Balkrishna C. Rao

How to Measure Innovation

Innovation will have an increasingly important place in the future prosperity of the world. But can we develop reliable models for quantifying innovations that enhance social capital? This piece describes the work of one economist who has developed a technically demanding but fascinating methodology to help evaluate a nations quality and quantity of innovation. Such measures are often technically elaborate, but it is important to present high-quality technical attempts at dealing with difficult but important subjects.

On the development of a dual-layered diamond-coated tool for the effective machining of titanium Ti-6Al-4V alloy

This work is focused on the development of a dual-layered diamond-coated tungsten carbide tool for machining titanium Ti-6Al-4V alloy. A hot-filament chemical vapor deposition technique was used to synthesize diamond films on tungsten carbide tools. A boron-doped diamond interlayer was added to a microcrystalline diamond layer in an attempt to improve the interface adhesion strength. The dual-layered diamond-coated tool was employed in machining at cutting speeds in the range of 70 to 150 m min−1 with a lower feed and a lower depth of cut of 0.5 mm rev−1 and 0.5 mm, respectively, to operate in the transition from adhesion- to diffusion-tool-wear and thereby arrive at suitable conditions for enhancing tool life. The proposed tool was then compared, on the basis of performance under real-time cutting conditions, with commercially available microcrystalline diamond, nanocrystalline diamond, titanium nitride and uncoated tungsten carbide tools. The life and surface finish of the proposed dual-layered tool and uncoated tungsten carbide were also investigated in interrupted cutting such as milling. The results of this study show a significant improvement in tool life and finish of Ti-6Al-4V parts machined with the dual-layered diamond-coated tool when compared with its uncoated counterpart. These results pave the way for the use of a low-cost tool, with respect to, polycrystalline diamond for enhancing both tool life and machining productivity in critical sectors fabricating parts out of titanium Ti-6Al-4V alloy. The application of this coating technology can also be extended to the machining of non-ferrous alloys owing to its better adhesion strength.

Alleviating Poverty in the Twenty-First Century Through Frugal Innovations

Sustainable development is easy to talk about but hard to accomplish. The author proposes an ambitious agenda to alleviate poverty in the world while also maintaining the sustainability of the planets climate and economic growth. He introduces to many readers the concept of frugal inventions to move us forward in a difficult agenda that does not receive the widespread recognition it deserves.

Advances in science and technology through frugality

Sustainable development necessitates the management of progress in science and technology for societys betterment while preserving Earths resources. In this regard, the appearance in recent years of low-cost sophisticated products consuming resources economically is a force for good. This effort terms each of these products as an advanced frugal innovation to highlight the frugality in resource consumption during the realization of these innovations through advances in various scientific disciplines. Other than 25 examples of advanced frugal innovations in a wide range of sectors from rural electrification to particle physics, a framework for the systematic realization of such innovations for sustainable development has also been described. The innovations showcased bring out the use of advances in science and technology or cutting edge knowledge for creating these low-cost sophisticated products. Moreover, the need for innovators typically with training in advanced knowledge areas to handle the sophistication in technology for the successful fruition of these innovations is also discussed. This effort supports the frugal design and frugal engineering of innovations, whether grassroots or the advanced type, through sound scientific principles for the creation of robust products, especially where the human life is at stake, in various sectors for all-round sustainable development.

Trading of Innovations to Combat Globalization and Climate Change

We know that innovation is vital to economic prosperity, especially over the past century. Can we now treat innovation as a commodity that can be traded in the financial markets? The authors propose an innovation derivative that can improve returns for investors in new pipelines of ideas.

Revisiting classical design in engineering from a perspective of frugality

The conservative nature of design in engineering has typically unleashed products fabricated with generous amounts of raw materials. This is epitomized by the factor of safety whose values higher than unity suggests various uncertainties of design that are tackled through material padding. This effort proposes a new factor of safety called the factor of frugality that could be used in ecodesign and which addresses both rigors of the classical design process and quantification of savings in materials going into a product. An example of frugal shaft design together with some other cases has been presented to explain the working of the factor of frugality. Adoption of the frugality factor would entail a change in design philosophy whereby designers would constantly make avail of a rigorous design process coupled with material-saving schemes for realizing products that are benign to the environment. Such a change in the foundations of design would abet the stewardship of earth in avoiding planetary boundaries since engineering influences a significant proportion of human endeavors.

On the Methodology for Quantifying Innovations

Human ingenuity will play an ever-important role in this century and into the foreseeable future. This is because of phenomena such as globalization and climate-change that stress the need for more innovative output from developed countries. Such a picture has made it necessary to develop reliable models for quantifying innovations. The huge momentum behind the need for quantifying innovations is brought out by the research efforts of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the United-States (US) government, which are at the forefront of the modeling activities required for this task. This effort describes some approaches, and the resulting models, for scoring individual innovations. Most of these approaches quantify innovations by considering their ensuing societal impact. In the course of this process, numerous variables have been identified that might have a significant influence from a scoring perspective. This work is the first portion of a research effort that addresses the theoretical background needed for quantifying innovations. The empirical results will follow up in a later work.

Mechanical Testing of Micro-specimens of Al6061-T6 Using DIC for Strain Measurement

Tensile properties of metals are typically measured using dog-bone shaped specimens having dimensions as per specifications imposed by international standards organizations. However, these properties may be influenced by the size of the specimen, especially when the cross-sectional dimensions are lower. At lower length scales, microstructure could have an effect on the mechanical behavior. In this study, tensile experiments were conducted to investigate the effect of cross-sectional dimensions on Young’s modulus of Al6061-T6 materials. Due to the small size of the specimens, digital image correlation, a non-contact measurement technique was used to obtain strain filed in the gage section of the specimen. Spray paint or toner powder were used to produce speckle pattern on the specimen surface for better correlation of the images. For specimens having the thickness of the order of a fraction of a mm, the natural gray pattern observed on the surface of the specimen was found to provide a good speckle pattern. This natural speckle pattern was used to correlate the images instead of synthetic speckles, to avoid the effect of paint on the Young’s modulus being measured on specimens with cross-sectional dimensions below 1 mm. Young’s modulus was found to be constant at about 67 GPa for specimens whose area of cross-section was more than 3 mm2. When the area of cross-section was lesser, Young’s modulus was found to decrease with a decrease in area of cross-section. Larger spread in Young’s modulus was also observed in the specimens with area of cross-section <u20091 mm2.

Evaluation of Mechanical Properties of Nano-structured Al6061 Synthesized Using Machining

This work focuses on the synthesis of nano-structured Al6061 using machining under plane strain and evaluation of its mechanical properties. It discusses an unusual application of the machining process by using it as a severe plastic deformation (SPD) process to develop nano-structured or ultra-fine grained materials. Chips obtained from this process show higher hardness than the bulk material which is in agreement with results reported in existing literature. Chips with minimum curvature have been obtained using restricted contact tool and extrusion-machining processes. Hardness of the straight chips obtained by the stated methods, though higher than the bulk material, was less than the hardness of the curled chips obtained from conventional orthogonal machining. Furthermore, hardness of the chips obtained using tool with restricted contact length of 0.6mm showed lesser variation. Hence they were used to prepare samples for the tensile test. A novel method was used to prepare small test specimens from chips to measure tensile strength. Specimens made from the chips had higher ultimate tensile strength (53%) and yield strength (85%) than that of bulk material. Improvement in strength was accompanied by a reduction in ductility (58%) for chips as compared to bulk material. It was observed that for both the chip and the bulk material, the reduction in gauge length leads to lower values of Young s modulus showing size effect.

Erratum: "ON THE METHODOLOGY FOR QUANTIFYING INNOVATIONS"

Furthermore, the concepts underlying some of the variables, including use in society (X2), monetary expenditure (X4), education (X5), organization approach (X7), seats of innovation (X9), count of documented works (X12), and rewards (X13) have been reported in other efforts in some form or the other (Tornatsky & Lemer, 1992; Wolfe, 1994; Kerssens-van Drongelen & Cook, 1997; Economic Affairs-Netherlands, 2006).