Dr. Lakshmi K. J. P
Principal Scientist , Thermal Geophysics, Rock Mechanics and Paleomagnetism
Research Area
Dr. K. Jaya Prasanna Lakshmi received B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees from Andhra University and Ph.D. from Osmania University. Dr. Lakshmi is currently a Senior Scientist at National Geophysical Research Institute in Hyderabad. Dr. Lakshmi’s research areas include Rock Mechanics, Palaeomagnetism and Planetary Geosciences. She studies the physical properties of rocks such as density, magnetic susceptibility, porosity, ultrasonic P- and S-wave velocities, quality factor, attenuation, uniaxial and triaxial compressive strength of rocks samples and their dependence on density and mineral composition of rocks. She has carried out ultrasonic P-and S-wave velocity, quality factor and attenuation measurements of various materials including rock samples such as Pavgadh rhyolite, granites, basalts and granulites from the Indian Shield and sedimentary rock samples from Gondwana sedimentary basins. In addition, she also contributed to planetary geoscience research at NGRI. She has in-depth expertise on crater counting based age determination tools for dating the planetary surfaces and linear structures on the Moon and Mars. She has created a vast database on petrophysical properties of Lonar crater impact ejecta and used them to generate impact spallation models. Another important research is the study of micro-fracturing processes and brittle failure of stressed rock samples using stress-strain data analysis and acoustic emission (AE) technique. She analyzed the AE b-value and amplitude distribution of AE of various crustal rock samples. She participated in multi-channel AE experiments on the Koyna borehole samples at AIST, Tsukuba, Japan, under the INSA-JSPS collaborative project in 2007. These experiments were carried out at different loading rates under triaxial compression, in order to investigate the influence of stress perturbations in the brittle fracture of critically stressed rocks of Koyna-Warna region. Earlier she also carried out palaeomagnetism studies of basalts of the Deccan basalt province at Latur earthquake site, Sankra dyke swarm of the Malani igneous suite from the western Rajasthan, sand dykes from the palaeo-liquefaction sites in the Shillong Plateau and magnetostratigraphy of the Sub-Himalayan Tertiary sediments of the Himachal Pradesh.