Research Facility

Design (contact mechanics) lab is equipped with a twin disc rolling contact fatigue (RCF) tester with scope for real time assessment of the tests. RCF is the phenomenon by which the durability of the contact surfaces is reduced due to repeated contact under rolling/sliding contact conditions. The test rig is used to simulate such contact stresses between any mating parts, eg. bearings and gears. The system is equipped with an accelerometer g sensor with 1g limit. The test rig has a water-cooled spindle motor that can function up to 24000 rpm. Pneumatic cylinders which can apply load up to 1000 lbs. Specimens are mounted and kept in place via collet chucks which are capable to hold 10mm and 30mm specimen loaded against discs of 180 mm diameter. RCF failure is predominant in gears, rolling bearings and cams which find wide application in machine tools, automobile and aerospace industries.

Medium force fatigue testing machine that is servo-hydraulic built for static and dynamic testing of materials at various frequencies and temperatures is available in design lab. The test setup has 3 section furnace to heat up to 1000​°​​C.

The following tests can be done on the machine

1. Tension, Compression, Flexural
2. Fatigue Crack Propagation
3. J​ 1c​ , K​ 1c​ , CTOD Fracture Mechanics
4. Low and High Cycle Fatigue
5. Low and High Temperature Tests

IIT Palakkad has set up the Central Instrumentation Facility and Central Micro-Nano Fabrication Facility with the primary objective of supporting the research activities of its faculty, Ph.D scholars and Postdoctoral researchers. The facilities will house a wide range of sophisticated analytical and fabrication equipment, maintain them and ensure a fair utilization among the research community. The facilities are envisaged to nourish collaborative research between IIT Palakkad and other academic and Industrial organizations. Some of the equipment that are installed and operational.

• Semiconductor Parameter Analyzer
• Manual DC Probe Station
• Vector Network Analyzer
• Signal Analyzer
• Analog Microwave Signal Generator
• Wire Thermosonic Bonder
• 64-channel Electroencephalograph (EEG) Data Acquisition System
• Fourier Transformed IR Spectrophotometer
• Thermogravimetric Analyzer - Differential Thermal Analyzer coupled to Mass spectrometer
• Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectrometer
• Liquid Chromatography Mass Spectroscopy System
• High Performance Preparative Liquid Chromatography
• Manual RF Probe Station
• Mixed signal digital storage oscilloscope

Please visit the following link for more information.
https://cif.iitpkd.ac.in/

Brain Machine Interface Systems lab at IIT Palakkad focuses on the development of Brain Machine Interface (BMI) systems, which offers alternate ways to augment a wide range of human activities such as locomotion, cognition and perception. Our BMI research aims to design and implement Electroencephalography (EEG) based BMI systems using signal processing and machine learning techniques to decode the associated neuronal signatures corresponding to various mental tasks. The laboratory is equipped with 64 channel actiCHamp EEG amplifier (Brain Products) with data acquisition software, Emotive Epoc+ and MUSE 2 Head band for data acquisition, monitoring and analysis, providing an interactive environment for experimental research. The research team works on different BMI applications including (but not limited to):

• Development of Motor Imagery BMI systems.
• Analysis/detection of error related potentials that are generated when the error/mistake is perceived to take corrective actions or to use it as a learning strategy using single trial EEG data.  
• Development of an EEG based biometric identification system.
• Development of an EEG based intention driven BMI system for the rehabilitation of stroke patients.
• Development of BMI systems for Cognitive enhancement and rehabilitation.
• Development of an EEG-based user-convenient driver drowsiness detection system that can quantify a person’s fatigue or drowsiness from his/her neural signatures.

On-going (Active) Sponsored Research

• A Multimodal Brain Machine Interface-based Neuroenhancement System for Retarding the Decline of Cognitive and Motor Functions in the Early Stages of Dementia, Stroke and Parkinson’s Disease Patients (funded by DST – Cognitive Science Research Initiative, Clinical Collaborator: NIMHANS, Bangalore)
• Brain Machine Interface based Assistive and Rehabilitation Technology (funded by GadgEon Smart Systems Pvt Ltd., Kochi, India, Clinical Collaborator: Institute for Communicative & Cognitive Neurosciences, ICCONS, Shoranur, Kerala)
• EEG-based Driver Drowsiness Detection (funded by UVJ Technologies Pvt Ltd., Kochi, India)