IIT-M commercialises software for photoelastic analysis & simulation

The prestigious Indian Institute of Technology-Madras (IIT-M) has commercialized four state-of-the-art software packages in the field of photoelastic analysis and simulation through an industry partner with applications in diverse fields ranging from agricultural applications to locomotion of organisms to mitigating stresses.

Novel applications for photoelasticity include areas like biomedical and conventional stress analysis involving complex loading and boundary conditions in aerospace, civil, mechanical, and manufacturing engineering fields as well.

This is the first comprehensive software for experimentally-based photoelastic stress analysis tool, the IIT-M said, adding that doctors, agriculturists and biologists are now increasingly turning to the use of photoelasticity for solving their domain problems.

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IIT-M entered a licensing and monetization agreement with Online Solutions (Imaging) Pvt Ltd., Chennai. for licensing these software packages, which were the result of three decades of research by Prof. K. Ramesh, Chair Professor, Department of Applied Mechanics, IIT-M.

“No such software modules are available till now across the world on exploiting photoelastic technique, which is an experimental approach that is used to validate the solution from numerical approaches,” he said.

The photoelastic analysis is made simple with the availability of these software modules, which can help industries to adopt this technique more widely for solving their day-to-day design issues as well as the development of new conceptual understandings of modern materials that are heterogeneous, porous and functionally graded by research and educational institutions.

Professor K. Ramesh, a Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering, is the first Indian in the last sixty years to receive the M M Frocht award from the Society for Experimental Mechanics, USA for his outstanding contributions as an educator in the field of Experimental Mechanics.

He has also been the first researcher from India to have received the Zandman Award from the same society in 2012 for outstanding contributions in the application of photoelastic coatings.

The Office of Industrial Consultancy and Sponsored Research (ICSR) at IIT Madras coordinates industry collaborations of the Institute faculty and researchers. IIT Madras generated over Rs 1,000 crore in funding and revenue in a financial year for the first time in its history during 2021-22. This sum includes funds from projects sanctioned by the state and central governments and funds from industry consultancy.