Scientists pay tribute to Prof Murthy

EMINENT SCIENTISTS participated at the Professor VSR Murthy Memorial Symposium at the Indian Institute of Technology here on Friday. They paid homage to him by dwelling on the researches conducted on various types of new materials which were of interest to the late professor of the institute.

EMINENT SCIENTISTS participated at the Professor VSR Murthy Memorial Symposium at the Indian Institute of Technology here on Friday. They paid homage to him by dwelling on the researches conducted on various types of new materials which were of interest to the late professor of the institute.

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Professor Murthy had died in a road accident near Guntur in 2004.

Chief scientist at the NASA Dr M Singh spoke about the Ceramic Matrix Composites for higher temperature applications. He said these materials had demanding applications in aerospace, energy and nuclear industries due to their strength, light weight and high temperature resistance. They were also being considered for use in the first wall and blanket components of fusion reactors.

He said although several composite components were developed during the past few decades, there were several challenges before the wide scale applications of these materials. The main challenge before the scientists was related to manufacturing of the material in bulk quantity, assembly and integration, modeling, life prediction design codes, databases cost and refurbishment. Dr R Balasubramaniam of the department of materials and metallurgical at the IIT-K said composite materials were subjected to enhanced environmental degradation due to presence of two or more than two constituents. said it was believed that degradation was due to galvanic coupling between the constituents and localised attack at matrix reinforcement interfacial locations.