Difficulties in controlling the effects of outdoor thermal environment on the human body are attracting considerable research attention. This study investigated the outdoor thermal comfort of urban pedestrians by assessing their perceptions of the tropical, micrometeorological, and physical conditions via a questionnaire survey. Evaluation of the outdoor thermal comfort involved pedestrians performing various physical activities (sitting, walking, and standing) in outdoor and semi-outdoor spaces where the data collection of air temperature, globe temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, solar radiation, metabolic activity, and clothing insulation data was done simultaneously. A total of 1011 participants were interviewed, and the micrometeorological data were recorded under outdoor and semi-outdoor conditions at two Malaysian university campuses. The neutral temperatures obtained which were 28.1 °C and 30.8 °C were within the biothermal acceptable ranges of 24-34 °C and 26-33 °C of the PET thermal sensation ranges for the outdoor and semi-outdoor conditions, respectively. Additionally, the participants' thermal sensation and preference votes were highly correlated with the PET and strongly related to air and mean radiant temperatures. The findings demonstrated the influence of individuals' thermal adaptation on the outdoor thermal comfort levels. This knowledge could be useful in the planning and designing of outdoor environments in hot and humid regions to create better thermal environments.
This paper introduces a method for modification of the formula of the fractal box counting dimension. The method is based on the utilization of the probability distribution formula in the fractal box count. The purpose of this method is to use it for the discrimination of oil spill areas from the surrounding features e.g. sea surface and look-alikes in RADARSAT-1 SAR data. The result showed that the new formula of the fractal box counting dimension was able to discriminate between oil spills and look-alike areas. The low wind area had the highest fractal dimension peak of 2.9, as compared to the oil slick and the surrounding rough sea. The maximum error standard deviation of the low wind area was 0.68 which performed with a 2.9 fractal dimension value.
Wind energy has often been touted as one of the most reliable sources of renewable energy that should be used for people. Today, wind energy (mainly by propeller type wind turbines) produces less than one percent of the total energy used worldwide. Practically, a standard three-blade propellers efficiency of use of the wind energy is around twenty percents and this is due to its design and shape that use the wind lift force and a rotating turbine. In addition, these turbines are quite expensive due to the complex aerodynamic shape of the propellers which are made of composite materials. The new world boom for wind turbines obliges inventors to create new wind turbine designs that have high efficiency and are better than any known design. This paper proposes the new patented invention of the vane-type wind turbine which uses wind energy more efficiently and is only dependent on the acting area of the vanes. The vane wind turbine was designed to increase the output of a wind turbine that uses kinetic energy of the wind. Due to its high efficiency, simple construction and technology, the vane wind turbine can be used universally, apart from the fact that it is made from cheap materials. The new design of the vane-type wind turbine has quite small sizes than the propeller type one of same output power.
In this paper, four types of circular probability distribution were used to evaluate which circular probability distribution gives the best fitting for southwesterly Malaysian wind direction data, namely circular uniform distribution, von Mises distribution, wrapped-normal distribution and wrapped-Cauchy distribution. The four locations chosen were Alor Setar, Langkawi, Melaka and Senai. Two performance indicators or goodness of fit tests which are mean circular distance and chord length were used to test which distribution give the best fitting.
The historical and future storm surge climate over the South China Sea Sunda Shelf was derived using a barotropic two dimensional model. The atmospheric forcings were obtained from the UKMO regional climate modeling system, PRECIS (Providing Regional Climates for Impacts Studies), forced at the boundary by the ECHAM4 simulation output under the SRES A2 emission experiment. In general, the model simulates historical sea surface elevation characteristics satisfactory although there is a substantial underestimation for the sea level elevation at local scales. The climate change analysis suggests that the storm surge extreme over the Sunda Shelf is expected to increase along the coastal area of the Gulf of Thailand and east coast of Peninsular Malaysia in the future (2071-2100). The projected increment is averagely ~9% over the Sunda Shelf region by the end of the 21st century corresponding to about 5% stronger wind speed as compare to the baseline period of 1961-1990.
The statistical characteristics of wind direction that was recorded at maximum wind speed in Peninsular Malaysia for two monsoons from 1999 to 2008 for seven stations were analyzed in this study. Modeled by von Mises distribution, the change in parameters values namely mean direction and concentration parameter was measured. Statistical summary, graphical representations, Watson-William Test and linear-circular correlation are used in the analysis. It is found that there is a significant change in the mean direction of wind over the period of ten years for most stations in Peninsular Malaysia. However, there is a weak relationship between wind direction and wind speed. This study suggested the presence of prominent direction of wind that blows in Peninsular Malaysia by monsoon. This finding may provide useful information on giving a better understanding of the behavior of the wind in Peninsular Malaysia and the potential use of wind as an alternative source of energy.
Oceanographic cruises in Pahang water in October 2003 and April 2004, monsoon transition months, produce data on water characteristics. The temperature in both months showed higher values in nearshore compared to the offshore stations. The nearshore salinity in both months is lower than offshore stations. Comparatively, there were smaller differences in temperature and salinity in October than in April, with very little variation between nearshore and offshore stations. T-S diagram showed significant differences between October and April water characteristics. According to the water characteristic observations, the temperature and salinity in October was lower than in April, while dissolved oxygen was higher than in April. The lower temperature and salinity taken during the sampling time in October suggested that during this time, the study area already received the influences of strong winds due to upcoming monsoon. The warmer and saltier water obtained in April showed that during this time, the study area was influenced by southwest monsoon. Winds related to rainfall were observed to have impact to the dynamics of water characteristics during both months.
This paper focuses on detecting outliers in the circular data which follow the wrapped normal distribution. We considered four discordance tests based on M, C, D and A statistics. The cut-off points of the four tests were obtained and the performance of the detection procedures was studied via simulations. In general, we showed that the discordance test based on the A statistic outperforms the other tests in all cases. For illustration, the city of Kuantan wind direction data set was considered.
Estimation and forecast of groundwater recharge and capacity of aquifer are essential issues in water resources investigation. In the current research, groundwater recharge, recharge coefficient and effective rainfall were determined through a case study using empirical methods applicable to the tropical zones. The related climatological data between January 2000 and December 2010 were collected in Selangor, Malaysia. The results showed that groundwater recharge was326.39 mm per year, effective precipitation was 1807.97 mm per year and recharge coefficient was 18% for the study area. In summary, the precipitation converted to recharge, surface runoff and evapotranspiration are 12, 32 and 56% of rainfall, respectively. Correlation between climatic parameters and groundwater recharge showed positive and negative relationships. The highest correlation was found between precipitation and recharge. Linear multiple regressions between
recharge and measured climatologic data proved significant relationship between recharge and rainfall and wind speed. It was also proven that the proposed model provided an accurate estimation for similar projects.
Pre-stressing is a concept used in many engineering structures. In this study prestressing in the form of axial compression stress is proposed in the blade structure of H-Darrieus wind turbine. The study draws a structural comparison between reference and prestressed configurations of turbine rotor with respect to their dynamic vibrational response. Rotordynamics calculations provided by ANSYS Mechanical is used to investigate the effects of turbine rotation on the dynamic response of the system. Rotation speed ranging between 0 to 150 rad/s was examined to cover the whole operating range of commercial instances. The modal analysis ends up with first six mode shapes of both rotor configurations. As a result, the displacement of the proposed configurations reduced effectively. Apparent variations in Campbell diagrams of both cases indicate that prestressed configuration has its resonant frequencies far away from turbine operation speeds and thus remarkably higher safety factor against whirling and probable following failures.
The complexity of the coastal environment and the advent of climate change cause coastal erosion, which is incontrovertibly a significant concern worldwide, including Peninsular Malaysia, where, the coast is threatened by severe erosion linked to anthropogenic factors and monsoonal wind-driven waves. Consequently, the Malaysian government implemented a mitigation plan using several coastal defence systems to overcome the coastal erosion problem. This study assesses coastal erosion management strategies along a monsoon-dominated coasts by evaluating the efficacy of coastal protection structures against the coast. To this end, we analysed 244 km of the coastline of Terengganu, a federal state located on the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia. Due to a higher frequency of storms and the ensuing inception of high wave energy environments during the northeast monsoon (relative to southwest monsoon), the study area is the most impacted region in Malaysia with regard to coastal erosion. Fifty-five (55) coastal defence structures were detected along the Terengganu coastline. The Digital Shoreline Analysis System (DSAS) was utilised to compute changes in the rate statistics for various historical shoreline positions along the Terengganu coast to assess the efficacy of the defence structures. Additionally, this study acquired the perception of the existing coastal management strategies through an interview session with the concerned stakeholders. The rate statistics revealed the effectiveness and impact of the coastal defence structure on the coastline. Assessing the functionality of the coastal defence structures shed light on the present scenario of coastal erosion management. Greater efficacy and lower impact of coastal defence structures are prescribed for coastal erosion management strategies across the monsoon-dominated coast.
This study examines the three-way linkage relationships between CO2 emission, energy consumption and economic growth in Malaysia, covering the 1975-2015 period. An autoregressive distributed lag approach was employed to achieve the objective of the study and gauged by dynamic ordinary least squares. Additionally, vector error correction model, variance decompositions and impulse response functions were employed to further examine the relationship between the interest variables. The findings show that economic growth is neither influenced by energy consumption nor by CO2 emission. Energy consumption is revealed to be an increasing function of CO2 emission. Whereas, CO2 emission positively and significantly depends on energy consumption and economic growth. This implies that CO2 emission increases with an increase in both energy consumption and economic growth. Conclusively, the main drivers of CO2 emission in Malaysia are proven to be energy consumption and economic growth. Therefore, renewable energy sources ought to be considered by policy makers to curb emission from the current non-renewable sources. Wind and biomass can be explored as they are viable sources. Energy efficiency and savings should equally be emphasised and encouraged by policy makers. Lastly, growth-related policies that target emission reduction are also recommended.
The large use of renewable sources and plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) would play a critical part in achieving a low-carbon energy source and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which are the primary cause of global warming. On the other hand, predicting the instability and intermittent nature of wind and solar power output poses significant challenges. To reduce the unpredictable and random nature of renewable microgrids (MGs) and additional unreliable energy sources, a battery energy storage system (BESS) is connected to an MG system. The uncoordinated charging of PEVs offers further hurdles to the unit commitment (UC) required in contemporary MG management. The UC problem is an exceptionally difficult optimization problem due to the mixed-integer structure, large scale, and nonlinearity. It is further complicated by the multiple uncertainties associated with renewable sources, PEV charging and discharging, and electricity market pricing, in addition to the BESS degradation factor. Therefore, in this study, a new variant of mixed-integer particle swarm optimizer is introduced as a reliable optimization framework to handle the UC problem. This study considers six various case studies of UC problems, including uncertainties and battery degradation to validate the reliability and robustness of the proposed algorithm. Out of which, two case studies defined as a multiobjective problem, and it has been transformed into a single-objective model using different weight factors. The simulation findings demonstrate that the proposed approach and improved methodology for the UC problem are effective than its peers. Based on the average results, the economic consequences of numerous scenarios are thoroughly examined and contrasted, and some significant conclusions are presented.
Many insect pests, including the brown planthopper (BPH), undergo windborne migration that is challenging to observe and track. It remains controversial about their migration patterns and largely unknown regarding the underlying genetic basis. By analyzing 360 whole genomes from around the globe, we clarify the genetic sources of worldwide BPHs and illuminate a landscape of BPH migration showing that East Asian populations perform closed-circuit journeys between Indochina and the Far East, while populations of Malay Archipelago and South Asia undergo one-way migration to Indochina. We further find round-trip migration accelerates population differentiation, with highly diverged regions enriching in a gene desert chromosome that is simultaneously the speciation hotspot between BPH and related species. This study not only shows the power of applying genomic approaches to demystify the migration in windborne migrants but also enhances our understanding of how seasonal movements affect speciation and evolution in insects.
In this paper, the suitability and performance of ANFIS (adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system), ANFIS-PSO (particle swarm optimization), ANFIS-GA (genetic algorithm) and ANFIS-DE (differential evolution) has been investigated for the prediction of monthly and weekly wind power density (WPD) of four different locations named Mersing, Kuala Terengganu, Pulau Langkawi and Bayan Lepas all in Malaysia. For this aim, standalone ANFIS, ANFIS-PSO, ANFIS-GA and ANFIS-DE prediction algorithm are developed in MATLAB platform. The performance of the proposed hybrid ANFIS models is determined by computing different statistical parameters such as mean absolute bias error (MABE), mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), root mean square error (RMSE) and coefficient of determination (R2). The results obtained from ANFIS-PSO and ANFIS-GA enjoy higher performance and accuracy than other models, and they can be suggested for practical application to predict monthly and weekly mean wind power density. Besides, the capability of the proposed hybrid ANFIS models is examined to predict the wind data for the locations where measured wind data are not available, and the results are compared with the measured wind data from nearby stations.
This study analyzes two wind-induced upwelling mechanisms, namely, Ekman transport and Ekman pumping that occur during the southwest monsoon. The results suggest that the coastline of the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia (ECPM) is affected by upwelling with spatiotemporal variations. Characterization of upwelling by using wind-induced upwelling indexes (UIW) indicate the existence of favorable upwelling conditions from May to September. Upwelling intensity increased in May and peaked in August before declining in September, decreasing intensity from the southern tip towards the northern tip along the coastline of the ECPM. The existence of upwelling along the ECPM has resulted in an important difference between the SSTs of the inshore and the oceanic regions. Nonetheless, the use of the SST gradient between the inshore and the oceanic SSTs to characterize upwelling (UISST) was found to be unsuitable because the SST along the ECPM was affected by water advection from the Java Sea and incessant changes in the SST. In order to indicate the major contributor of wind-induced upwelling along the ECPM in terms of the spatiotemporal scale, a comparison between Ekman transport and Ekman pumping was drawn by integrating Ekman pumping with respect to the distance where the positive wind stress curl existed. The estimation of Ekman transport and Ekman pumping indicated that Ekman pumping played a major role in contributing towards upwelling in any particular month during the southwest monsoon along the entire coastline of the ECPM as compared to Ekman transport, which contributed towards more than half of the total upwelling transport. By dividing the ECPM into three coastal sections, we observed that Ekman pumping was relatively predominant in the middle and northern coasts, whereas both Ekman transport and Ekman pumping were equally prevalent in the southern coast.
It has been shown in previous studies that the flight trajectories of sports balls are influenced by their aerodynamic characteristics. These aerodynamic characteristics are primarily dependent on the physical shape and surface texture of the balls. Even though sepak takraw is well established as a sport, little is known regarding the aerodynamic characteristics of the sepak takraw ball, which has a rather complex shape and surface texture. Hence, the main objective of this research is to investigate the aerodynamic characteristics (specifically the drag and lift coefficients) and flow features of a modern sepak takraw ball commercially available in the market by means of numerical simulations and wind tunnel experiments using the smoke flow visualization technique. The aerodynamic characteristics and flow features of the ball are determined for non-spinning conditions at a wind speed of 3 m/s. It is found that the drag coefficient and lift coefficient of the sepak takraw ball is 0.4868400 and - 0.0130915, respectively. The images captured from the smoke flow visualization experiments reveal that the sepak takraw ball is in the subcritical flow regime at a wind speed of 3 m/s, which is the regime before the drag crisis. The laminar boundary layer separates from the upper and lower surfaces of the ball at points upstream of the equator of the ball, creating a large wake region downstream of the sepak takraw ball and resulting in high drag. This in turn, influences the trajectory of the sepak takraw ball in flight. The flow features observed from the smoke flow visualization experiments are representative of the flow during a sepak takraw game. Owing to the complexity of sepak takraw ball, it is recommended that the aerodynamic characteristics of the sepak takraw ball are investigated for spinning conditions in future studies.
Recently, there is strong interest on the subject of outlier problem in circular data. In this paper, we focus on detecting outliers in a circular regression model proposed by Down and Mardia. The basic properties of the model are available including the exact form of covariance matrix of the parameters. Hence, we intend to identify outliers in the model by looking at the effect of the outliers on the covariance matrix. The method resembles closely the COVRATIO statistic for the case of linear regression problem. The corresponding critical values and the performance of the outlier detection procedure are studied via simulations. For illustration, we apply the procedure on the wind data set.
Wind turbines are massive electrical structures. They produce large returns when illuminated by radar waves. These
scatterings have a great impact on the operation of surveillance, air traffic control and weather radars. This paper presents
two geometric modelling methods for reshaping wind turbine towers so that the Radar Cross Section (RCS) of wind turbines
is reduced. In the proposed reshaping methods, bump structures are created on the surface of the conventional cylinder
wind turbine tower. When a reshaped tower is illuminated by radar waves, the bump structures scatter incident radar
waves into insignificant directions so that the strength of back-scattering is declined and the RCS of the wind turbine is
decreased. The test results confirmed that the proposed methodssignificantly reduce bi-static RCS values of wind turbines.
The proposed reshaping methods are practical, flexible and effective in alleviating the scatterings of wind turbines.
In this study, we proposed integrated tools to evaluate the wind power potential, economic viability, and prioritize 15 proposed sites for the installation of wind farms. Initially, we used modified Weibull distribution model coupled with power law to assess the wind power potential. Secondly, we employed value cost method to estimate per unit cost ($/kWh) of proposed sites. Lastly, we used Fuzzy Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (F-TOPSIS) to rank the best alternatives. The results indicate that Pakistan has enormous wind power potential that cost varies from 0.06 $/kWh to 0.58 $/kWh; thus, sites S12, S13, S14, and S15 are considered as the most economic viable locations for the installation of wind power project, while remaining sites are considered to be less important, due to other complexities. The further analysis using Fuzzy-TOPSIS method reveals that site S13 is the most optimal location followed by S12, S14, and S14 for the development of wind power project. We proposed that government should formulate wind power policy for the implementation of wind power projects in order to meet energy demand of the country.