Browsing by Author "Kumara, BS"

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item: Article-Full-text
Investigation of pozzolanic properties of sugarcane bagasse ash for commercial applications
(American Chemical Society, 2023) Prabhath, N; Kumara, BS; Vithanage, V; Samarathunga, AI; Sewwandi, N; Damruwan, HGH; Lewangamage, S; Koswattage, KS
The ideal climatic and environmental conditions for sugarcane cultivation are present all year round in the tropical island of Sri Lanka. Given the annual sugar consumption of the nation, a significant amount of sugarcane bagasse ash (SCBA), a by-product with no intended commercial use but potential environmental and health risks, is produced. Numerous studies have been conducted recently to assess the viability of using SCBA as a pozzolanic material in structural applications. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the microstructure of SCBA samples from three sugar manufacturing facilities in Sri Lanka to identify the pozzolanic capacities. Several quantitative and qualitative characterization techniques have been utilized for the investigations. While maintaining the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) 618 specification as the standard for pozzolanic properties, a comparative investigation of the attributes of samples from each location was conducted. Beyond that, the relationship between the SCBA generation process parameters and their impact on the properties of SCBA have been identified. Finally, the SCBA source of the Pelwatte unit has been identified as the ideal source for the pozzolanic material from the three locations, considering quality and the extent of additional treatments required before use. Other prospective areas of research on SCBA and its potential applications have been recognized.
item: Article-Full-text
A robotic platform for aircraft composite structure inspection using thermography
(MDPI, 2022) Samarathunga, AI; Piyasundara, N; Wanigasooriya, AI; Kumara, BS; Vithanage, VP; Chathuranga, DS
Water ingression is a critical issue in honeycomb composite structures, which could result in catastrophic structural failure. In the aviation industry, they are widely used to manufacture critical aircraft structural components including fuselage, wings, and flight control surfaces. Catastrophic failure of these structures would be disastrous, thus identifying water accumulation in earlier stages of the defect is necessary. The conventional non-destructive testing method is thermography which is performed using handheld thermography cameras by manually accessing the specific areas. This method of inspection has been identified to be a risky, costly, time-consuming, and inspector-dependent technique. This paper describes using a wall-climbing robotic platform that can be controlled remotely to access and perform the inspection on a targeted structural area replacing the manual process. The designed wall-climbing inspection robot onboard a heat pump to stimulate the composite surface to an adequate temperature and, an infrared sensor to feed the real-time temperature data via Bluetooth serial communication to a remote computer system to be processed into a thermal image and evaluated to determine the presence of water. The results obtained from the thermographic sensor are validated with the comparison of the Fluke thermography camera.