The research at present is directed towards the following fields:

Particulate composites with smart piezoelectric particles deposited in conductive resin, is considered for vibration damping application. This is a passive damping technique, which can transform the mechanical energy in vibration into electrical energy and thereby enhance energy dissipation. Different Perovskite ceramic particles are chosen for preparing the particulate composite. Currently, the effects of shape, size and volume fraction of the particles on vibration damping are being studied. The experimental as well as numerical studies are carried out initially only on different particulate composite beams. The effect of solid-solid and solid ?viscoelastic interaction in unit cell system has been numerically modeled and the possible material loss-factors with respect to different excitation frequencies have been evaluated. The method will be farther extended to composite structures. The author is the principal investigator of a MHRD project on Smart Prosthetic Limb in which the research output will be directly applied.

Delamination and defects in laminated composites does not affect the free vibration properties significantly. However, embedded magnetostrictive layers are found to be affected by such change due to the variation of in-plane deformation. A suitable instrument from outside the structure could pick up this change as a voltage signal. The magnetostrictive layers would undergo a change in deformation generating small electromagnetic field, which could be sensed by Gauss meter etc. The current research is directed to the numerical study of such phenomenon using high precision smart finite elements. One of the problems of active signal processing is the necessity of power supply from outside the structure. In the current research, motes (MEMS prototypes) powered by structural vibration is used for self actuation and sensing.

Following a bio-simulated study, wings of micro-flying robots are being designed which can generate significant lift using power of milli-watt level. Thin composite plates of different shapes and sizes are being developed and patches of smart layer are bonded to the thin wings. The low frequency dynamic characteristics of the wings are then studied in a smart plate test bench. The experiments will be now carried out inside a wind-tunnel where the wings will be subjected to different flow patterns and the PIV (particle image velocimetry) technique will be used to compare the aerodynamic performances corresponding to different morphologies of the wing.