Now showing 1 - 10 of 59
  • Publication
    Prototype Design for Rubik’s Cube Solver
    Rubik’s cube is a modern day plastic material puzzle, where the one need to twist and turn to solve the multicolour squares. At the end, the puzzle need to be solved to make all the same colour cubes on the same surfaces. High intelligence is needed to solve it at a shorter time. Therefore, this research is to create a robot solver to solve the Rubik’s cube in short time smartly. Initially, the algorithm will scan the six surfaces of unsolved cube through a webcam and register the colours in the memory. Once it is completed, the solving algorithm will analyse and instruct the servo motors to twist and turn based on the computed solution. It is then pass it to the solving algorithm to identify the solving process and send the moving instruction to the motors by Raspberry Pi. The robot body was constructed using laser cutter. It is to make sure that the measurements are accurate and correct. To solve the cube, four servo motors with high efficiency were used to twist the cube in certain legit with the rules of the game. Another four servo motors are connected to the rack and pinion gears by clamping to hold the Rubik’s cube from falling when it is twisted. An improvised “Kociemba Algorithm”, also called as “The Two-Phase-Algorithm” is used. It reduced the required moves to solve the cube into a maximum of 25 moves and a minimum of 19. Conclusively, the final prototype discussed in this paper is tested with the solving algorithm. The results are presented.
  • Publication
    The behaviours of steel fiber as main reinfocement in high performance slurry infiltrated fiber reinforced concrete
    Concrete is a structure that very weak in tension and need additional material to enhance their structural capacity. In 18thcentury, concrete have been recognized as structure that very weak in tension [. Thus, concrete need additional supporting material that can improve the tension capacity. Because of the steel is very good in tension, the steel bar was embedded in concrete at the tensile stress area to obtain the full capacity of the steel bar as reinforcement.
  • Publication
    Mathematical Modelling Development of Sound Transmission Loss for Laminated Glass Using Response Surface Methodology
    The purpose of this study is to identify parameters that affect the rate of sound transmission loss. Mathematical model of sound transmission loss (STL) is developed for laminated glass and maximize the STL of laminated glass by using response surface methodology (RSM). The main objective of this study is to determine the type of material and number of interlayers for laminated glass on the STL performance. The two-load transfer function method (TFM) coupled with LMS Test Lab Acoustic software to determine the STL. The analysis was made by observing the performance of STL with respect to different materials used, such as glass and Perspex. Besides that, number of interlayers for laminated glass also had been studied for the performance of STL. Next, the RSM will be applied to develop mathematical modelling of STL for laminated glass. Optimization on the variable of laminated glass also has been conducted to obtain optimum variable of laminated glass in order to deliver optimum STL performance.
  • Publication
    Performance of concrete gravity dam with various height of dam based on static pushover analysis
    The study was related to the performance of the concrete gravity dam with a various height of dam based on static pushover analysis. Based on the concepts of nonlinear static pushover analysis, a lateral incremental load is applied to the dam body after exerting gravitational and hydrostatic loads. In a concrete gravity dam, inertia loads and hydrodynamic loads are the types of lateral loads generated in earthquakes. The four concrete dams of various height had been analyzed by using ABAQUS. For each model, there were 10 trials analysis of increasing lateral load until the dam reached its limit state. The four finite elements of the concrete gravity dam with various height will be designed. The various height of concrete gravity dam has been specified to 50m, 75m, 100m and 125m. The analysis had been run and the limit state of concrete gravity dam such as cracking will be determined. The magnitude of lateral pushover load will be increased consequently until the dam reached its limit state.
  • Publication
    Acoustical Analysis and Optimization for Micro-Perforated Panel Sound Absorber
    The main objective of this study is to maximize the rate of sound absorption by applying the parameters of micro-perforated plate (MPP) such as the holes diameter, holes spacing, thickness of MPP, and air cavity depth of MPP. In this study, an optimization algorithm – Firefly algorithm is adopted to determine an optimum set of four parameters for MPP. There are four pieces of MPP with different holes of diameter and spacing was used as specimens. The two-microphone impedance tube method was used to measure sound absorption coefficient (SAC) of MPP sound absorber according to ASTM E1050-12 standard. From the experiments, MPP C (hole diameter = 0.5 mm, hole spacing = 7 mm) for both air cavity depth (30 & 60 mm) score the highest SAC which is 1.00 while MPP B (hole diameter = 0.9 mm, hole spacing = 5 mm) obtain the lowest SAC for air cavity of 30 and 60 mm, which are 0.62 and 0.54 respectively. Then, the firefly algorithm is applied to obtain the optimal solution the set of parameters for MPP sound absorber to reduce the noise level. Hence, it is concluded that by increasing the air cavity depth, holes spacing, and decreasing holes diameter size can increase the rate of sound absorption for MPP. The optimal set of parameters obtained from this study for MPP sound absorber for air cavity, hole diameter and holes spacing are 30, 0.71 mm and 0.5 respectively.
  • Publication
    Characterization and Properties of PP/NBRv/Kenaf Fibre Composites with Silane Treatment
    ( 2021-01-01) ; ; ;
    Faridah W.
    ;
    Amirah A.S.N.
    ;
    Tan W.H.
    ;
    Othman N.S.
    The effect of kenaf fibre content and the silane treatment of PP/NBRv/kenaf composites were studied and fabricated via melt mixing at 180 ˚C for 9 min using 15 rpm motor speed. By using silane as a coupling agent for PP/NBRv/kenaf fibre composite, the mechanical and morphological properties have been improved compared to PP/NBRv/kenaf fibre composite without silane treatment. The composites were examined by using Universal Testing Machine (UTM) for tensile testing and Scanning Electron Microspcope (SEM) for morphological study. The tensile strentgh of PP/NBRv/kenaf with and without silane treatment decreased with increasing amount of kenaf filler content but increased in the Young’s Modulus. However, composites with silane treatment indicated better strength values than the composites without silane treatment. The morphology observations of composites have supported the tensile properties which indicated better interaction between the filler and matrix for treated composites.
  • Publication
    Potential of pretreated palm kernel shell on pyrolysis
    The impact of pretreatment on palm kernel shell (PKS) with torrefaction for the possibility of pyrolysis is discussed in this study. PKS samples were torrefied at different holding times of 30 and 60 minutes at temperatures of 200, 225, 250, 275, and 300 °C. In a fixed-bed reactor with a constant nitrogen flow rate of 500 ml/min, torrefaction pretreatment was carried out. The elemental composition, mass, and energy yield, as well as proximate analysis, were all performed on the pretreated PKS. The optimised pretreated PKS was pyrolyzed next at a temperature of 400 to 550 °C in a fixed-bed reactor. The outcomes demonstrated that the pretreated PKS had a significant mass and energy yield at a temperature of 250 °C and a holding time of 30 min. PKS's calorific value and carbon content both rose after pretreatment. However, the oxygen and moisture content decreased for pretreated PKS. The maximum bio-oil production of 58% was achieved during the pyrolysis of pretreated PKS at a temperature of 500 °C. At higher temperature of 550 ℃, the bio-oil decreased due to secondary cracking reaction. Consequently, the pretreated PKS has greater potential as effective feedstock for successive proses particularly pyrolysis for bio-oil production.
  • Publication
    Fabrication of polypropylene/acrylonitrile butadiene rubber/kenaf core composites: Effect of polypropylene maleic anhydride as compatibilizer
    The fabrication of polypropylene (PP)/acrylonitrile butadiene rubber (NBR)/kenaf core (KC) composites were investigated. Tensile and morphological properties of composites were evaluated with the addition of polypropylene maleic anhydride (PPMAH) as a compatibilizer Five compositions of PP/NBR/KC with varied NBR loading (0–60 phr) were prepared with the addition of constant PPMAH ratio at 5phr. All the materials were melts mixed using a heated two-roll mill at temperature 180 °C and speed of 50 rpm. PP/NBR/KC compounds were compressed into 1 mm thin sheet by using a hot press machine and cut into a dumbbell shape specimen. The tensile test was conducted according to ASTM D 638 using a Universal Testing Machine. The results indicated that tensile strength slightly decreased with increasing NBR loading. However, it is interesting to observe that PP/NBR/KC composites with PPMAH compatibilizer have better tensile strength. Almost 43% improvement resulted for PP/NBR/KC/PPMAH composites with ratio 70/30/10. From scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis, composites with PPMAH compatibilizer show good attachment of KC filler with PP/NBR matrices.
  • Publication
    Analysis of Vibration for Grass Trimmer
    Grass trimmer is identified as a type of machine which contributes high vibration level and can cause hand-arm vibration. Hand-arm vibration syndrome (HAVS) can cause musculoskeletal disorder, neurology and complex vascular. The risk of developing HAVS is depending on the magnitude of vibration transmitted to the tool handle, the duration of vibration exposure and the user sensitivity to HAVS. In this study, a prototype handle is designed to reduce the vibration level. Three rubber mounts were used as isolator in the experiment. There are three isolators was selected to measure the different acceleration between the specimen. In addition, the transmissibility of engine was selected to compare between the original and three different isolators but on transmissibility of handle was compared between three rubber mounts. Every isolator has different value of stiffness and damping. When stiffness and damping are decrease in value; the vibration level was decreases. However, decrement of stiffness and damping, the value of transmissibility were decreases. In addition, the dynamic behavior as natural frequency and mode shapes of free analysis was determined between the original handle and the prototype handle. According to the analysis, the local and global vibration were found in the vibration mode of the grass trimmer.
  • Publication
    Smart SMS- based appointment management system for hospitals in rural area
    Nowadays, many hospitals are seeking for smart managing their operations. Based on the discussion with a local private hospital in Penang, Malaysia, there are problems in managing the appointments of dialysis patients. The dialysis center staffs currently having manual management system, where the staffs will call the patients one by one to find out whether they are available to fill the empty slots for the dialysis for the day. It is indeed troublesome for the staffs and the patients. Patients at times are not ready for filling the slots even though they wanted the dialysis, may be due to last minute arrangement for timing and transports. Thus, there is a need to have a system which can manage the appointments for dialysis patients. The purpose of the research is to automate the existing manual appointment system by the help of computerized devices, and to develop a dialysis appointment management system which is user-friendly, simple, fast and cost - effective. The main function of the system is to make an appointment and to store patient details, which will be an easier retrieval for the attendants. The system will identify the empty slots available, and will contact the patients to check the availability. Based on the input from the patients through Short Messaging System (SMS), the appointment will be sorted. The administrators can login to the Smart Appointment Management System using an authorized username and password for viewing and making changes manually.