepads have the same function. Gamepads take something entirely physical -like movement of your hand- and convert it to something mathematical –a string of ones and zeroes- which the processor/computer can understand.

It is noteworthy that joysticks were already present then, though the term was used to refer to the control rods of aeroplanes! They later evolved into modern computer joysticks and other peripherals like steering wheel, paddles etc. But that is a different story. After the success of the D-Pad, the game pad slowly evolved. User comfort and number of buttons were the most important factors in its evolution. Some common additions to the standard pad include centrally placed start, select, and mode buttons. Later on Analog sticks, Force Feedback, shoulder buttons along the edges of the pad, touch screen and motion control were added.

This basic function is what helps the gamer immerse himself completely into virtual world and interact with it. But which genius got this idea, the one which would glue generations of youth to their gaming consoles? Long after Nikola Tesla invented the remote control, a video game designer named Mr.Gunpei Yokoi of Nintendo Corporations (Best known for inventing the GameBoy) was inspired to make a push- button handheld portable gaming device called ‘Game and Watch’ after seeing people playing with their calculators on the Japanese Subway. And the Direction Pad/D-Pad was born. It was a huge hit. It was so successful and revolutionary that you still find the D- Pads on every gamepad 40 years after its invention.

Now let us see in brief the working of important parts of the modern gamepad.

D-Pad

A D-Pad is a flat, usually thumb-operated directional control with one button on each point. Working • The basic design consists of a stick that is attached to a plastic base with a flexible rubber sheath. The base houses a circuit board that sits directly underneath the stick. The

circuit board is made up of several “printed wires,” which connect to several contact terminals. • The printed wires form a simple electrical circuit made up of several smaller circuits. When the button is in the neutral position all but one of the individual circuits are broken. The conductors don’t touch, so the circuit can’t conduct electricity. • Each broken section is covered with a simple plastic button containing a tiny metal disc. When you press the button, it pushes down on one of these buttons, pressing the conducting metal disc against the circuit board. This closes the circuit sending input back to the computer.

the contact arm is on the opposite end of the path from the input connection terminal, it will face maximum resistance. If the contact arm is near the input terminal, the potentiometer will have minimal resistance.

An analog stick measures the stick’s position the X-axis and the Y-axis.

• Each potentiometer is connected to one of the stick shafts so that pivoting the shaft rotates the contact arm. • This electrical signal is totally analog .In order to make the information usable; the computer needs to translate it into a digital signal. • In the conventional system, a card inside the computer handles this with a very crude analog-to-digital converter. The basic idea is to use the varying voltage from each potentiometer to charge a capacitor. If the potentiometer is adjusted to offer more resistance, it will take the capacitor longer to charge; if it offers less resistance, the capacitor will charge more quickly. • By discharging the capacitor and then timing how long it takes it to get recharged, the converter can determine the position of the potentiometer, and therefore the analog stick. The measured recharge rate is a numerical value the computer can recognize.

Working • In the standard analog stick design, the handle moves a narrow rod that sits in two rotatable, slotted shafts. Tilting the stick forward and backward pivots the Y-axis shaft from side to side. Tilting it left to right pivots the X-axis shaft. When you move the stick diagonally, it pivots both shafts. Several springs centre the stick when you let go of it. • To determine the location of the stick, the gamepad control system simply monitors the position of each shaft. The conventional analog gamepad design does this with two potentiometers. • Each potentiometer consists of a curved track and a movable contact arm. By moving the contact arm along the track, you can increase or decrease the resistance acting on the current flowing through this circuit. If

Disadvantages The conventional analog system works okay, overall, but it does have limitations. • First of all, the crude analog-to-digital conversion process isn’t very accurate, since the system doesn’t have a true analog-to-digital converter. This compromises the analog stick’s sensitivity somewhat. • Second, the host computer has to dedicate

Disadvantages Only the directions provided on the D-pad buttons can be used, with no intermediate values. However, combinations of two directions do provide diagonals and many modern D-pads can be used to provide eightdirectional input if appropriate.

Analog Sticks

The conventional analog gamepad design determines the location of the stick with two potentiometers.

a lot of processing power to regularly “poll” the gamepad system to determine the position of the stick. This takes a lot of power away from other operations. New methods like direct data transfer to processor and LED method have been proposed to overcome these problems.

Force Feedback

The basic idea of a force feedback gamepad (also called a haptic feedback gamepad) is to move the stick in conjunction with onscreen action. For example, if you’re shooting a machine gun in an action game, the stick would vibrate in your hands. Or if you crashed your plane in a flight simulator, the stick would push back suddenly!

Imagine sometime in the future, when you play a FPS game, you’ll feel the weight of your gun, its recoil, mild pokes where the bullets hit and total 3D gameplay in all directions!

Working • Force feedback gamepads have most of the same components as ordinary gamepads, with a few important additions -an on board microprocessor, a couple of electrical motors and either a gear train or belt system. • Movement of the shaft causes the motor to get switched on thus vibrating the gamepad. The gear system is used for amplification of the shaft movement.

• The gamepad has a built-in ROM chip that stores various sequences of motor movement. For example, it might have a machine gun sequence that instructs the motors to rapidly change direction, or a bazooka sequence that instructs the motor to shift the analog stick backward suddenly and then forward again. The game software requests a particular sequence, and the computer transmits the request to the gamepad’s on board processor, which brings up the appropriate data from its own memory. This reduces the work load on the computer and allows faster reaction times.

Future Gamepads

Today gamepads have evolved beyond the wildest dreams. Kinect, PS Move and Wii Controller have opened the gates to motion sensing gaming. PS Vita and Nintendo 3DS already have touch interfaces. Day in and day out, more and more ways for immersive gaming are being invented. Imagine sometime in the future, when you play a FPS game, you’ll feel the weight of your gun, its recoil, mild pokes where the bullets hit and total 3D gameplay in all directions! You might actually be able to kick the virtual ball in FIFA 30! Now that’s the way it’s meant to be played!

References: Wikipedia.org Howstuffworks.com Slidshare.com Google.com

Amazing Facts

Electrified road could now power cars from ground itself. Scientists are developing a system that transmits electric power through steel belts placed inside two tyres and a metal plate in the road with 80% efficiency.

Magnetic Refrigeration

he bliss of an ice cream or the relief when we enter an air conditioned room on a hot sunny day. Refrigeration has become an essential part of everyoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s life. According to the recent survey results, it was pointed out that some 15% of the total worldwide energy consumption is related to the use of refrigeration, be it air conditioning, refrigeration, freezing, or chilling.

by Benjamin Varughese Johnson phenomenon that was discovered in 1881, by Dr. E. Warburg. Dr. Warburg who noticed heating effect while magnetising and cooling effect during the demagnetising in Iron. This phenomenon is called the magnetocaloric effect.

Magnetocaloric Effect

In 1842, the American physician John Gorrie, to cool sickrooms in a Florida hospital, designed and built an air-cooling apparatus for treating yellow-fever patients. His basic principle--that of compressing a gas, cooling it by sending it through radiating coils, and then expanding it to lower the temperature. Giving up his medical practice to engage in time-consuming experimentation with ice making, he was granted the first U.S. patent for mechanical refrigeration in 1851.

When a magnet comes in close contact to a metal, its field quickly aligns the metalâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s unpaired electrons, i.e. magnetic spins. Constrained by the field from moving about freely, the magnetic spins result in enhanced lattice vibrations in order to keep the overall disorder in the material the same, which causes the temperature of the metal to rise. Remove the magnet, and the temperature quickly lowers once again. All magnetic materials exhibit the magnetocaloric effect to some degree.

The basic components of todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s modern vapor-compression refrigeration system, as laid by Gorrie are a compressor; a condenser; an expansion device, which can be a valve, a capillary tube, an engine, or a turbine; and an evaporator. Lately, engineerings and scientist have been working on a

The discovery of this phenomenon led to more research in the field of magnetic materials that exhibit this property in a scale where such properties could be used for practical purposes. On these lines came the discovery of Gd2(SO)4 8H2O by Dr. Giaque

Dr. G. V.Brown is credited to have built the first magnetic refrigerator which could be used in room temperatures.

and Dr. MacDougall who were able to reach temperatures of 1K using this effect. This was followed by the use of this phenomenon in the field of refrigeration. Dr. G. V. Brown is credited to have built the first magnetic refrigerator which could be used in room temperatures.

Following the early work of Brown, the concept of using an active magnetic regenerator (AMR) in the cooling device to facilitate heat transfer was introduced by Steyert.

Prior to his work several researchers pursued the use of ferrofluids (a colloidal suspension of ferromagnetic particles) in near room temperature heat engines. But because of the low concentration of magnetic particles in the ferrofluid and also because of heat transfer problems this approach was abandoned. Dr. Brown showed that a continuously operating device working near room temperature could achieve much larger temperature spans than the maximum observed magnetocaloric effect (MCE, or the adiabatic temperature change, DTad). Brown’s near room temperature reciprocating magnetic refrigerator used one mole of 1mm thick Gd plates separated by a wire screen (Curie temperature, TC ¼ 294 K) and an 80% water–20% ethyl alcohol solution as a regenerator in an alternating 70 kOe field produced by a superconducting magnet. A maximum temperature span of 47 K was attained after 50 cycles (Thot ¼ 319 K [46 _C] and Tcold ¼ 272 K [_1 _C] where Thot is the hot end temperature and Tcold is the cold end temperature). This temperature span is more than three times larger than the MCE of Gd metal between 272 K (DTad ¼ 11 K) and 319 K (DTad ¼ 13 K); Gd has a maximum DTad value of 16 K at its Curie temperature TC ¼ 294 K. Subsequently, Dr.Brown was able to attain a temperature span of 80 K (from 248 to 328 K) using the same apparatus. Following the early work of Brown, the concept of using an active magnetic regenerator (AMR) in the cooling device to facilitate heat transfer was introduced by Steyert who was evaluating the Stirling cycle for magnetic refrigerators and heat engines. This AMR cycle which is a Brayton-like cycle, was further developed by Barclay and Steyert (1982) and Barclay (1983a). In a seminal paper Barclay (1983b) (also described in the patent by Barclay and Steyert, 1982) showed that it is possible to get much larger temperature lifts than just the adiabatic temperature rise of the magnetic refrigerant by using the magnetic material simultaneously as a regenerator and as the active magnetic component. Chen et al. (1992) concluded

room temperature magnetic refrigerators, a regenerative cycle is more efficient than the Carnot, Ericsson or Stirling cycles. A pure Carnot cycle, which consists of two isothermal and two isentropic processes, will have the maximum thermodynamic efficiency, but the cycle capacity for a given Thot and Tcold may be limited because of the allowable magnetic field variation. However, the cycle capacity can be increased by employing a regenerative process. The regenerative cycle was subsequently brought to life in the late 1990s, and early 2000s when various magnetic refrigeration units were built in the USA, Canada, Europe, Japan and China. These are just some of the path breaking research accomplishments in this field. Recent research is oriented towards the discovery of other MCE materials and methods to overcome various difficulties posed by these materials.

The MCE Material Problem The three major problems with the giant MCE materials as magnetic regenerator materials are due to the facts that they undergo a first order magnetostructural transition, which results in (1) a large volume change (2) hysteresis and (3) a finite time for the ΔTad to reach its maximum equilibrium value. The large volume change presents a problem since all of the giant magnetocaloric materials are intermetallic compounds (except for the complex manganites) and are notorious for their brittleness (the manganites are also brittle). Assuming a lifetime of 15 years and 10% runtime for a commercial cooling device, the magnetic refrigerant material will undergo 50 (at 1 Hz) to 500 (at 10 Hz) million cycles, it is quite likely that most of these brittle materials will undergo some fracture, i.e. decrepitate. Thus, it is likely that in time small particles of the refrigerant material will break off (friable) and would clog the regenerator bed, reducing the flow of the heat transfer fluid and lowering the cooling power, and eventually the refrigerator will stop cooling altogether. This problem may be solved by alloying (but one needs to be careful not to reduce the favorable magnetocaloric properties), or perhaps by coating the particles with a ductile material which would reduce the regenerator capacity

because of the coating material. The temperature hysteresis values for the various first order materials range from 2 to 14 K and the magnetic field hysteresis values range from 2 to 11 kOe. This problem can be overcome by layering the regenerator bed so that the temperature swing in a given elemental volume of the regenerator is such that Thot is higher than the upper temperature of the hysteresis loop of magnetization step of the magnetocaloric material, and that Tcold is less than the lower temperature of the hysteresis of the demagnetization step. Of even greater concern is delay time for the ΔTad rise to achieve its maximum value in a cycle. For Gd5(Si2Ge2) and La(Fe11.44Si1.56) (both MCE materials) the directly measured temperature changes may be 30–50% smaller than the equilibrium values because of the kinetics of the phase transformation when magnetic fields are near critical. This is a problem because the magneticrefrigerators operate between 0.5 and 10 Hz and much of the giant MCE may not be utilized during the rapid magnetic field increase and the field decrease.

But is all this necessary? Magnetic refrigeration is the only alternative technology which would simultaneously eliminate the need for harmful refrigerant gases and reduce the energy requirements, and hence carbon dioxide emissions. The following table gives us a glimpse of what magnetic refrigeration can contribute to our ‘efficiency’ ridden society.

The importance of saving energy has never been emphasised as it is now. Based on the 1990 USA energy consumption for industrial refrigeration and cooling systems (~15 billion kWh), ~5 billion kWh and $250 million could be saved if all of the gas compression refrigerators were replaced by AMR magnetic refrigeration units. Such big numbers are not available for the Indian context, but we can imagine, with per capita income and the standard of living of the Indian society on the rise, use of refrigeration is increasing and the importance of such technology in the future would be inevitable. China has stepped up their interest in this field in the past years and has developed certain prototypes for commercial purposes. India should also take initiatives in developing such technology which can contribute in cheaper and more efficient systems which are of daily use.

References : 1. Thirty years of near room temperature magnetic cooling: Where we are today and future prospects : http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140700708000236 2. History of Magnetic Refrigeration : http://www.ifw-dresden.de/institutes/imw/ sections/21/funct-magn-mat/magnetocaloric-materials/history-of-magnetic-cooling-and-magnetocaloric-effect

Comparison of efficiencies of various techniques used for refrigeration

Magnetic refrigeration would simultaneously eliminate the need for harmful refrigerant gases & reduce the energy requirements, and hence carbon dioxide emissions.

F1 Car Design by Siddhartha Nambiar

Apart from providing the driver with an extremely strong cocoon, the survival cell incorporates impact and rollover structures.

• It’s made up of 80,000 components; if it were assembled 99.9% correctly, it would still have 80 things wrong with it! • It can go from 0 to 160 kmph AND back to 0 in FOUR seconds! • On track, it is faster than the speeds at which smaller planes take-off for flight! • In dry weather, the peak optimum operating temperature of its tyres is between 900 and 1200 degrees centigrade. By now you’re probably thinking that these are quite impressive statistics. As you have rightly imagined, stats like these are not easy to get. Formula One teams spend an insane amount of time and money to ensure that the cars they create stand the best possible chance at surviving the conditions on a race track. How exactly, though, is it all done? The race day performance of an F1 car is already decided at the design stage and a lot of work goes into the development of the car. Let’s take a quick look into the birthing of a Formula One Race Car. As the complete article would be quite enormous, let us take a look at the most fundamental structure of any vehicle, the chassis. Back in the day, racing cars were made up of the same things as a normal road car. The onset of the 1980’s saw a revolution of sorts, and thus began the age of the carbon fibre composites. This material has four major advantages over other materials used in building the chassis. It’s lightweight, super strong, super stiff and can be moulded into all kinds of different shapes reasonably easily.

Let’s take a quick look at how exactly the chassis is manufactured. a) Designed, analysed and developed by CAD and FEA software’s, solid epoxy patterns for the chassis are cut using five axis milling cutters, which read data from the CAD file and replicate the required dimensions. Epoxy is used instead of metal to ensure that when the moulds are undergoing curing at high temperatures, the effects of thermal expansion are minimized. b) Female moulds are made from these patters. Upper and lower moulds are produced, as the chassis itself is manufactures in upper and lower halves which are then bonded together. This work is carried out in a ‘clean room’, which is effectively a room sealed off from surrounding environments using double-door airlocks. c) The chassis themselves are manufactured from layered carbon-fibre cloth. The orientation of the fibre ‘plies’ (layers) is critical and they must run in specific directions according to the required stiffness properties of the structure. The number of plies and their orientation varies at different locations around the chassis. To ensure that the plies are correctly positioned, the staff carry out the lay-up work (layering of various carbon fibre plies) with reference to printed manuals containing annotated visual description to be followed for each ply. This is then rechecked before moving to the next step. d) The whole assembly is then placed in a vacuum bag and pushed into an autoclave

(a large oven that provides thermal curing with precise control of temperature and pressure). The resin then cures, thus fusing all the plies together to create a single solid half of the chassis. The completed chassis halves are removed from the moulds, and are bonded together to form the final monocoque. e) Final machining and trimming of the finished chassis is carried out to produce any required detailing and to accommodate suspension pick-up-points, component mountings etc. f) Throughout the preceding steps, rigorous inspection procedures are followed at every stage. Parts are also returned for inspection between on-track events and many parts have specified service schedules which may include NDT of bonded joints and the condition of laminates, stiffness testing, visual checking and cleaning/tidying up processes. Although these steps provide a simplified view, the basic principles and procedures apply to all carbon-fibre components on the car. The main components of the chassis are the survival cell, the roll structures, the fuel tanks and ballasts.

The Survival Cell: The driver survival cell is

an important feature. Apart from providing the driver with an extremely strong cocoon, the survival cell incorporates impact and rollover structures. The survival cell also incorporates side-impact-protection panels to reduce chances of parts of another car, punching through the side of the chassis and causing injury to the driver.

Roll Structures: In the event that the car

becomes inverted during an accident, the FIA have specified that all cars must have two roll structures which must be incorporated into the chassis. The drives helmet and steering wheel must fall below a speci-

fied distance below the line drawn between the highest points of the two roll structures. Both Roll structures are subjected to load tests as part of the FIA regulations.

Fuel Tanks: The fuel tank is located in the

chassis to the rear of the cockpit, behind the driverâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s seat. It is made from an elastomer-impregnated Kevlar material which is light and extremely flexible. The fuel talk is designed to deform if subjected to highenergy impact. The fuel pumps are carefully designed to ensure that every last drop of fuel inside the tank is used up.

Ballast: The FIA specifies a minimum

weight limit of all cars taking part in a Formula One race. Thus, the teams ensure that the car is designed in such a way that it is at least 40-50 kg lighter than the weight limit. The remaining weight is provided in terms of ballasts. The ballasts are simple structures whose function is to distribute the weight around a car as desired. There is no restriction on the materials that can be used as Ballasts. Red Bull Racing, for example, made the use of Tungsten. The chassis for any new car must undergo a series of FIA crash tests, all of which must be passed before the chassis is homologated and the car is allowed to race. The impact test is usually carried out at the Cranfield Impact centre near Bedford, with an FIA witness present. Various tests are carried out, divided into impact tests, roll-structure tests and push-off tests. The chassis design is only a small part of the overall development process involved for an F1 car. The aerodynamics, safety equipment, hydraulics, electronics etc. constitute a large amount of money and work-force. And with the advent of newer forms of technology every day, the design and development process in F1 is sure to become even more rigid and sophisticated.

Amazing Facts

The Bugatti Veyron is named after French racing driver Pierre Veyron, who won the 24 hour race at Le Mans for Bugatti in 1939.

Throughout the preceding steps, rigorous inspection procedures are followed at every stage.

FALCON HTV-2 HYPERSONIC AIRCRAFT by Saurabh Singh

How do you learn to fly at 13,000 miles per hour—a speed at which it would take less than 30 minutes to get from say Delhi to New York? Or, how do you know whether a vehicle can maintain a long duration flight while experiencing temperatures in excess of 3500 degrees Fahrenheit—hotter than a blast furnace that can melt steel? And if you can fly, and withstand the extreme heat, how do you know if the vehicle can be controlled as it rips apart the air?

T The surface temperature of HTV-2 is expected to reach almost 2000 C.

he path toward a hypersonic space plane has been a slow one, filled with twists and turns one would expect given the technological leap involved. A speed of Mach 8+ involves tremendous heat and resistance stresses on a craft. Building a vehicle that is both light enough to achieve the speeds desired at reasonable cost, and robust enough to survive those speeds, is no easy task. Consequently the potential of a truly hypersonic aircraft for reconnaissance, global strike/ transport, and low-cost access to near-space and space is a compelling goal on both engineering and military grounds and one such big leap in that direction is the Falcon HTV-2,built with an aim to make long duration hypersonic flight reality. HTV-2’s inaugural flight collected data that demonstrated advances in high lift-to-drag aerodynamics; high temperature materials; thermal protection systems; autonomous flight safety systems; and advanced guidance, navigation, and control for long-duration hypersonic flight. The HTV-2 program had three key technical challenges, aerodynamics, aerothermal effects and control. Aerodynamic behavior in such extreme airspeed is still impossible to simulate accurately. Assumptions about Mach 20 hypersonic flight were made from physics-based computational models and simulations, wind tunnel testing .Wind tunnels capture valuable, relevant hypersonic data and can operate for relatively long durations up to

around Mach 15. Replicating speeds above Mach 15 generally requires special wind tunnels, called impulse tunnels, which provide milliseconds or less of data per run. To have captured the equivalent aerodynamic data from flight one at only a scale representation on the ground would have required years, whole host of funding, and several hundred impulse tunnel tests. And even then we wouldn’t know exactly what to expect based solely on the snapshots provided in ground testing. Only flight testing could reveal the harsh and uncertain reality.

The subsequent challenge was the Aerothermal effect, the result of which is the extreme aerodynamic pressure that creates vast amounts of heat. The surface temperature of HTV-2 is expected to reach almost 2000C, much hotter than the melting point of steel. Advanced carbon composite materials with very high melting point and very low thermal conductivity are used for the outer surface in order to keep the internal of the vehicle almost at room temperature in these conditions. The flight follows the path described in the picture above. The HTV-2 is launched aboard a Minotaur IV rocket, in high altitude it is poised to re-enter the Earth’s upper

atmosphere controlled by both aero surfaces and RCS. It executes some basic maneuvers and glides until its flight is terminated by diving into the ocean.

A reaction control system (RCS) is a subsystem of a spacecraft whose purpose is altitude control and steering by the use of thrusters. An RCS is capable of providing small amounts of thrust in any desired direction or combination of directions. An RCS is also capable of providing torque to allow control of rotation (roll, pitch, and yaw). This is in contrast to a spacecraft’s main engine, which is only capable of providing thrust in one direction, but is much more powerful. The HTV-2 is packaged in a special capsule atop the launch-ready Minotaur IV Lite rocket. After the Minotaur rocket launches and nears orbit, HTV-2 separates and flies in a hypersonic glide trajectory within the earth’s atmosphere at near Mach 20 speeds, approximately 13,000 miles per hour but approximately nine minutes into its first test flight in April 2010, telemetry assets experienced a loss of signal from the HTV-2. The vehicle’s onboard system detected a flight anomaly and engaged its onboard safety system—prompting the vehicle to execute a controlled descent (due to autonomous flight termination system) into the ocean.

REASON FOR HTV-2’S FIRST FLIGHT FAILURE Nine minutes into the flight - which was to take the hypersonic vehicle 4,160 nautical miles (7,700km) across the Pacific at Mach 20 along the edge of space – eight telemetry assets lost signals from the dart-shaped glider because of existence of “flight control limitations to operate at the angle of attack the vehicle was programmed to fly for the corresponding speed and the altitude of flight.” Other probable cause of the anomaly was a “higher-than predicted yaw, which coupled

into roll, thus exceeding the available control capability at the time of the anomaly.” For its second test flight, engineers have adjusted the vehicle’s center of gravity, decreased the angle of attack flown, and will be using the onboard reaction control system to augment the vehicle flaps to maintain stability during flight operations.

In spite of losing the aircraft so early in its flight, the HTV-2 test was a success as it involved: • “the first ever use of an autonomous flight termination system” and the first launch of the Minotaur IV booster. • Verified effective use of the Reaction Control System (RCS). Here are some points which at first hand may seem quite apparent for a passenger airliner but not for an aircraft travelling at incredible speed of Mach 20. • Validated two-way communication with the vehicle. • Maintained Global Positioning System (GPS) signals while traveling 3.6 miles per second. • Deployed largest number of sea, land, air and space data collection assets in support of hypersonic flight test. HTV-2 was a milestone from the perspective of collecting constructive and vital data for a hypersonic flight that would be impracticable to obtain on ground. These statistics will be deployed in the future aircrafts thus across all the impediments the ultimate goal of making the humans reach any place on the planet in a single hour will remain alive.

HTV-2 flies in a hypersonic glide trajectory within the earth’s atmosphere at near Mach 20 speeds.

Automatons by Vivek Chowdary Davincis Sketch of a robot

O The world’s first successfullybuilt biomechanical automaton is considered to be The Flute Player, invented by the French engineer Jacques de Vaucanson in 1737.

n 10th March 2012 there I was in my room watching the film “HUGO” by Martin Scorsese. The film was a pretty good one. But I am not here to critique about the film, am I? What made my mind mumbling about was the part where the protagonist fixes the automaton and it draws the picture of “The Voyage to the Moon”. So how does a complete Mechanical invention which was some sort of given a mechanical memory, drew a picture? So hence were sown the seeds of my inquisition towards automatons and I frankly admit it is one of the Purest Mechanical Engineering Ideas. Automaton is nothing but a Self-Operating Machine. “Self-Operating” the word itself has some huge depth and we shouldn’t try to neglect that it is some fancy talk about robots which can do the specified task without External involvement after starting the machine. Self-Operating is one of the basic existential possibility which laid the foundation for innovation of modern day Robotics. But what is it that one expects from an Automaton? There are so many automatons which can sing, dance, sketch, and jump. One of the most basic Automaton one every boy in the present age may know about is the Key car. Just give a turn to the car with the key and vroom the car kicks itself into life. So such is the power of an Automaton, an abstract mechanical creation but of pure and deep roots which we should try to understand whole heartedly. Let us explore some of the wonders of automata from time since past to the present grounded time.

Antikythera mechanism

The Antikythera mechanism from 150–100 BC was designed to calculate the positions of astronomical objects. It is thought to have come originally from Rhodes, where there was apparently a tradition of mechanical engineering; the island was renowned for its automata; to quote Pindar’s seventh Olympic Ode: The animated figures stand Adorning every public street And seem to breathe in stone, or Move their marble feet. In ancient China, a curious account on automata is found in the Lie Zi text, written in the 3rd century BC. Within it there is a description of a much earlier encounter between King Mu of Zhou (1023-957 BC) and a mechanical engineer known as Yan Shi, an ‘artificer’. The latter proudly presented the king with a life-size, human-shaped figure of his mechanical handiwork (Wade-Giles spelling): The king stared at the figure in astonishment. It walked with rapid strides, moving its head up and down, so that anyone would have taken it for a live human being. The artificer touched its chin, and it began singing, perfectly in tune. He touched its hand, and it began posturing, keeping perfect time... As the performance was drawing to an end, the robot winked its eye and made advances to the ladies in attendance, whereupon the king became incensed and would have had Yen Shih [Yan Shi] executed on the spot had not the latter, in mortal fear, instantly taken the robot to pieces to let him see what it really was. And, indeed, it turned out to be only a construction of leather, wood, glue and lacquer, variously coloured white, black,

Al-Jazari : A Musical Toy

red and blue. Examining it closely, the king found all the internal organs complete—liver, gall, heart, lungs, spleen, kidneys, stomach and intestines; and over these again, muscles, bones and limbs with their joints, skin, teeth and hair, all of them artificial... The king tried the effect of taking away the heart, and found that the mouth could no longer speak; he took away the liver and the eyes could no longer see; he took away the kidneys and the legs lost their power of locomotion. The king was delighted. The Medieval Age is the Golden age of Arabic Civilization. In this age, at first the wind powered automata were built. In the 9th century, the Banū Mūsā brothers invented a programmable automatic flute player and which they described in their Book of Ingenious Devices. And the most notable person Al-Jazari described complex programmable humanoid automata amongst other machines he designed and constructed in the “Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices” in 1206.His automaton was a boat with four automatic musicians that floated on a lake to entertain guests at royal drinking parties. As we can see the thinkers of that age didn’t require seeing Dragon ball-Z to know about humanoids.

Davinci’s robot In Modern Sketch

The Renaissance witnessed a considerable revival of interest in automata. Giovanni Fontana created mechanical devils and rocket-propelled animal automata. Leonardo da Vinci sketched a more complex automaton around the year 1495. The design

of Leonardo’s robot was not rediscovered until the 1950s. The robot, which appears in Leonardo’s sketches, could, if built successfully, move its arms, twist its head, and sit up. A new attitude towards automata is to be found in Descartes when he suggested that the bodies of animals are nothing more than complex machines - the bones, muscles and organs could be replaced with cogs, pistons and cams. Thus mechanism became the standard to which Nature and the organism was compared. The world’s first successfully-built biomechanical automaton is considered to be The Flute Player, invented by the French engineer Jacques de Vaucanson in 1737. Maillardet, a Swiss mechanic, created an automaton capable of drawing four pictures and writing three poems. The flute Player

The period 1860 to 1910 is known as “The Golden Age of Automata”. During this period many small family based companies of Automata makers thrived in Paris. From their workshops they exported thousands of clockwork automata and mechanical singing birds around the world. It is these French automata that are collected today, although now rare and expensive they attract collectors worldwide. The main French makers were Vichy, Roullet & Decamps, Lambert, Phalibois, Renou and Bontems. Some people say these automata are nothing but some petty magicians trick. Damn right they are, we are magicians and we create illusions or invent facts that re-define reality. As we know from the famous quote in our machine design notes: “Scientist studies the world as it is engineers create the world that never has been.”

Descartes suggested that the bodies of animals are nothing more than complex machines the bones, muscles and organs could be replaced with cogs, pistons and cams.

FLYING ROBOTS

by Rajat Tiwari

ver dreamt of having a spy robot that could fly to any unknown place and get the details of that place or ever wanted to have a team of flying robots that could solve your physical work automatically?? Well here is the solution.

Flying quad rotor robots are small agile weighing from 500 to 700 grams. These robots are highly efficient in doing any kind of work. Autonomous flying robots have 4 wings and a processor which directs the motors of wings to increase or decrease there frequency of rotation. Apart from this, these bots are equipped with sensors to detect their position with respect to surroundings.

These robots are agile and can move at faster pace when compared to the bigger ones.

As the size of these robots is small they are agile and can move at faster pace when compared to the bigger ones. These robots with proper attachments can be used to trace a map of some unknown place. These can be used to judge the size and shape of buildings and also these can be used to lift load. Recent experiment conducted by DR. Vijaykumar showed that these robots can traverse any path as they are designed. They traced the building and made its map when it entered in it for the first time. WORKING PRINCIPLE: When all the four motors of wings are rotated at higher frequency at equal speeds the robot hovers. In the adjacent picture the free body diagram of robot is shown. A question arises, how do we make robot to move forward?

To make robot move forward it should be tilted at some angle with respect to the horizontal. One of the many ways to tilt the robot is making two opposite wings rotate at different speeds, for example In the adjacent diagram if the wings R1 and R3 are rotated at different speeds in same direction keeping the two other wings at optimum speed the robot bends as the force at that moment will be T1>T3 and T4>T2=T4>T3.If all the 4 wings are rotated at equal and high speed the robot moves up. CONTROLLING THE BOT: If two opposite wings are rotated at higher speed with respect to adjacent two then robot yaws about the diagonal axis. These robots live in twelve dimensions hence to make its path the way required is a bit difficult but can achieved easily with the help of proper algorithm in the processor used at the centre of this robot. Agility of these robots depends on its dimension. BLADE TIP SPEED: V is directly proportional to square root of the radius. Half the distance between two opposite wings is called radius. LIFT: F is directly proportional to Cube of radius.

INERTIA: Approximately fifth power of Radius. USES:

The processor sends its wings 600 times a second the signal to guide it at correct position processor operates based on the signals which it receives from the censor situated at the centre.

These robots can be used to build maps of unknown places on their own. These robots can be used to lift loads and can be used in construction of structures.

These robots have small disadvantage they can carry very small load however, this difficulty can be overcome by usage of multiple robots at same time.

Innov ation

Reinventing urban wind power - As the wind speed in urban areas is too slow, hence scientists developed a new option to develop power at lower scale. A flexible aerofoil is attached to the end of a pole made out of a piezoelectric material. When air passes over the aerofoil it flutters, causing the pole to flex and generate a small AC current. Power generated is in milliwatt range with a wind speed of just 2m/s.

These robots live in twelve dimensions hence to make its path the way required is a bit difficult but can achieved easily with the help of proper algorithm in the processor used at the centre of this robot.

Solar Towers

by Navdeep Sharma

he idea of using solar radiation to generate air convection that can subsequently be converted to an energy source has been around since the start of the 20th century, when a Spanish Colonel called Isidoro Cabanyes proposed it in a scientific magazine. Solar Updraft towers, also called solar wind or solar chimney plants, provide a very simple method for renewable electricity generation, with a constant and reliable output.

ture will be Australia’s biggest solar power plant by far. Air heated by the sun will rise up the tower, where 32 turbines will generate about 650 gigawatt-hours of electricity a year, enough to meet the demands of 70,000 Australians.

While most people have never heard about it, the Solar Tower design was implemented on a small scale in Spain years ago to test the concept. More recently, a privately-funded company called EnviroMission has been working toward the construction of one or more 200 megawatt power plants in the Australian Outback. If this concrete structure makes it off the drawing board it will smash every record in the book. It will stand a staggering 1 kilometre tall, and its base will sit at the centre of a shimmering field of glass and plastic 7 kilometres across. If the tower’s dimensions are awe-inspiring, its aim is breathtaking. The planned struc-

transparent collector roof constructed around the base of the tower. Under the roof, the air is heated by the sun so that it functions as a greenhouse. The heated air will tend to go upwards and the only possibility for that is through the tower. Through the ‘chimney effect’ (forcing the air through a relatively small opening) the wind force can become strong. By placing a wind turbine or ring of turbines inside the tower, this updraft force can be used to produce electricity. The Solar Updraft Tower thus functions as a solar thermal power plant and can have different capacity scales (from 30 – 200 MW).

Solar towers make use of differences in temperatures of air near the ground and at the top of the tower or chimney. In a solar updraft tower, air is heated under a large

Solar towers make use of differences in temperatures of air near the ground and at the top of the tower or chimney.

Solar updraft towers are particularly suitable in countries with a warm climate and could be attractive for production of electricity for remote regions in developing countries where there large areas of degraded or lowvalue land are available for building the heat collectors. The design is appealing because it harnesses the weather, albeit on a small scale. Specifically, it collects the daily production of warm air that forms near the ground, and funnels all of that warm air into a chimney where turbines are located to extract energy from the rising air. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a little like wind tower technology, but rather than just extracting energy from whatever horizontally-flowing wind happens to be passing by, the Solar Tower concentrates all of that warm air heated by the ground into the central tower, or chimney, where the air naturally rises. Even on a day with no wind, the solar tower will be generating electricity while conventional wind towers are sitting there motionless. One of the advantages of a Solar Tower over using photovoltaic cells to generate electricity is that the Solar Tower keeps generating electricity even after the sun goes down. Because the ground under the canopy stays warm at night, it continues to warm the air while the land around the canopy cools much more rapidly. This maintains a tem

perature difference between the canopycovered air and the plantâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s surroundings, which translates into continued energy generation at night. Additionally, the Solar Tower does not require the huge volume of water that coal-fired plants use. The technology can be applied at different scales. In the above example of a 1000 m tower, capital costs would be relatively high as it requires a concrete base and a solid construction. However, smaller scale appli cations are also possible, such as a smaller tower with thin plates which is held in position with ropes. Then the collector area could also be smaller. The collector area could be covered with a double glazed roof or a durable plastic. In a pilot plant in Spain (see clip above) plastic was used and it was estimated to last for about 10 years. Once established, the maintenance of a solar tower is relatively cheap. However, when plastic is chosen as the cover for the collector area, then this might need regular maintenance. The feasibility of the technology could be enhanced by making combinations with land use activities under the collector area, which serves as a greenhouse, as well as using solar collectors and photovoltaics underneath the collector.

Amazing Facts

An F1 car can go from 0 to 160 kmph and back to 0 in four seconds !!!

Even on a day with no wind, the solar tower will be generating electricity while conventional wind towers are sitting there motionless.

3D Printer – Micro-Factory Anywhere Anytime by Abhinav Yadav

3D Printer by HP

Colored Printing Materials Spools

3 Printer creates one layer at a time by sprinkling the (powdered/ molten) printing material (with or without binding materials).

D Printing is an advanced method to produce 3-dimensional prototype of a design. This technology finds use in fields of architecture, engineering and construction, automotive, aerospace, dental and medical industries, jewelry and many others due to its ease of operation, low cost, less operation time and accurate results. Technology behind 3D Printing

Printing Materials

3D printing is an Additive Manufacturing (AM) type process in which the product is made by joining the material as contrasted to the Subtractive Machining (SM) in which the product is made by removing (machining) the material. It is a type of rapid prototyping which comprises of many other technologies such as Selective laser sintering (Thermoplastics, metals powders), Direct metal laser sintering (Alloy Metals), Fused deposition modeling (Thermoplastics), Laminated object manufacturing (Paper), Electron beam melting (Titanium Alloys), etc. (Base material in the parenthesis). All the above technologies differ with each other in the way layers are built to create parts.

The basic printing material used in 3D printing is plastic. It may be a thermosetting polymer or a thermoplastic. A thermoplastic turns liquid when heated and solidifies back on cooling, for example polyethylene and polypropylene. They can be re-melted and remolded for several cycles. But a thermosetting polymer solidifies on heating and cannot be re-melted. Bakelite is an example of thermosetting polymer.

Steps to print :• Software slices the solid model into layers and feed the layer information to 3D printer. • Printer creates one layer at a time by sprinkling the (powdered/molten) printing material (with or without binding materials). • Process is repeated till all layers are created and part is ready to be removed.

Some commonly used printing materials are as follows. • Poly Lactic Acid (PLA): It is a thermoplastic derived from renewable resources such as corn-starch or sugarcane. It cools quickly and is biodegradable in active compost heap. •Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS): Good toughness and strength, non-biodegradable thermoplastic. The above materials are available in different colors also.

Advantages

Price Comparison

• Output models in just a few hours: A typical human skull (size: 25×20×10 cm3) takes about 5.5 hours to print whereas an architectural model takes only about 10 hours. A printing speed of part per 10 hours is considered to be nice. • High resolution: Models with complex geometry can be made with detailed features.

Manufacturer 3D Systems HP Z Corporation

Price Range (In Lakhs)* 1.75 to 7.5 8 to 9 10 to 12

*- Exchange Rate taken as 1USD= 50 INR

IIT Guwahati has been able to build up world class infrastructure for carrying out advanced research and has been equipped with state-of-the-art scientific and engineering instruments. • Easy to use: Virtually requires nothing to operate manually other than a few clicks. • Safe and Environment Friendly: Quiet, odorless and has no use of toxic chemicals. • Affordable cost and less waste: Since it needs only a few kilowatts of electricity and few spools of material, operation is comparatively much cheaper than producing it in a workshop. A thermoplastic material can be used repetitively, so the used prototypes may be recycled.

Bibliography : www.amazon.com www.google.co.in wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page 3ders.org/3d-printer/3d-printer-price.html

Amazing Facts

No automobile made after 1924 should be designated as Antique!!

Futuristic Eco-homes

by Shashank Saxena

he world is becoming smaller for the existing population to dwell. Headed by the problems of energy crisis what will the energy-efficient house of the future look like? It could have gardens on its walls or a pond stocked with fish for dinner. It might mimic a tree, turning sunlight into energy and carbon dioxide into oxygen. Or perhaps it will be more like a lizard, changing its color to suit the weather and healing itself when it gets damage The Rios Clementi Hale Studios house has a garden faĂ§ade that includes chickpeas, tomatoes and other plants. The plants also provide shade and cooling. A rooftop reservoir collects water and keeps the building cool, while rooftop windmills generate energy.

In addition to structural support, the curved face of the exterior will minimize wind forces.

The Chicago Spire The Chicago Spire was a super-tall skyscraper project in Chicago, Illinois, which was abandoned in 2008 with only its foundation work completed. The construction was halted after several years of on-going financing challenges, including the global recession that began in 2008. Designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, at 2,000 feet (610 m) and with 150 floors, it would have been among the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tallest buildings and freestanding structures, after the Burj Khalifa, and the tallest building in the United States and the Western Hemisphere, surpassing the CN Tower.

The curved design would provide two major benefits to the structure of the building. First, curved designs have a tendency of adding to the strength of a structure. A similar principle has been applied in the past with curved stadium roofs. In addition to structural support, the curved face of the exterior will minimize wind forces. In rectangular buildings, a fluid wind flow puts pressure on the windward face of the building; while air moves around it, suction is applied to the leeward face. This often causes a sway in tall buildings which can be counteracted, at least partially, by stiffening the structure or by using a dynamic wind damper. Sustainable features included recycled rainwater, river water used for cooling, ornithological-

lighting, TVs, stereos, and some heating and cooling systems) with this DC power source, the prospective homeowners could have an extremely energy-efficient house that still offers the benefits of prefabricated construction, such as speedy construction and cost savings.

The Hydro-net Project

ly sensitive glass to protect migratory birds, intelligent building and management systems, waste storage and recycling management, and monitored outdoor air deliver.

The furthest-reaching green wonder of the future is IwamotoScott Architect’s vision of San Francisco in 2108. This stunning winner of the History Channel’s City of the Future competition shows what a totally ecoconscious San Francisco could look like 100 years from now, complete with algae-harvesting towers, geothermal energy mushrooms and fog catchers to distill fresh water from the city’s foggy atmosphere.

The Soft House The Challenge: How can a prefabricated housing be energy efficient, even to the point of generating its own power? The Solution: Kennedy & Violich Architecture took a radical first step in designing the Soft House, replacing many of the hard wall surfaces of a standard prefabricated house with movable curtains that contain embedded nanotechnology and thin-film photovoltaics.

Designed to make the most of the area’s microclimate and geology, Hydro-Net is a network of both above-ground and underground systems that takes the need for alternative energy sources in mind with a connected network of water, power collection and distribution systems. Carbon nanotube walls would collect and disperse hydrogen produced by algae, which would be used to hover-cars in underground tunnels. References: Wikipedia.org The Wall Street Journal The Weburbanist Tuvie.com

The research team found that these technologies would enable a 1,200-square-foot house to generate enough energy to meet fully half of its own daily requirements (as much as 16 kilowatts of direct current, or DC, power). By integrating specific household electronics (laptop computers, LED

These new technologies would enable a house to generate enough energy to meet its own daily requirements.

SAE CLUB IIT Guwahati : BAJA 2012 by Mansimran Singh, Team BAJA-2012

IITG’s first ATV in making: One of the most remarkable chapters of our lives.

BAJA (pronounced as ‘BAHA’) is an inter-collegiate rugged terrain vehicle design competition organized by SAE international. It is a non-profit organization which aims at creating technological awareness among students and professional in the field of aerospace and automotive engineering. BAJA is an internationally renowned event which is organized annually in various countries around the globe. In India, it was first organized in 2007 and since its popularity among the young engineering undergraduates has increased tremendously. Just one dream of riding their own ATV with some of them including me driving a 4-wheeler for the first time.

irst of all, I would like to thank Prof. S.Senthivelan and Prof. Vinayak Kulkarni for their moral and administrative support without which we couldn’t have even tightened up a single bolt of your vehicle. Then I would like pay my gratitude to our former HOD, Prof. Debabrata Chakraborty for encouraging such type of Technical activities of students. I would like to pay my humble regards to whole department of Mechanical Engineering for fund-

ing and other permissions which were crucial for the success of this Technical venture. And at last but not the least, I would like to thank all of my team members who worked day and night endlessly with just one dream of riding their own ATV with some of them including me driving a 4-wheeler for the first time. So, it all started in October 2010 when a bunch of automobile enthusiasts from our

department formed SAE club at IIT Guwahati. The club was founded by our immediate senior Mr. Ravish Vasan who had the vision to create such a platform for the students that could help them apply their theoretical knowledge to the real life engineering. To be more precise, he had seen other IIT’s doing the same thing. Our team was formed and to give a perfect start to our journey, all of us started getting acquainted with the basics of car design and other recent innovations in the automobile industry. In the second phase, we had to learn some modeling softwares like Solid works, Optimum K, Adams Car etc. In the meanwhile we were also bound to think of something innovative for our vehicle as the innovation has a huge advantage for the first time participants. We conceptualized a system which could cause real-time dynamic air refilling of tires. In turn we could have got higher fuel efficiency and higher tire life thus contributing for a safer handling. But in the later developmental stages we realized that somewhat similar system has already been patented by General Motors in 1995. Though our system was somewhat advanced from the original version, because of funding issues we could not move further towards development stages. Finally, the day of Virtual BAJA-2012 (prelims of main BAJA) arrived and we were all prepared with our design reports consisting of all the analyses which ensured that our vehicle’s performance was up to the mark. Four of our team members including myself had to visit Bangalore to give a small presentation of our design in front of an experienced panel consisting of four people, one from Maruti Suzuki, one from M&M and two other fellows from General Motors. Well, our presentation went good enough and we were certain about our shortlisting in Virtual BAJA. As expected, after one very long month we found the name “IIT Guwahati” in the list and the efforts of all of us finally paid off. Till now, I have only shared all of the official stuff but left in my pocket I have some interesting events of our journey. Though there are many interesting things that I can share with the readers, I would like to share one incident which at that moment made us realize that we were going to get completely messed up. The situation goes like this:

“It was the morning of 30th January 2012, five of us including me had been working in the workshop for continuous 34 hours and yeah you’ve read it right, THIRTY FOUR hours. We were all feeling hungry, sleepy and tired but the only thing that kept us working for such a long time was that on 30th itself, DGM of Mahindra and Mahindra R&D were coming to our IIT for having a technical inspection of our vehicle. Some of the finishing work was still left, that would have counted a lot in a technical inspection. We were all aware of the fact that the team failing in technical inspection would not be allowed to participate in the main event. Well at 8’O clock in the morning, we were quite happy to see that our vehicle was ready for inspection. Then we suggested our driver Praneet Amitabh to have a final test drive. After one or two rounds, we heard some noises like “krrrrrrrr--krrrrrrrrr” from the Transmission box and that noise was being amplified after each and every round. Then we stopped for a while to rectify the problem and we realized that the clutch gear has completely twisted and deformed. That was the moment when we thought of the possibility of our complete effort going to the dogs. Only an hour was left for the officials to come. We somehow thought of a temporary solution to the problem. For that solution to work, we had to wake the shopkeeper up and simultaneously we had to delay the visit of Mahindra Official by some “Jugaad” methods. At last we were given a green flag in technical inspection and we were able to sleep peacefully.” Even after overcoming numerous difficulties we could not participate in the main event because of some funding and transportation related issues. But since those issues were completely out of control at that time we don’t have much regrets rather we are proud to have successfully fabricated the first ATV of IITG. The team for BAJA -2013 has been selected and the team is all set to rock this event. This time we are equipped with enough knowledge and experience and we are quite certain that we will bring laurels to our very own IIT Guwahati. I hope that administration will support us in an encouraging way as this is the platform for mechanical engineers to use their theoretical knowledge in the real world problems.

At present the Institute has eleven departments and three interdisciplinary academic centres covering all the major engineering, science and humanities disciplines

Mimicking Swarm Intelligence from Birds and Fish by Konduri Vamshi that the traffic everywhere (on land water and air) is ever increasing. Now that we are done with the introduction, we will look into a basic but quite effective way of simulation the swarms by one man Craig Reynolds.

am of course referring to case resembling the above pic.

It is quite extraordinary as to how they manage to move in such huge numbers in perfect harmony and manage to avoid obstacles and predators without ramming into one another.

Each individual is at a given distance from one another that is neither too close and on the other hand not very far either.

Scientists have tried to come up with algorithms that depict the same phenomenon and but have not even managed to come at par to the natural phenomenon.

We can observe in any swarm that it is completely a self-organized process where no leader is in charge and each individual bases its movement decisions solely on locally available information: the distance, perceived speed, and direction of movement of neighbors. Each individual is at a given distance from one another that is neither too close and on the other hand not very far either. The direction of the velocity must more or less coincide with the total groupâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s direction. Based on these assumptions, he came up with a computer simulation that had the following basic algorithms:

Still, Considerable advancements have been made in this field and people are working on swarm intelligence to come up with innovative and imaginative ways to use it in real life. One set of swarm bots made in EPFL can co-ordinate with other flying bots to build walls by laying bricks in a given complex pattern.

Now apart from such applications, the understanding of working with swarms can help us understand the concepts of anti collision better and will help us in having better traffic control which is quite necessary given

Separation: Steer to avoid crowding local flockmates.

Alignment: Steer towards the average heading of local flockmates. Now each boid (the unit of the flock) will be affected by the boids in a given distance

Cohesion: Steer to move toward the average position of local flockmates. from itself and will ignore all others beyond it. The neighborhood is characterized by a distance (measured from the center of the boid) and an angle, measured from the boidâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s direction of flight. These two values of the boids in its neighbourhood will decide the resultant velocity and direction of the boid. Now with this simple model, he has tried to see how the flock works with simple obstacle avoidances and with a general direction of motion for the entire group by laying down the rules which decide the direction of steering if a boid comes too close to it.

Although this fairly simple model could come up with a good result for obstacle avoidance and general flight paths, an even greater challenge would be to simulate the escape patterns formed by birds and fish when they are being hunted or in danger. It has been observed that they have a number of distract strategies to now only save the individuals but also to minimize the overall loss to the entire group. This concept is pretty simple to understand and easy to implement using softwares such as C or Matlab and could be quite helpful in coming up with new set of algorithms and motion patterns for flocks and schools Sources: Wikipedia http://www.red3d.com/cwr/boids/ www.scholarpedia.org/article/Swarm_ intelligence#Flocking_and_Schooling_in_ Birds_and_Fish

He then played with the threshold values such as the neighborhood radii and the variation of angles etc to come up with a fairly good model to depict the flight of birds in a flock.

Amazing Facts

The first catalytic converter was developed by Eugene Houdry around 1950 but was first produced in 1973.

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