Center for Research in Emerging Actuation & Testing in Engineering — from NiTi shape memory alloys and intelligent actuation to mechatronics, robotics, UAVs, artificial intelligence, additive manufacturing and electric vehicles.
Thermomechanical behaviour of NiTi SMA springs and sheets; contact actuation (Joule heating, hot water) and non-contact actuation (laser); life-cycle behaviour, fatigue and reliability estimation; Cu-Al-Ni/Polyimide bi-morphs.
Emerging actuation for devices: micro-valves, micro-grippers, micro-positioning stages, SMA-actuated Stewart platforms, directional control valves, barrier-gate systems and SMA heat engines.
Precision position control (On/Off vs PID, HHO-tuned fractional PID), cyber-physical SMA instrumentation, and design & control of mechanical systems including vehicle suspension.
Robotics and automation (AGVs, UAVs, micromouse robots), electric-vehicle powertrain and charging, wire-arc additive manufacturing with material characterization, and AI/ML-driven engineering applications.
Dr. Nath's doctoral research at IIT Indore focused specifically on contact and non-contact based actuation studies of SMA structures and their life-cycle behaviour — laser-assisted and electrically/hot-water actuated NiTi, tested on a purpose-built thermo-mechanical cycle test bench (now a granted patent), with life prediction using Talbot interferometry and Bayesian Weibull frameworks. This line of work continues in the lab today, extending to SMA micro-robots and SMA bundles.
Electrical actuation of NiTi SMA springs with thermomechanical characterization.
SMA-actuated Stewart platform for automated laser-assisted micro-machining.
SMA-operated directional control valve — granted Indian patent 573034.
Hot-fluid based actuation of SMA springs applied to the development of an SMA heat engine for energy-harvesting applications.
SEM · TGA · XRD · EDAX
Symbol's'shakti (Bond Graph) · ANSYS · COMSOL · MATLAB (Simulink) · AutoCAD · OriginPro
