IIT Bhubaneswar celebrated, for the first time, the Engineers’ Day on 15th September, 2017, in honour of Bharat Ratna Sir Mokshagundam Visvesvarayya as a tribute to one of the greatest engineer of the country for his outstanding contribution to society. The celebration was attended by a large number of students, faculty and staff members.

Renowned Professor and Transportation Engineer Prof. Braj Bhushan Pandey from IIT Kharagpur graced the occasion as the Chief Guest and the Director Prof. R.V.Raja Kumar presided over the function.

The event was initiated with a working model making competition, participated by the students of the Institute. A large number of models were there for the demonstration. The Director and the Chief Guest of the event, evaluated the models based on innovation and creativity involved. Four out of the Ten teams earned cash prizes and all the other teams received certificates of participation.
 

Prof. R.K.Panda, Dean (R&D) introduced the purpose of celebrating the Engineers’ Day and mentioned that incidentally this is the Golden Jubilee Year of celebration of Engineers’ Day in the country with the theme: “Role of Engineers in a Developing India”. He also introduced the Chief Guest to the audience.

The Director, in his address, emphasized on the importance and advised students to start feeling and role playing as young Engineers, right from their first year of engineering education, immerse themselves into becoming engineers on purpose. He reminded the audience about the selfless services of Sir. M. Visvesvarayya and urged the fraternity to follow his footsteps for building future India.

 

 

Prof. Pandey, in his splendid lecture, emphasized on the importance of innovative, low cost and indigenous technology for construction of durable urban and village roads at a cost at par with that of conventional flexible pavements using an innovative technology developed by his team at IIT Kharagpur. The technology paves the way, he said, for construction of cast-in-situ concrete block pavement using recycled plastic cells. This technology creates three dimensional interlocking among the concrete blocks. The cost of such pavement compares favorably with conventional asphalt pavements usually adopted for rural roads.

 

He also talked on paneled concrete pavements, which can be used as white topping over existing asphalt pavements for rehabilitation and also for construction of new concrete pavements with lesser thickness compared to conventional concrete pavements. IIT Kharagpur, under his leadership is providing technical support to NHAI for demonstrating this technology on Indian highways.

 

The event ended with the vote of thanks by Dr. S.N.Panigrahi, Head of SMS