Current generation related to wireless and mobile systems can have highly reliable, high coverage, high gain, lightweight, portable, high coverage, compact and high SNR radiators for the non-line of-sight system communication. The technology of MIMO system provides all these and has spatial multiplexing, diversity, multipath propagation solution and optimization of data rate. The proposed system designing an area 0.450 λ0 × 0.2910 λ0 × 0.030 λ0 compact with the better isolation in current generation requirement. In the current research designed a mathematically generalized radiator is implemented for 2 − 10 GHz which is resonate at 3.0 and 3.5 GHz whose S11 are − 14.58 dB and − 33.5 dB S21 are − 45 dB and − 33.5 dB and corresponding bandwidths are 830 MHz 2.37 GHz. To improvement of isolation later a monopole ground plane is also used in back side of the design. At the resonant frequencies group delay observed that 18.009 ± 1nsec. Time domain and frequency domain analysis are also observed in cases of face-to-face orientation and side by side orientation.

Background Co-management of HIV-TB coinfection remains a challenge globally. Addressing TB among people living with HIV (PLHIV) is a key priority for the Government of India (GoI). In 2016, GoI implemented single-window services to prevent and manage TB in PLHIV. To strengthen HIV-TB service delivery, case-based e-learning was introduced to health care providers at Antiretroviral Therapy centres (ARTc). Methods We implemented a hub and spoke model to deliver biweekly, virtual, case-based e-learning at select ARTc (n = 115), from four states of India–Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. We evaluated feasibility and acceptability of case-based e-learning and its impact on professional satisfaction, self-efficacy, knowledge retention using baseline and completion surveys, session feedback, pre-and post-session assessments. We reviewed routine programmatic data and patient outcomes to assess practices among participating ARTc. Results Between May 2018 and September 2020, 59 sessions were conducted with mean participation of 55 spokes and 152 participants. For 95% and 88% of sessions ≥ 80% of respondents agreed that topics were clear and relevant to practice, and duration of session was appropriate, respectively. Session participants significantly improved in perceived knowledge, skills and competencies (+ 8.6%; p = 0.025), and technical knowledge (+ 18.3%; p = 0.04) from baseline. Participating ARTc increased TB screening (+ 4.2%, p < 0.0001), TB diagnosis (+ 2.7%, p < 0.0001), ART initiation (+ 4.3%, p < 0.0001) and TB preventive treatment completion (+ 5.2%, p < 0.0001). Conclusion Case-based e-learning is an acceptable and effective modus of capacity building and developing communities of practice to strengthen integrated care. E-learning could address demand for accessible and sustainable continuing professional education to manage complex diseases, and thereby enhance health equity. We recommend expansion of this initiative across the country for management of co-morbidities as well as other communicable and non-communicable diseases to augment the existing capacity building interventions by provide continued learning and routine mentorship through communities of practice.

The short fiber reinforced hybrid thermoplastic blend composites is most widely used in aerospace & automobile industries. Individual fibres and their hybrid effect on mechanical characterisation are the focus of this article. The materials used for the study are Polyamide66 (PA66), Polypropylene (PP), Short glass fibers (SGF) and Short basalt fibers (SBF). The material system used for the study are Blend (PA66/PP), Blend/SGF, Blend/SBF and Blend/SGF/SBF. Melt mix method with twin screw extruder is used to manufacture composite material systems. ASTM standards were used to evaluate the composites physical and mechanical properties, such as hardness, density, tensile, flexure, and impact strength. The experimental data indicated that the mechanical properties particularly tensile and flexural strength enhanced significantly by the insertion of short fibers into thermoplastic blend. Further the impact properties reduced due the brittle nature of the fibers in the blend composites. The density as well as the hardness of the short fiber reinforced composites increases with respect to the blend. The failure mechanism of the composites due the mechanical characterization is observed through the SEM pictures.

The scattering and absorption characteristics of different clouds may vary due to regional, seasonal, altitude and physical properties of the clouds. Spatial techniques have been employed which has failed to perform adequately in all the required environments. Whereas the present work focuses on detection of convective clouds using the state-of-the-art normalized split window method (near 3.9 and 11.3 µm) called normalized difference cloud index (NDCI) from National Oceanic and Atmospheric administration (NOAA) data. Convective clouds have been examined in different regions of India using NDCI method from NOAA images. It has been reported that index values of convective clouds differ in different seasons. These extracted cloud data have been then compared with supervised classification of the same data in ERDAS imagine software and the overall accuracy has significantly improved.

Wood is a wide flexible material appreciated extremely for its cost-effectiveness, great quantity, and biocompatibility. In addition, naturally existing materials possess prominent biomedical applications, and they can withstand efficiently when compared to other materials like glass, steel, and plastics. The present study revealed the prepared chitosan, silver nanoparticles incorporated with Borassus flabellifer trichome, and fabrication of Prosopis juliflora wood-based biomaterial. A characterization study was done by UV-visible spectroscopic analysis, FTIR analysis, and SEM analysis expressing and confirming a significant characteristic and morphological property of the prepared biomaterial.

Information available in the Infrared and visible NOAA (National Oceanic Atmosphere Administration) satellite imagery is in the form of brightness temperature and albedo. Three Techniques are constructed to retrieve the convective cloud portion using Singular Value Decomposition (SVD), 2D-DCT (Discrete Cosine Transform) and fuzzy logic methods provided within MATLAB®, and compared the accuracy of these methods. The results delineates that there is tradeoff between accuracy of effective cloud amount and execution time. Though the fuzzy logic method takes the time to train the data but gives the accurate detection and classification of clouds

This article deals with the combined effect of micro and nano fillers on mechanical, thermal and morphological behavior of glass-basalt hybrid composites (GB). Three material systems were selected for the study: glass-basalt fiber reinforced 80 wt. % PA66 – 20 wt. % PTFE blend (GB), GB/Micro fillers (MoS2, SiC, Al2O3) (GBM) and GBM/nano fillers (TiO2) (GBN). It has been revealed from the experimentation that the effect of micro fillers deteriorated the mechanical behavior of micro composites (GBM). But the combined effect of micro and nano fillers slightly impaired the mechanical behavior of nano composites. The synergistic effect of micro and nano fillers constrained the loss of strength of nano composites. But the impact strength of nano composites has been improved due to hybrid fillers effect. The hybrid effect of fillers significantly improved the thermal stability of nano composites. Further, it is observed from the morphology that the fractured surfaces were characterized by fiber pull out and fiber overlapping, severe deformation and agglomeration of nano particles.

The hybrid effect of micro fillers on two body abrasive wear behavior of PA66/PP blend based composites is studied. Three composites PA66/PP/MoS2, PA66/PP/MoS2/SiC and PA66/PP/MoS2/SiC/Al2O3 are prepared using melt mix method by twin screw extrusion technique. The test is carried out on a water proof SiC abrasive paper (180 and 320 Grit) for a load of 10 N in multi pass condition. The results revealed that abrasive wear volume is a function of polymer composition, grit size and abrading distance. The effect of interparticulate distance seems to be detrimental to improve abrasive wear resistance. The negative effect of wear is due to the major reduction in ductility of composites which is due to hybrid effect of fillers. The surface counter modification also affects wear behavior. Deep micro grooving, micro cutting and abrasive ploughing are major mechanisms observed during the test. Among the studied micro composites, PA66/PP/MoS2 exhibited better abrasive wear behavior. The abraded surfaces are analyzed by using scanning electron microscope (SEM) photographs

2Development of the mmc with fibers and filler materials as a replacement material for some engineering purpose such as automobiles, aerospace are indispensable. Therefore, the studies related to hybrid mmc's of Al6061 were noted in this paper. In this work, Al6061 reinforced with E glass fibers and micro Titanium particles. Hybrid composites was prepared by very feasible and commercially used technique Stir casting and by varying composition of Al6061, Titanium and E-glass fibre. Experiments were done by varying weight fraction of Titanium (0%, 1%, 3% and 5%) and E glass fibre (0%, 1%, 3% and 5%). Wire EDM were used to prepare the specimens required for tensile and hardness according to standards and tests conducted. The proportion of elements which are present the mmc's are identified by EDAX. Optical microscopy were conducted by SU3500 machine Scanning Electron Microscope and Microstructure shows the distribution of reinforced Ti particles and E glass fibres. The characterization of Al6061 hybrid mmc's is having significant impact on the mechanical properties.

The effect of hybrid fibers on mechanical behavior of thermoplastic composites is most important for structural applications. This article deals with the effect of hybrid short fibers i.e., short glass fiber (SGF), short carbon fiber (SCF), and short basalt fibers (SBF) on 80/20 wt% of polyamide 66/polypropylene (PA66/PP) blend. The glass-carbon hybrid composites (CG) and glass-basalt hybrid composites (BG) were prepared by using melt mix twin screw extruder. The mechanical properties such as tensile, flexure, and impact strength of hybrid composites were studied as per ASTM methods. Further, hardness and density of hybrid composites were also discussed. The experimental results revealed that hybrid fibers effect greatly enhanced mechanical behavior of PA66/PP blend. The CG composites exhibited improvement in tensile strength by 76.7%, flexural strength by 104.12 and 20.82% reduction in elongation whereas BG composites by 77.22, 109, and 12.92% reduction in elongation, respectively. Significant enhancement in strength of composites was observed due to hybrid fibers effect. The synergistic effect between hybrid fibers and matrix helped in improving mechanical behavior. The impact strength of hybrid composites was reduced due to brittle nature of fibers. Fiber fracture, fiber pull out and fiber misalignment are some of the mechanisms observed through scanning electron microscopy (SEM) photographs.

The objective of this work is to develop environmental friendly fire retardant areca Phenolic composites by adding environmental friendly Pongamia pod powder as filler. Thermal properties such as Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA), Coefficient of Thermal Expansion and Thermal Conductivity are investigated and analyzed. When the composites are exposed to heat above the glass transition temperature of resin matrix, this leads to reduction in stiffness and strength of material and degrades the mechanical properties due to thermal degradation and combustion of the resin. This poor fire resistance of composites has been a major factor to limit their wide spread of applications. Composites require high flame retardancy which can be obtained by adding a filler material. Thus improving the thermal properties and fire retardant behaviour of polymers was a main challenge for extend their use to most of the applications. In fabrication of composite specimen process, the proportion of the Phenolic resin ( primary phase) was fixed to 65% by volume. It is mixed with varying proportion of areca Fibre (5%, 10%, 15% and 35%) and Pongamia shell powder (30%, 25%, 20% and 0%) by volume to weight ratio and represented by APC05, APC10, APC15 and APC35 respectively. Thermal properties improved with increase in Pongamia shell powder. Thermal stability, fire resistance properties increases with increase in Fibre proportion. It is expected optimum composition of the current work APC15 will be used in Aircraft industries, Aerospace applications, Chemical industries, Electrical systems and Electronics, Automobiles, Shipbuilding, wind turbine blades, Thermal encapsulation, Flip chip applications, Thermal interface materials.

Polymer blend of composition 80 wt% polyamide 66/20 wt% polytetraflurotheylene (PA66/PTFE) was selected as a matrix and reinforced with different weight percentage of short glass fibers (SGF). These composites were prepared by melt mix method using twin screw extruder followed by injection molding. The tribological behaviors were tested by using pin on disc machine by varying the different experimental parameters. The friction and wear mechanisms were studied as a function of sliding velocity, sliding load, and distance. The effect of fiber loading lowered the wear volume loss of SGF filled PA66/PTFE blend. The least frictional coefficient of 0.24 was obtained for 20 wt% of SGF in the blend. However, the wear resistance was not apparently improved by SGF loading in the experimental range for comparison with unfilled PA66/PTFE blend. The worn surfaces of specimen were examined by scanning electron microscopy photographs. The observations revealed that the frictional behavior was a function of development and formation of transfer film. Matrix wear and fiber wear were the result of frictional mechanism. The critical wear volume of PA66/PTFE/SGF composites was the contribution of both matrix and fiber wear. The abrasive nature of SGF was also one of the important factor for frictional behavior.

The use of natural fiber along with the glass fiber in polymer composites is one of the present material combinations for automotive industries. This article deals with the hybrid effect of 10 wt% short glass fibers (SGF) and 10 wt% short basalt fibers (SBF) on the mechanical behavior of 80 wt% PA66/20 wt% Teflon (PA66/PTFE) blend. These composite materials were prepared by melt mixing method, by using twin screw extruder followed by injection molding. The mechanical performance of the composite materials was tested as per ASTM method. The experimentally determined mechanical properties were tensile behavior, flexural behavior and impact behavior. Hardness and density of the blended composites were also studied. Experimental results revealed that the effect of hybrid short fibers on the blend greatly enhanced the mechanical behavior. Increase in tensile strength and flexural strength by 33% and 57% respectively and 6% reduction in elongation was exhibited by the blend due to the hybrid effect of fibers. The synergistic effect between the fibers and the matrix blend improved the mechanical behavior. The strain rate of the hybrid composites was deteriorated due to the hybrid effect. The enhancement of load carrying capacity by 17.35, 8.5 and 36% was exhibited by SGF, SBF and hybrid fiber filled PA66/PTFE blend composites respectively. The impact strength of the hybrid composites was reduced due to the brittle nature of the hybrid filled composites. Fiber fracture, fiber pull out and fiber misalignment were the certain mechanisms observed during mechanical performance. The fractured surfaces were analyzed through Scanning Electron Microscopy photographs.

The Monophase reinforced hybrid thermoplastic composites are the materials for the superior mechanical behavior. This article deals with the effect of single reinforcing phase (Fiber) in hybrid mode on the mechanical behavior of PA66/Teflon blend. Two hybrid material systems were selected: 10 wt% short glass fibers (SGF) and 10 wt% short carbon fibers reinforced 80 wt% PA66/20 wt% Teflon (PA66/PTFE) blend (GB) and 10 wt% SGF and 10 wt% short basalt fibers reinforced 80 wt% PA66/20 wt% Teflon (PA66/PTFE) blend(GB). These hybrid composite materials were prepared by melt mixing method by using twin screw extruder followed by injection molding. The experimentally determined mechanical properties were tensile behavior, flexural behavior and impact behavior. Experimental results revealed that addition of hybrid short fibers into the blend greatly enhanced the mechanical behavior of PA66/PTFE composites. Increase in tensile strength by 46 and 33%, flexural strength by 45 and 57% for GC and GB composites respectively were observed. The GC composites had the better impact strength than GB composites. The peak load obtained was 36 and 48% higher than that of neat blend for GC and GB composites respectively were observed. The strain rate of the hybrid composites deteriorated due to the hybrid effect. The synergistic effect between the fibers and the matrix blend improved the mechanical behavior. The hybrid effect increased the size of the voids and also the number of aggregates of the short fibers. This would weaken the reinforcement effect simultaneously building the strong bridge for the development of internal crack. Fractured surfaces were observed through Scanning Electron Microscopy photographs.

An experimental characterization of the abrasive wear behavior of clay and clay plus short carbon fiber filled polyamide66/polypropylene (PA66/PP) nanocomposites has been investigated. Two-body abrasive wear studies were carried out using pin-on-disc wear tester under multi-pass condition against the water proof silicon carbide abrasive paper. It was observed that the clay reinforcement is detrimental to the abrasive wear resistance of PA66/PP blend. A combination of clay and short carbon fiber in PA66/PP blend improved the abrasive wear performance than those of clay filled PA66/PP nanocomposites. Further, on the basis of microscopic observation of the worn surfaces, dominant wear mechanisms were discussed. (C) 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 119:2292-2301, 2011