Having discussed about ethics, its types and initiatives, role of editors, authors and other stakeholders, in the previous issues, let us deliberate ‘what plagiarism is’. Plagiarism is the act of using someone else’s intellectual work without giving proper credit. If someone made off with your mobile phone, you call it burglary and would know what to do. But if a professional, claiming to be an intellectual, stole your words, you feel hapless. It is crime of robbing intellectual property and it is as serious as the crime of stealing a real property. It is not clearly defined as what constitutes plagiarism. IEEE Publication Services and Products Board has defined the following five levels of plagiarism (The Institute, IEEE, December 2004, p. 20):

1. Uncredited verbatim copying of a full paper.

2. Uncredited verbatim copying of a large portion (up to half) of a paper.

3. Uncredited verbatim copying of individual elements such as sentences, paragraphs, or illustrations.

4. Uncredited improper paraphrasing of pages or paragraphs (by changing a few words or phrases or rearranging the original sentence order).

5. Credited verbatim copying of a major portion of a paper without clear delineation of who did or wrote what.

The IEEE guidelines also make recommendations for corrective actions to be taken for each level of misconduct and for repeated offenses.

Until the growth of Internet and electronic dissemination of intellectual material, it used to be much more difficult to plagiarize. Now, someone’s words or whole work can be lifted quickly with a couple of mouse clicks. Fortunately, there are two sides of the coin. The mouse click that allows people to cut and paste others’ work into their own also allows offenders to be found, almost as easily. Authors can now use powerful search engines to find, with relative ease, unscrupulous use of their work—to say that their work was plagiarized and help in bringing offenders to book. During the past few years this ease has been an important contributor to the increased tendency to plagiarize as well as reporting of more and more incidents of plagiarism.

The first paper, “Modeling of Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition Combustion for Future Engine Application: A Literature Review”, by Kale S C and Nandgaonkar M R, is a good compilation for the researchers in this field. The automotive engine has improved significantly over the last decade to achieve the stringent emission norms and this has helped to improve the performance and fuel efficiency. However, to meet future exhaust emission norms there is a need to develop an alternative combustion system which will further reduce engine emissions. Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) is an alternate combustion technology with high efficiency as well as low NOx and PM emissions. This paper gives an overview of the various numerical modeling methods used for the HCCI combustion analysis. This will be useful for understanding the numerical approach to study engine parameters like inlet air temperature, Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR), compression ratio, valve timing, and injection strategy on the HCCI combustion and exhaust emission.

The second paper, “Analysis of Flow Through First Stage Pump (FSP) of New Aircraft Fuel Control System Under Various Aircraft Accelerations”, by Arunn Kumar, Pradyumna Ghosh and Kamesh Goyal deals with IC engines. The flow through First Stage Pump (FSP) has been studied by the authors under various aircraft accelerations for the new aircraft engine which is under design and development in India. For energy transfer in a rotodynamic machine, Euler’s equation has been used to calculate the total head developed considering inviscid fluid and the viscous losses in rotor have been incorporated implicitly as 4-5% of the total head developed. The calculated head-discharge characteristics for the FSP have been compared with actual test data under normal ground conditions. Subsequently, theoretical analysis has been carried out to check the fuel flow through FSP under various aircraft accelerations (g forces).

The next two papers in this issue deal with engineering materials. The paper “Fine-Grained Ti-6Al-4V Alloy Through Multidirectional Forging” by Abhijit Dutta, Amit Kumar and J Babu presents an innovative method of Multidirectional Forging (MDF) to refine the grain size of Ti-6Al-4V alloy without changing the preform. The coarse-grained sample of Ti-6Al-4V was compressed from each of the three sides sequentially at an elevated temperature which constitutes one set of forging. Such set of compression was carried out for two more times by progressively decreasing the temperatures. The huge accumulated strain imposed on the specimen reduced the grain size to ~7 µm, which is attractive for superplastic forming and also for improved strength and toughness. Interestingly, there was a paper on Ti-6Al-4V Alloy behavior in the last issue.

The present day standards for materials having high strength, high strength to weight ratios, and improved wear performance, etc., call for manufacturing processes that can result in supersaturated solid solutions. The modern manufacturing processes, such as rapid solidification processing, vapor deposition and sputtering, have manifested significant supersaturation of solute atoms in various alloy systems. However, the recently developed Mechanical Alloying (MA) process holds a better promise in extending solid solubility limits in cases of ductile-ductile, ductile-brittle and brittle-brittle alloy systems. In the paper, “Some Investigations into the Mechanical Alloying Process Applied to the Manufacture of Al-Pb Alloys”, the authors Ch. V S H S R Sastry and G Ranga Janardhana present their work on Al and Pb powders of various compositions subjected to MA using the laboratory size ball mill and attrition mill. Various considerations employed for successfully compressing and sintering the Al-Pb alloys are presented. The standard compressibility test, X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, optical microscopy, tensile test and hardness tests are used to analyze the dependence of densification behavior and mechanical properties of Al-Pb alloys made by MA, on the process parameters, viz., mixing route, ball-to-charge ratio and alloy composition.

In the last paper, “Design and Analysis of Electrical Calorimeter to Determine Quality of Steam”, the authors Saurabh Sharma, Mahesh Pophaley and S C Sharma have claimed that an electrical calorimeter is a concept not well covered in literature, though it has wide range of application and scope with accuracy and this may offset the limitations of the conventionally used calorimeters. Their concept can be applied conveniently to find the dryness fraction and can be validated experimentally. The electrical energy is used to make dry saturate from the wet steam in a controlled manner, and steam parameters are recorded along with the heat supplied to the wet steam. It is also found that this system can be used for a wide range of the dryness fraction unlike conventional methods, which give results in a narrow range.

- - R K Mittal
Consulting Editor