A method for recycling aluminium alloy chips by hot extrusion was studied as well as the possibility of using to recycle aluminium chips. As a result, according to an ANOVA analysis, preheat temperature is the most significant factor influencing the response variables investigated. Preheat temperature and the quadratic effect of factor preheat temperature provided a primary contribution to the responses investigated. Additionally, factor preheat time did not provide a significant contributing factor to the Ultimate Tensile Strenght. This developed the Response Surface Methodology (RSM) model for ER12, which can now be used for analysis and predicting the Ultimate Tensile Strenght for recycling aluminium chip using the hot extrusion process. The Miscellaneous Design and Response Surface Methodology enabled the determination of optimal operating conditions for obtaining hot extrusion production. The optimization of the analyzed responses demonstrated that the best results for hot extrusion process parameter. It reveals the empirical models developed were reasonably accurate, particularly for UTS at 550°C temperature and 3 hours preheating time. All the actual values for the confirmation run are within the 95% prediction interval.
Virtual reality (VR) is a fast-growing technology in the world today. Many countries use virtual reality for many purposes such as education, military and entertainment. Despite the benefits of VR, harmful effects of VR on the users are still inconclusive. With only a few reliable studies that investigate the effect of virtual reality on the users especially on the eyes, yet still there are a lot more things we do not know about the effects of VR. The purpose of this study was to compare the amplitude of accommodation before and after watching 3-dimesional (3D) movie utilizing VR and notebook (control group). Thirty-two participants volunteered in this study and all participants underwent amplitude of accommodation (AA) test using Royal Army Force (RAF) rule before and after watching three-dimensional (3D) movie for 30 minutes using VR and two-dimensional (2D) movie by laptop. The amplitude of accommodation between pre- and post-watching 3D movie on VR was insignificantly changed (p= >0.05). The similar trend was also found after 30 minutes watching movie using laptop (p= >0.05). The utilization of VR and laptop for 30 minutes did insignificantly alter the eye accommodation.
: Virtual reality (VR) has been integrated and used with smartphones as one of the digital entertainments such as in gaming and movie streaming. With emergent of various VR brands in the market, it concerns the public on the possible side effects of VR on the ocular performance specifically on tear film stability and ocular discomfort. The purpose of this study was to compare the change on non-invasive keratograph tear break-up time (NIKBUT), tear meniscus height (TMH) before and after the use of VR for 30 minutes, and to measure the ocular discomfort after the use of VR quantitatively. Thirty-two subjects were recruited in this study and all the subjects were divided randomly into two groups; VR and laptop (used as a control) groups. Each subject needed to watch a movie for 30 minutes using the respective devices. The changes of tear film stability and ocular discomfort before and after the use of the devices were then compared and the results showed that there was no significant difference (p>0.05) after 30 minutes of the use. Comparison of the ocular parameters between the devices on post-watching activities was also not significant (p>0.05). Use of VR did not give any signs of dryness to the eyes and it can be used without any discomfort even after 30 minutes usage of the devices.
Virtual reality (VR) headsets are becoming remarkably well-known nowadays, especially in gaming industry. Their ability to immerse users into virtual world makes them captivating. However, there is limited research about the impacts of this technology on our eyes and vision. This study investigated if there is any effect on blink rate (BR) and inter-blink interval (IBI) after 30 minutes of watching 3-dimensional (3D) movie on VR. Besides, this study compares between watching 3D movie on VR headset and 2D movie on laptop. Blinks were recorded over 1 minutes for 32 participants volunteered in this study before and after 30 minutes of watching 3D movie on VR headset and 2D movie on laptop. The result of BR and IBI between pre- and post-watching 3D movie on VR was not significant (p= >0.05). The result between watching movie on laptop and VR also not significant (p= >0.05). Watching 3D movie on VR for 30 minutes resulted in no effects on blink rate and inter-blink interval of the users.
Manufacturing systems, in pursuit of cost, time and flexibility optimisation are becoming more and more complex, exhibiting a dynamic and nonlinear behaviour. Unpredictability is a distinct characteristic of such behaviour and effects production planning significantly. Complexity continues to be a challenge in manufacturing systems, resulting in ever-inflating costs, operational issues and increased lead times to product realisation. This challenge must be met with appropriate decision-making by manufacturing companies to secure competitive advantage without compromising sustainability. Assessing complexity realises the reduction and management of complexity sources which contribute to lowering associated engineering costs and time, improves productivity and increases profitability. Therefore, this study was undertaken to investigate the priority level and current achievement of manufacturing performance in Malaysia’s manufacturing industry and the complexity drivers on manufacturing productivity performance. The results showed that Malaysia’s manufacturing industry prioritised product quality and they managed achieved a good on-time delivery performance. However, for other manufacturing performance, there was a difference where the current achievement of manufacturing performances in Malaysia’s manufacturing industry is slightly lower than the priority given to them. The strong correlation of significant value for priority status was observed between efficient production levelling (finished goods) and finish product management while the strong correlation of significant value for current achievement was minimised the number of workstation and factory transportation system. This indicates that complexity drivers have an impact towards manufacturing performance. Consequently, it is necessary to identify complexity drivers to achieve well manufacturing performance.
Three types of binder PVA, PVC and PVA/PVC mixtures have been evaluated for PANi-TiO2 immobilized system. These binders have been varied to several weights of loading for optimization purposes. As a result, it shows that higher loading of binders improved the photodegradation of RR4 dye but the mechanical properties of each immobilized system started to decreases. This behavior occurs due to the immobilized particles coated on the plate easy to peel off despite weak attachment toward to the continuous photodegradation operation system. Therefore 4 times of dipping PVA and PVC layers was selected as the optimum loading of binders to the PANi/TiO2 system during photocatalytic degradation of Reactive Red 4 with the rate constant of 0.5568 K/min for PVA and 0.5742 K/min for PVC. Meanwhile for PVA/PVC mixture binder system at 4 times dipping showed the highest rate constant of photodegradation of RR4 dye with 0.6026 K/min. In addition, SEM analysis has also been carried out for further investigation.
Unmanned air vehicles (UAV) have been used for many years and it mainly focus on military purposes. Numerous UAV development have been popular worldwide because the low in development cost, operating cost and ability to provide accurate surveillance information and it is a better option for performing reconnaissance missions in hostile environment. However, in the past years a new type of UAV has appeared that possessed lighter weight and smaller in size and it is categorized as a micro unmanned air vehicle (μ-UAV). Although the non-autonomous ready-to-fly tailless μ-UAV exists among local universities, the development of non-autonomous ready-to-fly tailless μ-UAV is still open to be explored. Thus, this project demonstrates the development of the non-autonomous ready-to-fly tailless μ-UAV named as Neo-Ptero. A special CNC hot wire cutter machine was used in the Neo-Ptero fuselage and wing development in which has evidently produced high accuracy of shapes and geometry based on the CAD design. A 3D printing process was used to produce few parts in the Neo-Ptero μ-UAV model. The model was equipped with on shelves RC components for future flight testing purpose. The actual Neo-Ptero weigh around 1.3kg and has a wingspan of 120.6cm.
Rivers as surface water in Malaysia are recipients of effluents and wastewater and yet it is important water source for daily uses of some villagers living along the river. Endocrine disruptors such as Bisphenol A (BPA) can be found in river due to continuous discharge into it. The objectives of this research is to find out the occurrence and concentration of BPA in Sungai Langat and also to see how water quality parameters such as temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen (DO), turbidity, Total Suspended Solid (TSS), Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD), Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) and ammonia nitrogen (AN) affecting the concentration of BPA. 12 stations in total including upstream to downstream of Sungai Langat and also tributary of Sungai Langat. The instrument used to find out concentration of BPA is Triple Quadrupole LC/MS. The source of BPA are mainly industrial effluents and also direct domestic discharges. The water quality parameters that will affect concentration of BPA are Ammonia Nitrogen (AN), turbidity, Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD), Total Suspended Solid (TSS), and Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), Dissolved Oxygen (DO). While pH and water temperature are also factors that will affect concentration of BPA but the significance is not shown in the analysis. It can be concluded that upstream of Sungai Langat has lower concentration of BPA than downstream.
In the oil and gas industry, pipeline is the major transportation medium to deliver the products. According to [1] containment of pipeline loss to indicate that corrosion has been found to be the most predominant cause for failures of buried metal pipes. MIC has been identified as one of the major causes of underground pipeline corrosion failure and Sulphate Reducing Bacteria (SRB) are the main reason causing MIC, by accelerating corrosion rate. The objectives of this study is to study the SRB growth, Desulfovibrio desulfuricans ATCC 7757 due to pH and determine the optimum value controlling the bacteria growth on the internal pipe of carbon steel grade API X70. The result shows that the optimum SRB growth is at range pH 5-5 to 6.5 and the exposure time of 7 to 14 days. At pH 6.5 the maximum corrosion rate is 1.056 mm/year. Corrosion phenomena on carbon steel in the study proven had influence by pH and time. From this result pitting corrosion strongly attack at carbon steel pipe. In the future project, it is recommended to study the effect of different pipe location for example the pipeline under seawater.
In this research, study on mutual coupling of aperture coupled cylindrical DRA and its influence on return loss, radiation pattern including the directivity, gain and bandwidth was computed and illustrated. The DRA was excited by a micro strip line with aperture coupled slots where the slot locations were calculated using the characteristic of standing wave ratio over a short ended micro strips. Small dielectric resonator antenna was designed using high permittivity dielectric material with permittivity the substrate of 3.38. The diameter of the dielectric resonator is 12mm with the height of 4.2mm. The element spacing that been investigated for the effect of mutual coupling was at 0.5λ, 0.75λ and 1λ with maximum of four DRA been used. The final result shows the effect of mutual coupling is decreased with three DRA element with the gain measured at 5.948GHz frequency is about 8.619dB with high directivity measured at 11.4dBi. This shows that the proposed DRA with three 1λ spacing DRA elements exhibits an enhancement of the gain and directivity in comparison with a single pellet DRA. Hence, by increasing the level of isolation between the two identical DRAs to 1λ it actually helps electromagnetic interaction to attract and further increase the directivity and effective area.
Protease is an enzyme that catalysed the hydrolysis of protein into peptide. Application of protease in industry has been linked with cost effective substrates and complex of enzyme-substrate stability. Molecular docking approach has identified casein as a preference substrates. However, lack of data on casein mode of binding to protease and enzyme stability represents a limitation for its production and structural optimization. In this study, we have used a molecular dynamic (MD) to examine the stability of complex enzyme-substrate of protease from Bacillus lehensis G1. The 3D structure of protease (BleG1_1979) was docked with substrate casein using AutoDock Vina. Structural analysis of the substrate-binding cleft revealed a binding site of casein was predominantly at the hydrophobic region of BleG1_1979. The MD of complex BleG1_1979-casein was tested with two temperatures; 298 K and 310 K using GROMACS v5.1.4. MD simulation showed a stable behaviour of BleG1_1979 over the 20 ns simulation period. The molecular docking and MD simulation suggested that the production of protease from B. lehensis G1 by utilization of casein and the stability of complex protease-casein could be a potential application to generate a cost effective enzyme to be develop for industrial use.
his paper presents the structure and static model of engine camshaft analysis. For the purposes of this analysis, the finite element method is used. Camshaft is one of the critical components for effective and precise work of internal combustion engines. This camshaft rotates at high speed causing pressure and vibration in the system. Camshafts are also subject to varying fatigue burden due to cam plunger contact. These precise values are required to be determined to prevent failure in the camshaft. The objective of the project is to model and to perform pressure analysis on the camshaft machine. In this project the standard engine cam shafts are modeled and analyzed using the CATIA V5R21 software respectively. This model is created by the basic requirements of the engine. It is done with an existing background, such as the power of acting on cam by means of a valve while running at maxi mum speed. Here the approach becomes fully CAE based. CAE - based approaches enrich Research and limit the time span. A study was conducted to predict the behavior of the different camshafts structure of the material using the finite three - dimensional pressure of the element. Four types of materials such as Steel, Titanium, Aluminum and Magnesium are taken into account. FEA Stress and maximum displacement decisions are calculated and compared to all of the above materials. The conclusion is to focus on the material suitable for the camshaft to reduce the maximum displacement and weight. Titanium materials become the best material for camshaft manufacturing based on analysis.
Recently, the industry and academia there is significant activity in research and development towards the next generation micro and Pico cellular wireless Networks (5th generation). This paper presents, a structure design of microstrip patch antenna array operate at the central frequency of 28 GHz waveband is proposed. The patch antenna array consists of four elements with rectangular patch and uniform distribution. It has a compact size of 26.51 x 20.37 mm with operating frequency at 28 GHz. The inset feed technique is used for the matching between radiating patch and the 50Ω microstrip feedline. The proposed 2x2 antenna array successfully improve the antenna gain up to 8.393dB compare to existing CRLH TL CPW antenna with 2.99 dB, wideband antenna with 7.1 dB and 3.7 dB for broadband elliptical-shaped slot antenna. As a conclusion, the directivity of 10.13 db and efficiency is higher than 80% considered as a potential candidate for the 5G wireless networks and applications.
Education needs to change working life in order to improve and ensure the latest technology has been adopted to cater the new era of industrial revolution. To reach this, a technological-oriented education is required for students. In this section, Virtual Reality (VR) technology is useful to get empirical experience in tertiary education. Moreover, virtual world provides a hazard-free and explorative learning experience. This paper reviews the application of VR in engineering education. This work also covers the usage of VR application which begins with the history of VR application, reasons of VR in education, key elements for immersive VR collaboration, and types of VR systems. The input / output devices which involved in VR systems were also discussed. This paper also reviews VR systems classification and usage of VR in education systems. VR in design application was finally reviewed followed by the advantages and disadvantages of VR systems and VR hardware. The last section provides future trends and conclusion.
Aero Intel mobile application (mobile app) is an interactive learning application which is specific to aircraft airframe providing information to help aircraft maintenance engineering students. The objective for this study is to investigate students’ perceptions towards Aero Intel mobile app. Quantitative study using questionnaires have involved 78 respondents of semester 1 students of Diploma Engineering of Aircraft Maintenance from Politeknik Banting Selangor. The questionnaires constructed about ownership of smartphone, frequency use of type of apps, are they interested to download educational app and most importantly, students’ perceptions after exploring the Aero Intel mobile app. All respondents owned smartphones and 97.4% interested to use apps for academic purposes. The data obtained were analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS). The finding results revealed the students have positive perception towards Aero Intel mobile application. Thus, the use of this application is expected to help students’ understanding in aircraft airframe and various feedbacks given to encourage educator as the developer to explore and improving development of mobile app for diverse needs in teaching and learning.
Cerebral Palsy (CP) is a common neurodevelopmental condition encountered by pediatricians. The condition may present itself in many different kinds of classification. In many cases, the cause of CP may not be apparent. Cerebral Palsy is always showing many deficits such as mental retardation, speech and language and oral motor problems. This project inspired from Elisya, a nine-year-old kid that has CP since born and she have the communication problems since she cannot speak to express her opinions and desires. The main focus on this project is to help to improve the communication issues among CP children. In order to assist the people with CP, the assistive tool is required to help them to communicate or interact with people around them. Assistive technology includes equipment, devices and software solutions that increase functional capabilities of people with disabilities and improve the quality of their lives. There are several Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) devices for people with Cerebral Palsy that are not able to speak. One of the ways to make this happen is to implement the AAC technology with mobile technology by developing a mobile application named as Make Me Speak and React Native technology in order to build the cross platform for this application since the application should be run on IOS and Android platform so it’s easier for other people to bring it anywhere and use it at any time. It also involves CP centres and school to do experimental studies for this project. There are several studies shows that AAC technology can help in enhancing the speech and language development and in this project, the suggested mobile application should be friendly to our language and culture of our nation, Malaysia and the project is in line with the social innovation in the Eleventh Malaysia Plan (RMK-11).
Microbiologically Influenced Corrosion (MIC) caused by the presence of Sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB) is a big concern in heavy industries. Pipeline infrastructure may experience severe metal loss due to corrosion induced by the species and can potentially lead to catastrophic failure. By studying SRB growth condition, important parameter can be controlled to prevent or slow down a corrosion process. This study discussed on the effect of pH value to the corrosion growth rate on API 5L X70 low carbon steel subjected to outer part of underground pipeline. In this research, the type of SRB that's been used is Postgate C of Desulfovibrio Desulfuricans. There are 80 numbers of samples prepared with various pH value and temperature, which each of the samples contains two coupon steel immersed in the medium together with SRB for 7, 14, 21 and 28 days. The process in determining weight loss is analyzed and the corrosion rate for each steel sample is identified by weight loss. The result is plotted and analyzed, the particular pH values and temperature affect the growth of SRB in the medium where the existence of SRB could accelerate the corrosion rate towards the steel surface of API X-70. The samples are exposed to SRB in days’ time. This experiment aims to determine the optimum temperature for SRB growth and demonstrate the corrosion rate simulation using One-Factor-at-A-Time method (OFAT) method. The consequences of SRB activity, it is shown that pitting corrosion produced on the surface of steel. In fact, the sulphur element is identified as one of the corrosion products due to SRB activity.
The changing trend towards the use of natural ingredients in product formulation has becoming very significant nowadays. Herbal products have gained increasing popularity in the last decade, and are now used by approximately 20% of the population and contribute to the health care of our people. The natural products global trade is projected to be over RM2 trillion by the year 2020 as more people are turning to herbal-based products as nutritional and dietary supplements; an alternative to the conventional therapeutic medicine. Therefore it is hoped that the utilisation of natural ingredients could be capitalised for the mass production of herbal based products. Malaysian herbal product market is experiencing tremendous growth. Malaysia's rich tropical biodiversity is a reliable source for natural health products, and the Government is now addressing its full potential. Although herbs are often perceived as “natural” and therefore safe, many safety issues and side effects have been reported owing to active ingredients, contaminants, or interactions with modern drugs. Before herbal-based products are commercialized, several processes/steps which are critical aspects of the development and marketing of product must be addressed. Thus, there is an urgent need to conduct experimental research to provide scientific evidence in terms of safety, efficacy and quality of herbal medicines. In addition the plants as sources for new lead structure for drug development especially the active compounds that are beneficial for human health requires further investigation.
In this research, sago mill effluent was treated using anaerobic sequencing batch reactor (ASBR). Seven HRT from 10 to 1.5 days were tested to evaluate the methane production from sago mill effluent. The findings revealed the highest methane production rate was found at 1.288 L CH4/L reactor. d under HRT of 2 days The results showed that COD removals decreased from 70% to 47% as HRT was reduced from 10 to 2 days. The HRT 1.5 days was found critical for the studied system, which leads to decreased in methane production, yield and COD removal. Overall, ASBR was capable to treat sago mill effluent in producing methane by means of anaerobic digestion.
The measurements of dielectric and thermal properties for bio composite substrate conducted between the mixture of polypropylene (PP) and saw dust filler Leucaena Leucocephala (150μm). The high temperature Agilent 85070E dielectric probe and Quickline 30 Thermal properties analyser used as an instruments to measure the dielectric properties (εr) and handling temperature of the substrate for frequency range of 1GHz to 20 GHz that are suitable for radio frequency applications. The effect of increasing wood filler indicated that it will raise the DK value from 1.84 to 2.49 and decreases the thermal conductivity behaviour from 0.2 to 0.11w/m.k for all 5 mixture fabricated substrate (PP100, PB9010, PB8020, PB7030 and PB6040). In this research the composition of PP must be greater than the sawdust filler due to PP act as laminating and hold the composite structure. The result presented on this research will useful for planar antenna and microwave filter substrate up to frequency 20 GHz and it could support the technical and vocational education tanning (TVET) learning process that hybrid the knowledge among different field.