Faculty development programme held in Aligarh Muslim University

Aligarh: The Department of Civil Engineering, Zakir Hussain College of Engineering and Technology, Aligarh Muslim University organized a two-day online faculty development programme on “Behaviour of smart materials and concrete structures”.

In his presidential remarks, Vice Chancellor Professor Tariq Mansoor highlighted the need for online teaching and learning during the nationwide lock down.

“With the development of materials and technology, many new materials have found their application in civil engineering. Smart material is a promising example that deserves a wide focus, from research to application”, he added.

Dr Akil Ahmad, Associate Professor, Jamia Millia Islamia delivered inaugural lecture on “Use of Smart Materials for Structural Control” while the second technical talk was delivered by Dr Shilpa Pal, Associate Professor, DTU on “Development of Self-Healing Concrete for Crack Repair”.

Dr T Visalakshi, Associate Professor, Bennett University talked on “Structural Health Monitoring using Piezo Sensors” on the second day, whereas Prof Ashraf Iqbal, IIT Roorkee spoke on “Behaviour of Prestressed Concrete Elements under Impact Loading” in the last session.

Earlier, in his opening remarks, Prof Abdul Baqi (Chairman, Department of Civil Engineering and Convener of the FDP) said that structural health monitoring is another emerging area in which the piezo sensors are used for damage detection in civil engineering structures. He said that recently microbial mineral precipitation resulting from metabolic activities of some specific microorganisms in concrete, tending to improve the overall behaviour of concrete, has become an important area of research.

Prof Amjad Masood, Coordinator of the programme said that the magnitude of strain rate influences the failure mechanism of brittle concrete material. The extent of localised deformations with increase in loading rate lead to initiation of shear cracks in the vicinity of impact location which is detrimental to concrete structures.

Dr Parvez Mahmood, Director, Prof MN Farooqui Computer Centre, AMU was the Technical Coordinator while Dr Mohd Shariq and Dr SM Ibrahim were Co-coordinators.