Displaying publications 1 - 20 of 839 in total

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  1. Huat, Bujang B.K, Faisal AIi, Choong, Foong Heng
    MyJurnal
    Residual soils occur in most countries of the world but the greater areas and depths are normally found in tropical humid areas. In these places, the soil forming processes are still very active and the weathering is much faster than the erosive factor. Most residual exhibit high soil suctions for most of the year. The absence of positive pore water pressure except immediately after rain, renders conventional soil mechanics for saturated soil irrelevant. In particular, the effective stress theories of saturated soil are not applicable at the practical leve l. Ignorance or lack of understanding of the geotechnical behavior of soil in the partially or unsaturated state has caused a lot of damages to infrastructures, buildings and other structures. For instances, the collapsibility and volume change of partially saturated soils in connection with the drying or wetting causes a lot of damage to foundation, roads and other structures. As such, the development of extended soil mechanics, which embraces the soil in the unsaturated state or subjected to soil suction, is essential. This paper examines the collapsibility and volume change behavior specifically of an unsaturated residual soil under various levels of applied matric suction (u -u ), and net mean stress (a-u) in a predetermined stress path. The volume change of ;he"' soil is found to be sensitive to both the applied matric suction and net mean stress. The soil is found to exhibit a collapsibility behavior upon a reduction in applied matric suction to 25 kPa at constant net mean stress.
  2. Ee, G.C.L., Cheow, Y.L.
    MyJurnal
    Detail chemical studies on Carcinia maingayi have yielded one xanthone, 1,3,7-trihydroxy-2-(3-methylbut-2-enyl)-xanthone, one benzophenone, isoxanthochymol, one benzoic acid derivative 3,4-dihydroxy-methylbenzoate and two triterpenoids, stigmasterol and sitosterol. Meanwhile, investigations on Carcinia parvifolia have afforded one triterpenoid, a-amyrin and two xanthones, cowanin and rubraxanthone. Their structures were derived based on spectroscopic evidence, mainly ID and 2D NMR spectroscopy. Acetylation reaction was carried out on rubraxanthone to yield triacetate rubraxanthone. It was found that the pure rubraxanthone was strongly active against the larvae of Aedes aegypti with LC50 value of 15.49 {lg/ ml and HL-60 cells line with an IC50 value of 7.5 {lg/ ml.
  3. Azizul Isha, Nor Azah Yusof, Musa Ahmad, Dedy Suhendra, Wan Md. Zin Wan Yunus, Zulkarnain Zainal
    MyJurnal
    An artificial neural network (ANN) was applied for the determination of V(V) based on immobilized fatty hydroxamic acid (FHA) in poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA). Spectra obtained from the V(V)-FHA complex at single wavelengths was used as the input data for the ANN. The V(V)-FHA complex shows a limited linear dynamic range of V(V) concentration of 10 - 100 mg/ L. After training with ANN, the linear dynamic range was extended with low calibration error. A three layer feed forward neural network using backpropagation (BP) algorithm was employed in this study. The input layer consisted of single neurons, 30 neurons in hidden a layer and one output neuron was found appropriate for the multivariate calibration used. The network were trained up to 10000 epochs with 0.003 % learning rate. This reagent also provided a good analytical pedormance with reproducibility characters of the method yielding relative standard deviation (RSD) of 9.29% and 7.09% for V(V) at concentrations of 50 mg/ L and 200 mg/ L, respectively. The limit of detection of the method was 8.4 mg/ L.
  4. Alnned M. Mharib, Mohammad Hamiruce Marhaban, Abdul Rahman Ramli
    MyJurnal
    Skin detection has gained popularity and importance in the computer vision community. It is an essential step for important vision tasks such as the detection, tracking and recognition of face, segmentation of hand for gesture analysis, person identification, as well as video surveillance and filtering of objectionable web images. All these applications are based on the assumption that the regions of the human skin are already located. In the recent past, numerous techniques for skin colour modeling and recognition have been proposed. The aims of this paper are to compile the published pixel-based skin colour detection techniques to describe their key concepts and try to find out and summarize their advantages, disadvantages and characteristic features.
  5. Ahmed M. Mbarib, Mohammad Hamiruce Marhaban, Abdul Rahman Ramli
    MyJurnal
    Skin colour is an important visual cue for face detection, face recogmtlon, hand segmentation for gesture analysis and filtering of objectionable images. In this paper, the adaptive skin color detection model is proposed, based on two bivariate normal distribution models of the skin chromatic subspace, and on image segmentation using an automatic and adaptive multi-thresholding technique. Experimental results on images presenting a wide range of variations in lighting condition and background demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed skin-segmentation algorithm.
  6. Huat, Bujang B.K, Faisal Ali, Hashim, S.
    MyJurnal
    The three shear strength parameters that are required to define a failure envelope of an unsaturated soil are c' (apparent cohesion),
  7. Mohd. Izhan Mohd. Yusoff, Mohd. Rizam Abu Bakar, Abu Hassan Shaari Mohd. Nor
    MyJurnal
    Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm has experienced a significant increase in terms of usage in many fields of study. In this paper, the performance of the said algorithm in finding the Maximum Likelihood for the Gaussian Mixed Models (GMM), a probabilistic model normally used in fraud detection and recognizing a person’s voice in speech recognition field, is shown and discussed. At the end of the paper, some suggestions for future research works will also be given.
  8. Mohamed Khalaf alla Hassan Mohamed, Raja Syamsul Azmir Raja Abdullah, Rasid, M.F.A.
    MyJurnal
    This paper analyses electromagnetic signal scattered from the target crossing the Forward Scattering
    Radar (FSR) system baseline. The aim of the analysis was to extract the Doppler signal of a target under the influence of high ground clutter and noise interference. The extraction was used for the
    automatic target detection (ATD) in the FSR system. Two extraction methods, namely Hilbert Transform and Wavelet Technique, were analyzed. The detection using the Hilbert Transform is only applicable for some conditions; however, the detection using the Wavelet Technique is more robust to any clutter and noise level. From 55 sets of signal, only 4% of false alarm was detected or occurred when the Wavelet Technique was applied as a detection scheme. Two sets of field experimentation were carried out and the target’s signal under the influence of high clutter had successfully been detected using the proposed method.
  9. Chatterji, Ani, Faizah Shaharom
    MyJurnal
    The central coast of Tamil Nadu, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, along with other regions, was severely hit by the tsunami on 26 December 2004. A strange spawning behaviour of the Indian horseshoe crabs (Tachypleus gigas, Müller) was observed after the tsunami disturbance. Along the northeast coast of India, the horseshoe crabs normally migrate towards the shore in large numbers coinciding with the tidal height and grain size of the sediment and spawn in nests made in sand. The spawning behaviour was normal until November 2004 and throughout that period about 35 to 45 nests in 200 m2 of area of the breeding beach were examined. However, no nesting was observed from December 2004 to March 2005, i.e. after the occurrence of tsunami. The number of nests per 200 m2 of area (~82) and the number of eggs per nest (750-1000 eggs) were increased considerably when the normal conditions were restored in April 2005. The absence of spawning migration, from December 2004 to March 2005, is totally an unusual behaviour and this happened for the first time during the past several years of the study period.
  10. Shamsabadi, H.T., Biabani, A., Desa Ahmad
    MyJurnal
    A field study was conducted on the effect of four primary tillage implements and three seed densities on the grain yield of rain fed wheat (Tajan cultivar), using a drill planting machine with the end wheels. The experimental design was a split plot design in a 4×3 factorial with three replications. In this study, the main plots were the tillage treatments, namely Mouldboard plough, Disc Plough, Chisel Plough, Offset Disc, and sub-plots were seed rates of 350, 400 and 450 seeds.m-2. Determinations included grain yield and selected yield components. The results showed that grain yield was not affected by the densities of seed and tillage machine treatments. The use of Chisel Plough, with 400 seeds.m-2 sowing rate, had the highest grain yield of wheat grown in the Golestan province (Iran), a region with an average annual rainfall of 450 mm.
  11. Wee, Siaw Khur, Chok, Vui Soon, Gorin, Alexander, Chua, Han Bing, Yan, Hong Ming
    MyJurnal
    Compartmented Fluidized Bed Gasifier (CFBG), consisting of two compartments - the combustorand gasifier, uses air blown instead of pure oxygen for syngas production in bubbling fluidization mode, eliminating the need of air separation unit, and reducing the capital cost, thus distinguishes it from other traditional ones. Fluidization quality is a determining factor in the CFBG to guarantee its well-lifted behaviour. Previous study, without solid circulation at ambient conditions, brought to the fore the necessity of considering the effect of the minimum allowable effective diameter. The study was then performed in the CFBG cold physical model of 0.66m overall diameter (effective diameter for combustor and gasifier is 0.413m and 0.257m) to investigate the fluidization quality and compare it with the results obtained from the previous cold model of about 1.36 times smaller, but with the same compartmented ratio of 65:35. Different inert particles (river sand, quartz sand and alumina) were used, over a range of aspect ratios, for the aforementioned objective. The results showed that the fluidization quality in the gasifier has not been achieved and the degradation of fluidization quality in the combustor is still observed, notwithstanding the fact that the condition of the minimum allowable effective diameter has been met. The reduction of distributor free area, to increase the distributor pressure drop, showed a marginal effect on the quality. The effect of the minimum allowable effective diameter on fluidization quality in CFBG as well as the interplay of geometric and operational parameters require further studies be carried out. The fluidization quality of the binary mixture is also currently under investigation.
  12. Noraishah Othman, Siti Kartom Kamarudin, Muhd Noor Md Yunus, Abd. Halim Shamsuddin, Siti Rozaimah, Zahirah Yaakob
    MyJurnal
    The production of carbon dioxide from Karas woods under argon atmosphere was investigated using a direct pyrolysis-combustion approach. Direct burning was used in this study, using argon for yrolysis and oxygen during combustion to look at the yield of carbon dioxide, produced at different parameters, such as the temperature, retention time and flow rate of argon, as the carrier gas. In this study, a new methodology, 23 response surface central composite design was successfully employed for the experimental design and analysis of results. Central composite experimental design and response surface method were utilized to determine the best operating condition for a maximum carbon dioxide production. Appropriate predictable empirical linear model was developed by incorporating interaction effects of all the variables involved. The results of the analysis revealed that linear equation models fitted well with the experimental for carbon dioxide yield. Nevertheless, the R-Squared obtained using the direct pyrolysis-combustion was 0.7118, indicating that the regression line was not at the best-fitted line.
  13. Nor Aishah Saidina Amin, Soon, Ee Peng
    MyJurnal
    Thermodynamic chemical equilibrium analysis using, total Gibbs energy minimization method, was carried out for methane oxidation to higher hydrocarbons. For a large methane conversion and a high selectivity to higher hydrocarbons, the system temperature and oxygen concentration played a vital role, whereas, the system pressure only slightly influenced the two variables. Numerical results showed that the conversion of methane increased with the concentration of oxygen and reaction temperature, but it decreased with pressure. Nevertheless, the presence of oxygen suppressed the formation of higher hydrocarbons which mostly consisted of aromatics, but enhanced the formation of hydrogen. As the system pressure increased, the aromatics, olefins and hydrogen yields diminished, but the paraffin yield improved. Carbon monoxide seemed to be the major oxygen-containing equilibrium product from methane oxidation, whilst almost no H2O, CH3OH and HCOH were detected although traces amount of carbon dioxide were formed at relatively lower temperature and higher pressure. The total Gibbs energy minimization method is useful to theoretically analyze the feasibility of methane conversion to higher hydrocarbons and syngas at the selected temperature and pressure.
  14. Bakhshan, Y., Shahrir Abdullah
    MyJurnal
    An in-house quasi-dimensional code has been developed which simulate the overlap, intake, compression, combustion, as well as expansion and exhaust processes of a homogeneous charged internal combustion engine (ICE). A detailed chemical kinetic mechanism, constituting of 39 species and 148 elementary reactions, has been used in conjunction with above code to study the combustion of CNG under IC engine conditions. Two different criteria, based on pressure rise and mass of fuel burned, are used to detect the onset of ignition. Parametric studies are conducted to show the effect of compression ratio, initial pressure, intake temperature and equivalence ratio, on the time of ignition and fuel burning rate. The results obtained from the modelling show a good agreement with the experimental data.
  15. Lim, Kean Pah, Abdul Halim Shaari, Chen, Soo Kien, Ng, Siau Wei, Zalita Zainuddin, Ye, Chau Yuen
    MyJurnal
    A series of polycrystalline samples (La1-xSmx)0.67Sr0.33MnO3 (X=0.00, 0.05 and 0.10) were prepared using the conventional solid-state reaction method. The XRD analysis indicated that all the samples were fully crystalline and in a single phase with a rhombohedral structure after a sintering at 1200ºC for 24 hours in air. Meanwhile, the Atomic Force Microscopy measurements showed that a small amount of Sm doping in La sites affected the grain growth and this might affect the grain boundary layer, thus resulting in the reduction of the Curie temperature, TC. Extrinsic magnetoresistance (MR) was observed for all the samples with a large negative MR at low field (0-0.1 or 0.2T) region, followed by a slower varying MR at high field (0.1 or 0.2-1T). The highest low-field MR value of -4.6% (at 0.1T) and -6.1% (at 0.2T) were observed for sample X=0.10 and X=0.05, respectively. Hence, these indicated that the extrinsic MR was grain size dependent and was therefore enhanced with a small amount of Sm substitution in La sites.
  16. Waje, Samaila Bawa, Noorhana Yahya, Irmawati Ramli
    MyJurnal
    Monoclinic bismuth oxide (α-Bi2O3) nanoparticles were prepared via precipitation method and
    irradiated with a pulsed laser forming thin films. Their phase and surface morphological properties
    were investigated using x-ray diffraction (XRD), atomic force microscopy (AFM), scanning electron
    microscopy (SEM) and high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM). The XRD
    analysis shows the phase transformation to a partially crystalline tetragonal phase β-Bi2O3 thin film.
    The SEM micrograph of the nanoparticles, with an average crystal size of 72 nm, was seen to form
    a thin film with a peculiar structure, coined as “cotton-like”, is attributed to the high surface energy
    absorbed by the nanoparticles during ablation. The HR-TEM micrograph shows the particulate with
    a clearly defined interlayer spacing.
  17. Ee, G.C.L., Jong, V.Y.M., Sukari, M.A., Rahmani, M., Kua, A.S.M.
    MyJurnal
    The roots of Calophyllum inophyllum (Guttiferae), furnished six xanthones which are brasilixanthone (1), 1,3,5-trihydroxy-2- methoxy xanthone (2), caloxanthone A (3), pyranojacareubin (4), caloxanthone B (5) and tovopyrifolin (6), Structural elucidations of these compounds, were achieved through 1D and 2D NMR andMS techniques. In this paper, the isolation and structural elucidation data for these xanthones are reported.
  18. Nur Azida Che Lah, Aidy Ali, Napsiah Ismail
    MyJurnal
    Welding process is most widely used in joining components or structures in industry. Although welding is part of a larger category called metals joining, the weld itself still gives significant problems to engineers, researchers and manufacturers until today. Several widely used welding processes, such as the Metal Inert Gas (MIG), Tungsten Inert Gas (TIG), and Manual Metal Arc (MMA), were studied. In the present paper, the characterization of the macrostructure, microstructure, hardness and residual stress distribution are highlighted and discussed to achieve a better understanding of the welded quality which is crucial in determining the welded products.
  19. Zaroog, Omar Suliman, Aidy Ali, Sahari, B.B., Rizal Zahari
    MyJurnal
    Compressive residual stress, induced by mechanical surface treatment, may relax during component
    operation life, due to thermal or mechanical mechanism. Fatigue life prediction for the components which have residual stress will be misled and inaccurately predicted the phenomenon of residual stress relaxation is not considered. Despite putting an effort on incorporating the residual stress relaxation, the issues remain concerned with the technical challenge of measuring and quantifying
    the magnitude of residual stress relaxation as well as redistribution during the loading cycling itself.
    In this paper, the residual stress relaxation and its models were reviewed and discussed to picture
    the best knowledge related to this topic, i.e. whether relaxation is a cause or an effect.
  20. Jaafar, M.S., Wong, N.J., Noorzaei, J., Thanoon, W.A.
    MyJurnal
    This study presents an efficient finite element analysis technique which shows great versatility in
    modelling of precast composite flooring system subjected to static loadings. The method incorporates sliding and opening in the analysis of composite structures using the interface element which was specifically designed to simulate the actual behaviour at the interfaces between contacting materials. A three-dimensional finite element model of the precast composite slab which exhibits discontinuous behaviour was performed to demonstrate the potential and applicability of the proposed method of analysis. The results of the analysis demonstrate that the overall response of a discontinuous system to external loading is significantly affected by the bonding condition at the interfaces between the contacting materials.
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