In this paper, we present our work, which is doing an energy audit on alternator’s current output and battery’s voltage output at idle engine. Along with advances in technology today, the automotive industry has been growing rapidly and became competitiveness. One of the increasingly sophisticated fields is electrical charging system in the vehicle. Although as good as any of a carriage, it still requires the perceiver electrical system to move. Alternator and battery carriage mutual need between one another. Both of these things do work in unison when a car engine is turned on. Without electrical charging system, no power can be channeled to fire the spark plug, and so can not turn the engine on. Alternator is a major component in the charging system. Alternator generates AC current and converts it into DC current. Alternator helps to charge the battery and also turn on the electrical components inside the car. When the car engine is turned off, the current is supplied by the battery. When the engine is turned on, the current is supplied by the alternator. A fully charged battery should read over 12.6 volts. The actual output voltage produced by the alternator will typically be about 1-1/2 to 2 volts higher than the battery voltage. At idle, most charging systems will produce 13.8 to 14.3 volts with no lights or accessories on. A discharged battery will have a voltage of about 11.2 volts. A repeated experiment has been done to ensure the theory. The car used in the research was Proton Preve 1.6L Manual, with no added electrical accessories. An AC/DC clamp is being used to measure the value of current being produced by the alternator. And a multi-meter is being used to measure the value of voltage from the battery. The value of current and voltage were recorded before and after the engine turned on. All electrical accessories were turned on one by one. The experiment was done at engine was at idle, which is 750 RPM. The result of the experiment shows the relationship between voltage and current in the charging system. The result taken was then used to calculate the power in term of Watt. The value of power shows how much there is excessive power still can be produced.

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This paper reviews the effect of reinforcing agents in polypropylene (PP) on mechanical properties for car bumper. PP is one of the main plastic materials used for making car bumper. PP as a matrix is mixed with reinforcing agents that are talc and rubber. Types of rubber employed as reinforcing agents are ethylene-propylene diene monomer (EPDM) and polyolefin elastomeric (POE). Result was shown that PP filled with talc increased the modulus strength however yield strength and its strain decreased. Meanwhile, PP filled with rubber shown that impact strength and percentage of elongation increased however its yield strength and bending strength decreased. Furthermore, this paper also found that the higher the processing temperature the lower the mechanical properties of virgin PP. Thus, it shown that adding reinforcing agents into PP matrix increased and/or decreased certain properties of PP composites. Therefore, some companies have their reasons used talc and/or rubber as reinforcing agent for production their car bumper.

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The purpose of this study is to present relationship between sustainable manufacturing practices (SMP) and economy sustainability performance (SP1_Economy). Eight practices that may affect SP1_Economy were studied. In the first phase, a multiple regression model considered a linear relationship between eight variables and SP1_Economy as performance was considered to the best fit of the observed values. It was perceived that multiple linear regression method indicated 24% from SP1_Economy of the variation in the observed data. Finally, it can be conclude that multiple linear regression method can predict the performance from observed practices in manufacturing firms.

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Increasing requirement in railway vehicle technologies regarding on riding comfort, running safety and speed of railway vehicles are in the increasing trend of studies today. These requirements are opposed by the fact that the condition of the tracks is getting worse and maintenance cost is becoming expensive. In view of this conflict, conventional suspension concepts are not able to overcome all these problems. This paper investigates the performance of semi-active control of lateral suspension system namely fuzzy body-based skyhook and fuzzy bogie-based skyhook for the purpose of attenuating the effects of track irregularities to the body lateral displacement, body roll angle and unwanted yaw responses of railway vehicle. The controller is optimized on 17 degrees of freedom railway vehicle dynamics model and showing better dynamics performance than its counterparts.

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Fatigue failure may occur in any engineering component subjected under cyclic loading that is lower than the ultimate strength of the material. However, fatigue tests are costly because they require much time just for a single experiment. Hence, simulation using finite element analysis (FEA) can reduce the cost and time for experiment. This paper presents the stress analysis and fatigue damage of steering knuckle using FEA. Steering knuckle is a vital part of the steering system, where the knuckle will pivot the wheels to turn; the steering knuckle is also connected to the suspension system. FEA was performed on a steering knuckle using a commercial finite element package. The steering knuckle is modelled based on 1300 cc national automobile, and grey cast iron with compressive strength of 572 MPa and tensile strength of 152 MPa is used as a material of the steering knuckle. The steering knuckle is subjected to three types of load according to a reported procedure. The critical part of the steering knuckle can be identified in the stress analysis. The relationship among the force applied, maximum displacement, damage, and factor safety is also determined. Moreover, a relationship can be obtained between the fatigue damage and applied loads of the steering knuckle.

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Dredging is routinely carried out for the maintenance of shipping channels, ensuring safe trafficability of vessels within the designated depths and breadths. The process involves removal of large quantities of sediments from the seabed for disposal. The disposal, whether on land or offshore, could incur additional costs as well as contamination risks along the transportation path and at the disposal site. Dredged materials are primarily soils, albeit much of the fine-grained type, i.e. clay and silt. Nonetheless the reuse potential of the material should be explored, as this can lead to less dumping and lowered associated risk levels. As these soil types are generally of poor engineering properties and with high probability of contamination, they cannot be reused without thorough characterisation. Accordingly, it is important to determine the material’s inherent geo-characteristics as the first step in ascertaining its physical reusability. This paper describes the tests and measurements of key geotechnical properties for 4 dredged marine soil samples retrieved from Malaysian waters. The parameters examined include particle size distribution, water content, Atterberg limits, specific gravity and organic content. The results obtained were also compared with those of related soil samples collected from land. Overall it was found that the dredged marine soils do not differ significantly from ordinary fine-grained soils, and could be potentially reused as a sound geomaterial, though certain pre-treatment and processes may be necessary depending on the intended applications. Thorough geo-characterisation of the dredged marine soils provides the basis for further determination of the material’s reusability.

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In this paper, we present the vibration performance of lightweight concrete coated biopolymer based on used cooking oil. The composition of material preparation was involved in two categories: (a) fabrication of lightweight concrete by different percentages of rubber aggregate with a ratio from 55%, 60%, 65% and 70% weight by weight, (b) the different proportion of titanium dioxide as additive for biopolymer used cooking oil coating in the ratio of 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0 and 2.5 by weight with the thicknesses of coating is about 0.30 ± 0.05 mm. The composition of lightweight concrete and surface coating was observed by scanning electron microscope (SEM) image to inspect the effect undercut edge and adhesion on layer coated on lightweight concrete. The results obtained by higher ratio particles sizes of rubber aggregate, which is 70% can reduced more mechanical vibration of lightweight concrete. It was observed that the proportion up to 2.0 by weight titanium dioxide of biopolymer used cooking oil offer some possibility to reduce the characterization of vibration on lightweight concrete in phase with a high frequency of 100 Hz operate at amplitudes is about 0.000174 Grms for input (A1) while 0.000111 Grms for output (A2). In comparison of an uncoated lightweight concrete, the vibration amplitude is higher exceeding 0.002130 Grms for input (A1) and 0.000468 Grms for output (A2).

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In this paper, selection of drinking water bottle material is to be selected. Therefore, to try out decision making tools efficiency, three methods have been used. The methods are fusion of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) with Fuzzy logic with different membership function. The material selected are silicone, polypropylene, HDPE, LDPE and Tin. The criterion that being taken into consideration are price, density, tensile strength, thermal conductivity and electrical resistivity. Three methods have been carried out, and the weight age compared in the form of line graph. The best material gave by traditional AHP and trapezoidal AHP are Polypropylene, however triangular AHP gave LDPE is the best. But all three methods shows that tin is the least desirable when it does not satisfy all criterions.

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Injection moulding process is widely used in plastic product industry. Mould design is one of the crucial stages in the injection moulding manufacturing design. Mould design currently utilizes commercial CAD software and is knowingly time consuming. This paper proposes an algorithm that automatically generates core and cavity for a 3D CAD model with regular and free-form faces by selecting the best parting direction using normal vector approach and detecting through holes and undercuts using scanning ray approach. The implementation of this algorithm were able to generate a 3D model of core and cavity in a fully automatic manner without user interaction in a short span of time and faster than using commercial CAD software.

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The aim of this paper is to investigate the emission of a single cylinder diesel engine when being injected with hydrogen gas. The hydrogen gas was produced by alkaline electrolyser, which has multiple separators to separates hydrogen and oxygen gas produced. The input hydrogen gas injected into the single cylinder diesel engine was altered by changing the alkaline electrolyser input voltage. The effects of the hydrogen gas injected into the diesel engine was observed by measuring the emission characteristics. The engine emission was measured in terms of carbon monoxide (CO) and also nitrogen monoxide (NO) in parts per millionth (ppm). The results shows that, as more hydrogen gas was injected, the emission of carbon monoxide (CO) decreases while Oxides of Nitrogen (NOx) increases.

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There are many researches in the field of autonomous and Intelligent Vehicle in Malaysia, but most of them never have the chance to be tested in actual environment due to constraints in terms of hardware and its configuration. Thus, this paper aims to share with other researchers in the field of Autonomous and Intelligent Vehicle with our independent modular-based system and hardware configuration of an Autonomous and Intelligent Vehicle research platform at our university. Each of the research projects are represented by a module and they are linked by a communication layer. The modules utilized the communication layers to transmit and received data as a part of system communication network, and finally this configuration build up the whole system. Through this approach, it is hoped that the contribution from each research project leads to fully autonomous vehicle and intelligent vehicle. The proposed modular system and hardware configuration have been successfully verified via our platform through lane-keeping research. The proposed platform is demonstrated via I-DRIVE (Intelligent Drive Vehicle) on the standard testing track and Malaysia highway road.

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Advance Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) have successfully been integrated in many vehicles; however, the research on its improvement is still on-going. Some of the features of ADAS include Lane Departure warning System, Blind Spot detection, Lane Change Assistance and etc. However, with such systems available, accidents still occurred due to the driver's lack of awareness and negligence towards the given indication and warning, especially situation related to side lane collision. Thus, this paper aims to propose a simple steering intervention control. If the driver still proceed for the lane change when there are other object appearing in the blind spot area, the proposed solution will automatically trigger vehicle evasion mode to avoid side lane collision. The system does not take into account comfort in order to warn the driver. The system was tested and validated using a test vehicle. The results show that the steering intervention provides good vehicle evasion results and hypothetically it may act as the final warning towards the person behind the wheel.

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Road safety has become more concern due to the number of accidents that keeps increasing every year. The safety systems include from simple installation such as seat belt, airbag, and rear camera to more complicated and intelligent systems such as braking assist, lane change assist, steering control and blind spot monitoring. This paper proposes another intelligent safety system to be implemented in passenger vehicle by monitoring the blind-spot region by using automotive short range radar as sensor to assess its surrounding. This system is called Active Blind-Spot Assist (ABSA) system and this system will collaborate with a Steering Intervention system for autonomous steering maneuvers. The objective of ABSA system is to deploy safety interventions by giving warning to the driver whenever other vehicle is detected within the blind-spot region. Furthermore, this active system also triggers autonomous steering control when the potential of collision with the detected vehicle increases greatly. Consequently, a threat assessment algorithm is developed to evaluate the right moment to give safety interventions to the driver and the conditions for autonomous steering maneuvers. The process of developing the threat assessment algorithm explained in this paper.

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Deep drawing is one of important sheet metal processes used in manufacturing industry. It is a process for shaping sheet metals into cup-shaped products. Prediction of forming results can help to save material and production time. Hence, the finite element (FE) simulation provides the best answer to predict the early defects of forming product. This paper describes the use of ABAQUS/ Standard FE simulation in a square cup deep drawing process using low carbon steel sheet metal. Here, the isotropic properties were used for the material’s input data in the FE model and then, the result was validate via experimental product. The objective of this paper is to study the effectiveness of FE model to predict the wrinkling defect in the deep drawing process. As the result, the FE model predicted the similar wrinkling pattern with the experimental product.

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Trace metals were accumulated in sediment by anthropogenic and natural processes. The unwanted sediment was removed by dredging activities. The contaminated dredged marine sediments (DMS) were disposed at offshore. This would affect the marine ecosystem and human health. The objective of this study is to evaluate the trace element pollutant in the DMS. In this study, the DMS were retrieved from 4 locations of Malaysia (Lumut, Melaka, Tok Bali and Pasir Gudang). The samples were analyzed by x-ray fluorescence for trace metals. There were six trace metals detected in all samples (As, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb and Zn). The evaluation was carried out considering the sediment quality guidelines (SQGs) proposed by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Florida Department of Environment Protection (FDEP). The highest mean content of as (18 mg/kg) was observed in Melaka and Pasir Gudang. Melaka had high mean contents of Cr (66.7 mg/kg), Cu (21.7 mg/kg), Pb (40.3 mg/kg) and Ni (22 mg/kg). Pasir Gudang had high mean content of Zn with 107 mg/kg. Arsenic concentration in the four samples exceeded the ERL and TEL values. Based on the analysis, all the samples need treatment to make it acceptable for reused. From this study, it shown that DMS have different concentration of trace metals and treatment is necessary to preserve environment due to some of the trace metals detected were potentially affect the environment.

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This paper presents a numerical investigation of the flow and combustion behavior in a small-scale tangential firing furnace to study the occurrence of flow and temperature deviation without the influence of upper furnace structures. Particular emphasis is given to the flue gas flow field, velocity, temperature distribution, and swirl intensity at different furnace elevations. The CFD simulation result shows that the swirl and velocity distribution are perfectly symmetrical along the furnace. The swirl diameter becomes larger as furnace height increases. Flow and temperature deviation, which normally occur in full-scale furnace were absent in this case. The swirl intensity was found to be highly influenced by the tangential velocity. These initial findings are useful in understanding the flow behavior in the furnace and thus, find the root cause of flow and temperature deviation in the full-scale furnace.

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Gearbox is a structural member that provides support to the gear train that it houses. All loads from the gears are transferred on to the gearbox through bearings which support the shaft and connect them to gearbox, which inturn is passed to the chassis. The loads acting on the gearbox are of two types, one that acts due to meshing of the gear, and the other that acts due to unbalance in any parts of the gearbox. The load acting due to unbalance is sinusoidal in nature and hence it is necessary that harmonic response analysis is conducted on the gearbox so that it does not fail under this condition. In this paper, a gearbox for hybrid transmission system has been designed on which modal and harmonic response analysis has been done to find the stress and the safe operating frequencies for different materials to avoid resonance.

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For the stability evaluation of rock structures, it is important to reveal the deterioration characteristic of rocks under repeated stress as rock structures may not only subjected to static loads but also affected by dynamic loads. Literature studies showed that there are significant reductions of rock strength due to cyclic loading. However absence of research involving the effects of cyclic loading on the strength parameter has led to improper knowledge and fundamentals. Therefore this research work is to assess and determine the effects of cyclic loading on the uniaxial compressive strength of weathered granite. With the use of advance GCTS Triaxial RTX-3000 machine, it is now possible to apply a fixed number of cycles to the rock specimens. The rock specimens used for the characterization purpose were classified into Grades II, III, and IV, and free from any fractures, joints and faults. All of the specimens were loaded up to 50 % loading amplitudes under frequency of 1 Hz and the number of loading cycle was limited to 100 cycles as the limitation. Considering the effects of cyclic loading, the maximum percentage reduction of strength for Grade II, Grade III, and Grade IV granite were recorded as 13.50 %, 15.15 %, and 16.30 % respectively. Conclusively, the approximate average 15 % strength reduction is due to the increase of bulk compressibility and accumulated permanent strain damage resulting from cyclic loading, thus reducing compressive strength of weathered granite.

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The failure of bone may cause from accumulation of micro cracks, and will affect the micro structure features. The composition in cortical bone can be in the composite structure which has variety in material properties and play a role to macroscopic fracture behavior of whole bone structure. The composition in bone can be demonstrated as heterogeneous material properties which considered as constituents of osteon, cement line, interstitial matrix and Haversian canal. It is hypothesize that linear stress interaction exist and growth to intensify the interaction between constituents. This paper presents a finite cortical bone model based on continuum mechanics theory to identify the linear elastic interaction between four constituents and evaluate its model based on the standard analytical model for brittle fracture. Finite element method is employed to calculate the interaction fracture parameter, stress intensity factor (SIF) and energy release rate for four anatomical positions in cortical bone which are posterior, anterior, medial and lateral are considered due to different variability of bone properties. The results demonstrates the highest value of SIFs at posterior cortex and found lowest at lateral cortex. It is identified that numerical data is in good agreement with analytical model for brittle fracture.

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The cortical thickness is one of important factors for supporting the implant stability. There is a clear correlation between available cortical thicknesses for implant placement with implant stability. However, the relation between cortical thicknesses with stress distribution behavior that might be generated during regular mastication process is still unclear. This study aimed to investigate the effect of cortical thickness on stress distribution of dental implant system by using in vivo model with finite element analysis (FEA). The in vivo model consisted of body implant, crown, two neighbor teeth, cortical and trabecular bone. The thicknesses of cortical thickness are varying: 2.30 mm, 2.85 mm, 3.53 mm, and 3.93 mm. The in vivo models are derived from Cone Beam Computed Tomography (CBCT) scanning with the segmentation process is performed by using MIMICS software with the pseudo cortical thickness are generated by using morphology tools which is available on this software. A 200 N vertical force are applied as an external loading into top of crown surface to simulate the masticatory process. The finite element analyses are performed in the ANSYS WORKBENCH 14 software and the maximum Von Mises Stress are selected to represent the stress distribution on each simulation. The result shows that the cortical thickness can protect the lowering bone area from overloading force in the post crown condition during masticatory. The stress will be propagated into cortical which is distributed to whole direction in the cortical and small part of stress are propagated to the trabecular bone surrounding implant. However, the thicker cortical thickness will transfer more stress into lower part of the jaw system particularly the trabecular bone.

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Carbon dioxide (CO2) at supercritical phase is being used recently in Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration (HVAC&R) industries due to its special thermal properties of supercritical CO2, which leads to better performance of heat transfer and flow characteristics. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to develop flow and heat transfer CFD models and validate the models by comparing with previous studies from literature. For the simulation, the CO2 flow was assumed to be incompressible, turbulent, non-isothermal and Newtonian. The numerical results compared with the experimental data obtained from (Liao and Zhao 2002). The experimental data consisted of three different cases with different inlet pressure (P), inlet temperature (Tin) and tube diameter (d). All the maximum and minimum temperature percentage differences for all three cases are in a small values. Moreover, the surface area, A of the tube is inversely proportional to heat transfer coefficient (h). Besides, the pressure drop (P) for all three cases increased together with h when the tube diameters decreased. The numerical results were in good agreement with experimental results for temperature distributions. The CFD model is validated.

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Quasi-static uniaxial loading of aluminium honeycomb is reported, along with biaxial loadings. The load-displacement curves show an initial collapse occurs at a peak load, then followed by the amplitudes of the little peaks, which signify progressive folding collapse. The area under the curve is an energy absorbed during the loading.

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Moving towards developed and high income nation by 2020, the pace of industrialization in Malaysia has been increasing rapidly. On the other side of the spectrum, industrialization process that is not considering the sustainable development would significantly increase the risk to safety, health and environment. Therefore, Cleaner Production (CP) provides an assessment of production process that aim to reduce the impact to safety, health and environment as well as increase the productivity of the company. This paper aims to investigate the carbon dioxides emission from the chicken slaughtering industry by focusing into five entities namely fuel consumption, electricity consumption, water consumption, wastewater generation and solid waste generation. The methodology used to achieve the objective are direct observation, reviewing relevant documents and on site measurement. It is found that among the five entities, the highest contribution of carbon dioxide emission is from the electricity consumption. CP options were suggested to the company to reduce the electricity consumption and subjected to the feasibility study in the future.

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This paper outlines the requirement for a successful measurement of an equipment named Mass Properties Measurement System (MPMS) which capable to calculate the center of gravity (CG), moment of inertia (MOI) and Product of Inertia (POI) of a satellite. POI-1000M is the model type for this equipment which can measure a specimen from 10 kilogram and up to 1 ton in weight. Go through a factory acceptance test (FAT) is compulsory before receiving a machine, which has been done earlier in Connecticut, USA. Then, National Space Agency (ANGKASA) which acts as a Malaysian Government Agency has to experience through an Acceptance Test Procedure (ATP) to compare on the performance review with FAT. This ATP was conducted on determining the requirements of a specification or contract are met or not by conducting test which is commonly applied for engineering and its various sub disciplines. The ATP was done in ANGKASA headquarters located in Banting, Selangor and have been witnessed by a Malaysian Research Institute; SIRIM Berhad, local and international contractors as well as the principal of the equipment itself. The ATP may involve chemical tests, physical tests, or performance tests by comparing the results with FAT. Both environmental condition and steady equipment preparations gave big influence for having optimum reading. POI-1000M Rotary table, deadweights and a compressor are the main components assisted by a control system used by operators to calculate the desired measurements during the ATP. By comparing both the ATP and FAT results, it has been confirmed that the equipment is successfully approved and satisfied on its performance.

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In this paper, a comparative study of Electrical Discharge Machining (EDM) on Reaction Bonded Silicon Carbide (RB-SiC) by using different types of surfactants and additives powder has been carried out. The EDM oil type Low Smell (LS) used in the experiment was mixed with different surfactants namely Span 20, Span 80, Span 83 and Span 85. Additives powder that were used to verify the machining performance are Carbon Nanofiber (CNF), Carbon Nano Powder (CNP) and Carbon Powder (CP). These powders are different in terms of size and shape. In this study, the change of material removal rate (MRR), electrode wear ratio (EWR), surface roughness and spark gap was investigated. The result shows that the surfactant and additives added dielectric fluid not only improves MRR and spark gap, but also reduces the EWR. The addition of surfactant might prevent the agglomeration of powders, and caused the powders dispersed well in the dielectric fluid. Therefore, electro discharge frequency will be increased, leading to a higher MRR and spark gap. However, the improvement of surface finish is not significant after addition of surfactant. For comparison, combination of surfactant Span 80 and CNF is more significant in improving machining efficiency of RB-SiC compared to the others type of surfactant and additives.

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