Highly enhanced energy storage properties of H2O2-hydroxylated rare earth ferrites (LaFeO3 and GdFeO3) nanofillers in poly(vinylidene fluoride)-based nanocomposite films

Journal of Materials Science: Materials in Electronics - Pure PVDF has higher breakdown strength but low dielectric and ferroelectric properties. Thus, we synthesized the LaFeO3 and GdFeO3...     

3D MHD cross flow over an exponential stretching porous surface

The present study aims to investigate the effects of thermal‐diffusion and diffusion‐thermo onan magnetohydrodynamic convective flow of viscous fluids over an exponentially stretching sheet. Thermal radiation effects are also considered in the study. This analysis is carried out in three dimensions and a similarity transformation is adopted to get a set of ordinary differential equations from a set of partial differential equations. And the Fourth‐order Runge‐Kutta method and shooting technique along with the secant method are employed to find out an iterative solution. We also analyze here the influence of the variable magnetic field, nonuniform permeability and variable chemical reaction on the fluid flow. The impact of various pertinent parameters of interest has extensively been explored through graphs and tables. The major findings of the present study are that resistive Lorentz force diminishes the fluid velocity and uplifts the thermal as well as concentration fields. Inclusion of porous matrix improves the viscous drag force which in turn augments wall shear stresses and peters out the heat and mass transfer rates from the sheet. In addition, the thermal expansion coefficient has an inverse relation with temperature.     

Effect of functionalized silicon carbide nano-particles as additive in cross-linked PVA based composites for vibration damping application

In this research study, a comprehensive effort has been made to functionalize silicon carbide particles using the acidic oxidation with nitric acid to obtain homogeneous stabilized distribution of activated SiC particles within a polymer matrix, and develop functionalized silicon carbide (f-SiC) particle reinforced polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) based cross-linked composite. After fabrication of functionalized silicon carbide (f-SiC) particle reinforced polyvinyl alcohol based cross-linked composite with varying f-SiC weight percentages of PVA (0%, 1%, 2%, 3%, and 4%) were placed to various investigations. Processed samples are initially examined based by the physical tests (water absorption tests), followed by mechanical test (tensile test) and then micro-structural tests (scanning electron microscopy). Lastly, thermal tests were also concluded which involved the dynamic mechanical, differential thermal and thermo gravimetric analysis. The cross-linked polyvinyl alcohol-based composite with 2 weight % of f-SiC content is observed to be the superlative of all the compositions under this research study that was confirmed by the mechanical and micro-structural tests. This composite material shows high storage modulus with visco-elastic behavior, therefore, the material can be utilized to diminish the transmission of noise, as a shock absorber and vibration isolator.     

A mathematical model and solution methods for rail freight transportation planning in an Indian food grain supply chain

This paper addresses the rail transportation of food grains undertaken by Food Corporation of India (FCI) to meet the requirements of the food security programme called Public Distribution System (PDS). The research focuses on improving the allocation of railway rakes transporting food grains to a set of storage warehouses. A penalty factor based approach is adopted to represent the considerations in transportation planning and three penalty factors such as rake penalty factor, weekly penalty factor and capacity utilization penalty factor are introduced for the purpose. The single source - multiple destination problem is formulated and solved using exact method to minimize the sum of these three penalty factor values, termed total penalty. Further, a heuristic named optimum rake allocation algorithm is developed and tested using a set of 35 problem instances. The proposed heuristic is found to be highly efficient in terms of solution quality and computation time. A case study of FCI Kerala Region is also carried out to validate the formulated model and the proposed heuristic. The work provides valuable insights into the practical issues encountered in rail freight transportation planning and proposes an effective solution methodology to address them.     

Low temperature ionothermal synthesis of TiO2 nanomaterials for efficient photocatalytic H2 production,dye degradation and photoluminescence studies

The photocatalytic hydrogen generation is a novel, eco-friendly and favourable method for production of green and clean energy using light energy. In this direction, we report low-temperature ionothermal method for the preparation of TiO₂ nanoparticles (NPs) using methoxy ethyl methyl imidazolium tris (pentafluoroethyl) trifluoro phosphate (MOEMINtf₂) as an ionic liquid (IL) at 120°C for 1 day. The synthesized nanomaterials were examined using different spectrochemical methods like UV-DRS, XRD, FT-IR, TEM, BET and TGA-DTA techniques. The mixed phase TiO₂ is obtained with 81.7% of anatase and 18.3% of rutile phase by the XRD studies, and average crystallite size is found to be ∼7 nm. The stretching of Ti-O bond (∼555 cm⁻¹) and few other bands related to ionic liquid were confirmed by FTIR spectrum. The band gap energy was observed to be ∼3.38 eV by UV-DRS analysis. TEM images reveal spherical shape with an average particles size of about 10 nm. Photocatalytic H₂ generation was carried out using TiO₂ NPs and observed the generation of 553 μmol h⁻¹ g⁻¹ via water splitting reaction. Furthermore, the prepared TiO₂ NPs employed for the photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue dye (84.54%), and photoluminescence studies confirms the obtained material can be used in optoelectronic applications with green emission.     

Fusion of multi-exposure images using recursive and Gaussian filter

Multidimensional Systems and Signal Processing - This paper proposes a novel technique to create a high-resolution image by combining the bracketed exposure sequence without a priori...