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Fiber Metal Laminates (FML) are hybrid composites comprising metals and Fiber Reinforced Plastics (FRP). FMLs are the most widely used in aerospace, defence and automotive sectors due to their superior qualities like light weight, tensile, compression, flexural, excellent fatigue and impact resistance. The properties like strength-to-weight ratio, susceptibility to corrosion and good heat conduction of FML make it suitable for subsea applications. Commonly, FML with a combination of aluminium (Al), titanium (Ti), stainless steel (SS) alloys and FRP are widely used for ocean applications. Compared to other FML, the SS alloy-based FML is typically used in subsea applications as it has more creep and excellent corrosion resistance. In India, under the Ocean Acoustics programme of the National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT), an autonomous underwater Ambient Noise Measurement System (ANMS) has been developed and deployed in the shallow waters of Indian seas for the past 12 years to study the background noise prevailing in the sea. To accommodate electronics and power packs for the measurement of ambient noise at an ocean depth of 100 m, subsea housing with stainless steel 316L (SS316L) material for a pressure rating of 1 MPa has been developed. The objective of this study is to develop the FML with SS316L and FRP for reducing the weight of the housing. Based on the literature studies and Classical Laminate Theory (CLT), the FML has been fabricated as a 0.45 m (450 mm) panel with a sequence of SS316L as outer layers and E-glass fibre and carbon as the inner layers. The total thickness of the laminates is 0.006 m (6 mm). The developed FMLs are processed with water jet cutting machines to carry out various testing such as tensile, compression and flexural, which are relevant to the characterization of FML and the experimental results are described in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional food supply chains are centralized in nature and possess challenges pertaining to a single point of failure, product irregularities, quality compromises, and loss of data. Numerous cases of food fraud, contamination, and adulteration are daily reported from multiple parts of India, suggesting the absolute need for an upgraded decentralized supply chain model. A country such as India, where its biggest strength is its demographic dividend, cannot afford to malnutrition a large population of its children by allowing them to consume contaminated and adulterated dairy products. In view of the gravity of the situation, we propose a blockchain-enabled supply chain platform for the dairy industry. With respect to the supply chain platform, the dairy products of choice include milk, cheese, and butter. Blockchain is one of the fastest growing technologies having widespread acceptance across multiple industry verticals. Blockchain possesses the power to transform traditional supply chains into decentralized, robust, transparent, tamper proof, and sustainable supply chains. The proposed supply chain platform goes beyond the aspect of food traceability and focuses on maintaining the nutritional values of dairy products, identification of adulteration and contamination in dairy products, the increasing economic viability of running a dairy farm, preventing counterfeit dairy products, and enhancing the revenue of the dairy company. The paper collates the mentioned functionalities into four distinct impact dimensions: social, economic, operations, and sustainability. The proposed blockchain-enabled dairy supply chain platform combines the use of smart contracts, quick response code (QR code) technology, and IoT and has the potential to redefine the dairy supply chains on socio-economic, operational, and sustainability parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]