Have you ever wondered how to join two pieces instead of using glue? Say for example, can you join two pieces of wood to make it appear as a single piece? The answer lies in the fine craftsmanship of a mechanical engineer who knows the emerging science of “mechanically-induced wood flow welding” pretty well. Now to “weld” wood, which is quite a promising technology, you need to force pieces of lumber together by pressing (at 60 – 330 psi) and rubbing the parts to-and-fro at a very high speed for 4 to 5 seconds. The friction created in between the pieces heats and melts the primary components of wood, lignin and fibers present on the exposed surface. In the next few seconds, the molten lignin of both the surfaces intertwines in a matrix and finally solidifies when the friction movement is stopped and the interface cools down. It results in the formation of a full piece of wood of desired shape and size.

Laboratory for Timber Construction IBOIS of Ecole Polytechnique (EPFL), Switzerland applied the principle of friction welding to weld wood for the first time. The University of Tennessee has also been exploring the same area. Their research is mainly focused on the fabrication and application of welded timber panels. The research work has produced small-scale welded wooden samples successfully. Those samples have gone through tests of bending and shear-giving and have yielded positive results. Here it should be noted that the structural design of welded timber construction requires a calculation tool for strength prediction to make those lumber pieces work practically. Initially probabilistic methods were used to determine the load bearing capacity. There the welded joints had both parallel and perpendicular natural fiber patterns. The mathematically calculated and experimentally determined strength were found to stay in good agreement with each other. Further research in this sphere will encourage investigations into more complex systems.

Now let us come back to the basics and take a tour of the history of welding science. As a preconceived belief, welding is possible using only a good conductor of thermal energy and electricity. The parent materials should be joined in such a manner that the physical and the chemical properties of the welded portion remain same as the matter itself. Not only the finished product should look like a single piece but must also retain the ditto chemical qualities. Therefore welding of wood, if judged in this light, does not seem to have any real life acquaintance. However, standing in 2016, this chapter in mechanical engineering has passed the test of time in the very ritualistic way of how welding is done. It is an almost unthinkable phenomenon! After all, Science never fails to surprise. At every instance, and that too in a very pleasant way.

• ·        Reference:

The websites of EPFL & the University of Tennessee

Hollow clay bricks can be used as Civil Engineering guiding materials for specific functions. It can improve thermal insulation performance of building walls by reducing building wall loads. It has two phases. One is solid phase and the other is pore and void phase. Worldwide, the possibility of improving block wall insulation has already been studied by increasing porosity of bulk material. The reason for usage of hollow clay brick is to improve the energy efficiency of built structures in terms of thermal insulation, during both winter and summer. Heavy clay blocks are the most frequently used basic materials for construction in India as well as worldwide. From the consideration of increasing tendency to reduce cost production and installation by achieving better insulating properties, it is necessary to introduce new solutions. Existing solutions to thermal insulation problems are provisions of different systems of walls as well as addition of layers like polystyrene, sandwich panels, thermal insulation mortars, etc., which significantly increases the cost of construction.

There is a scope of further research based on the geometry of the products, thickness of the walls and the number of cavities if we use clay as the basic material. There are also some possibilities of using different secondary raw materials like industry waste which will decrease waste quantities and reduce primary raw materials consumption.

The success of any nation depends upon its productivity and national income. National income depends upon employment generation and industrialization. Therefore success of a country depends on three resource pillars. These are human resources, financial resources and knowledge based resources which is more synonymous as skill. India is the second largest growing economy in the world and it yields demographic dividend from large proportion of young population.

The Government of India has started to foster the young population by providing skill based education. Around 10 million fresh Indian join its work force in every year. The absorption capacity of large and medium scale industry with respect to this huge skilled population is very low.  The remedy of such situation is self-employment and starting of own business based on individual skill and providing employment opportunities to the skilled neighborhoods. These entrepreneurial activities may be created in the field of construction, trading or day to day house hold supplies.  Government is trying to nourish the environment of entrepreneurship, because it is not possible for government to provide jobs for huge growing workforce. The prominent obstacle to start up new business is availability of seed capital and capital for further expansion of existing business. The huge proportions of these businesses belong to unorganized sector. The urge to procurement of seed capital recognized the importance of financial inclusion for easy accessibility of credit facility. The farmers, tannery workers, bidi binders, hawkers, lady tailors etc belong to unorganized sector and are still far away from accessing formal financial services. This financial exclusion has happened as a result of number of factors like: distance of local bank branches or ATMs, lack of financial education, unavailability of collaterals, high cost of financial services, poverty, lack of knowledge and information on credit facility, psychological barriers and other demand and supply side barriers.

The objective of financial inclusion is to convert unbanked population into banking population. Huge proportion of rural and urban populations still depend upon the credit facility of informal financial sector in spite of hefty interest rate. Therefore huge funds are still untapped in organized financial sector and bank cannot utilize this money for other development purposes. This hampers the growth of the economy and infrastructural developments. These unbanked populations cannot enjoy the facility of different banking products, like education loan, home loan, personal loan and other institutional credits. Financial inclusion is necessary to facilitate the unbanked population by providing banking services, like credit facilities, safe custodies, life and non-life insurances for up gradation of their standard of living and so on.

To promote financial inclusion, RBI has taken enormous initiatives. The few prominent initiatives are Pradhan Mantry Jan Dhan Yojana, no-frill bank account, handy and easy KYC norms, establishing bank branches in no-bank areas etc. The remarkable contribution to catalyst the financial inclusion and financial empowerment in the rural and urban areas is the implementation of E-governance. The AADHAR and the blessing of E-governance made the identification easier for new account opener and decreased the corruptions. AADHAR made the KYC norm easier and made it very easy to track the customers of a bank. The prominent challenges to overcome supply and demand barriers are not only financial inclusion but also financial education and financial stability. Financial education educates the population by providing financial awareness in the area of risk and operational process associated with different financial services, procedures to get credit facility and different services provided by bankers. This leads to wipe off the demand side barriers.

The financial inclusion facilitates to overcome supply side barriers. These altogether provide financial stability to the users of banking services. The government of India has come out with different types of policies in five year planning programs to provide financial stability to the rural and urban population. The most prominent milestone of this initiative is Mahatma Gandhi NREGA for rural India. To facilitate the rural and urban population the banks have tied up with NGOs and MFIs. The banks have started granting loans to poor people for their household and business requirements through NGOs and MFIs without collaterals and at zero loan processing costs. To facilitate the financial inclusion, the Government of India has adopted different steps. The subsidy on LPG is directly credited to bank account of the customers; different aids and assistance provided by government are distributed through electronic channel. The E-governance process made the compulsory bank account of the beneficiary. The initiatives for financial inclusion made the lives to live to fulfill, inspire, empowerment, recharge, inspired and prosper.

On  Oct 10, 2015, Brainware School of Management proudly hosted a Seminar on “The Role of Technology and Management in Emerging Business”. The chief  speaker, Mr. Santanu Sengupta, Managing Director, Britannia Engineering Ltd. Westingshouse Saxby Farmer Ltd. (W.B. Govt. undertaking), glorified the occasion with his presence.

The head of the Department of Management gave the opening speech, and introduced the speaker to the audience. How new technologies and management techniques are constantly changing the business scenario of the present time, was the central issue of the day. Mr. Sengupta elaborated on the multifarious ways in which technology impacts the various areas of the economy, and how smart, systematic and modern management processes are much needed in the highly evolved world today. The multi-dimensional picture of improved management and technology, complementing each other at work, in the developing nations clearly indicated that a healthy combination of the two will certainly foster employment in India.