Volume 36 (01) January 2024

When an earthquake occurs in a neighboring country close to Malaysia, such as Indonesia, the tremor can be felt by Malaysians, especially states located along the Straits of Malacca. The epicenter of an active earthquake in the Indian Ocean near northwestern Sumatra, Indonesia triggered a tsunami in December 2004 that hit Penang Island and killed dozens of people and caused minor property damage especially the transportation system. A Quantum Geographic Information System (QGIS), Open Street Maps (OSM), Online Questionnaire Survey, and Literature Review were used to evaluate the preliminary traffic resilience in Penang Island. The presence of fault lines and traffic networks from the secondary data were identified and integrated using GGIS and OSM. The contour results showed that the red zone (most affected) and yellow zone (less affected) were mostly located in the northeast district and the upper half in the southwest district while only a small part was covered with the green zone (not affected) in the southwest district of Penang Island. The factors influencing humans in responding during an earthquake were panic and fear from the point of view of history and general knowledge, as well as announcements and evacuations by the government as the highest votes by online questionnaire survey. Preliminary, the traffic networks with higher probability being affected in the events of earthquake are identified so that further study for the traffic resilience can be carried out.

Keywords : Traffic resilience; Earthquake; Penang; QGIS, Human factors

Recently, there has been a lot of research in the concrete industry on a sustainable approach using concrete waste as a substitute for natural aggregates. The reason for this is that the quantities of construction and demolition waste generated today pose a significant threat to the environment but can be used as a useful concrete material in the construction industry. The aim of this study is therefore to investigate the mechanical behaviour of solid concrete wall panels containing recycled concrete aggregates as a partial substitute for natural fine aggregates. Mortar cubes and wall panels with dimensions of 50 mm x 50 mm x 50 mm and 1000 mm x 300 mm x 75 mm, respectively, were produced. The wall panels were made from a 1:4 concrete mix consisting of 50% recycled concrete and 5% perlite (to reduce the weight of the concrete, and improve its workability), and 1% superplastizer, while the control wall was made with 100% natural fines. The wall panels were subjected to a compression test under uniformly distributed load. The cube samples were tested at 28 days of age. Mortar cubes with RCA achieved the highest compressive strength of 16.27 MPa compared to the control sample. The control wall panel has a higher ultimate load of 147.51 kN compared to the sample that contains RCA and perlite, which has an ultimate load of 128.68 kN. By 2030, our country needs to achieve sustainable management and efficient use of natural resources. By recycling this solid waste through separating, cleaning and crushing the concrete waste into small particles so that it can be used as a building material to replace sand. This shows that recycled concrete aggregate can be a potential material for making wall panels.

Keywords: Mortar; Recycled concrete aggregate; Wall panel; Slenderness ratio; Perlite

Defects damage in concrete structures are an important measure of structural integrity and serviceability. In the context of investigating the condition of concrete surface that has defects, a visual inspection is usually performed. However, this method is subjective, tedious, time-consuming, and complicated, requiring access to many components of a large project design. Therefore, a Machine Learning classifier for concrete surface defect classification using the Discriminant Analysis Classifier was introduced to more accurately extract the types of concrete surface defects information from the digital images. The aim of this research is to increase the efficiency of concrete surface defect analysis in terms of quality, time and cost. 200 images were collected, with 50 images for each concrete defect (crack, corrosion, spalling, and no defect) serving as control data. The Gray Level Co-Occurrence Matrix (GLCM) is used to create an image processing and feature extraction algorithm. This model is trained using 80% of the image data and tested using another 20% of the image data. Thus, the model achieved 95% accuracy on the training data and 70% on the test data when using Quadratic Discriminant Analysis. These findings is very important to help engineers or construction inspectors in inspection activities.

Keywords: Discriminant Analysis Classifier; Concrete Surface Defect; GLCM; damage; Visual inspection

An earthquake is classified as a natural disaster of mother nature. Sometimes, it cannot be predicted when it will occur and difficult to estimate the striking force values and the period of incident. The effect of the earthquake may catastrophic if the magnitude is more than 6 Richter. It had been proved by previous event, an earthquake could cause a huge impact towards the soil condition especially when the saturated soil is soft or loose since the propagation of shear wave and compression could induced the soil liquefaction and gave an effect towards excess pore pressure and effective stress of the soil that may affect the stability of infrastructure such as dam, embankment, and bridge. This study was conducted to analyse the horizontal displacement of soil due to earthquake and to evaluate the possibility of liquefaction at Chukai Sentral, Kemaman, Terengganu, Malaysia. The study was conducted using Plaxis-2D software based on Mohr-Coulomb soil model at magnitude of 5.4 Richter. The Mohr-Coulomb model was selected as its failure occurs when the shear stress acting on the soil reaches a critical value and the shear strength is related to the effective stress acting on it. The analysis was concentrated on the mesh deformation and horizontal displacement. The result shows the mesh deformation and horizontal displacement obtained in the boreholes not more than 6 mm. It is considered as a small deformation and will not trigger to the potential of liquefaction to that area. It can be concluded that the earthquake magnitude of 5.4 Richter is unable to disturb the natural resistance of the soil and structure due to their stiff layer proportion.

Keywords: Liquefaction; Plaxis 2D; Horizontal displacement

Urbanization, industrial wastes, non-point sources from agricultural activities, and various types of wastes within a landfill system have posed major threats to groundwater quality in Malaysia. One of the common contaminated groundwater remediation techniques is pump and treat system. This work was conducted to investigate the influence of extraction wells in pump and treat system to remove the contaminant by evaluating the capture zone under different arrangements and configurations of well in an unconfined aquifer system. A conceptual model was developed using PMWIN software at pre-determined soil characteristics and boundary conditions. In the numerical simulation, 17 models were simulated to examine the influence of pumping rate of wells, distance between two wells, wells orientation and the number of wells to the width of capture zone under four study cases. The results show that the width of the capture zone corresponded linearly to the increment of pumping rate. In the two and four wells system, the width of the capture zone was reduced when the extraction wells were aligned parallelly to the flow direction and the distance between wells were increased. However, the capture zone was extended when the well orientation was aligned perpendicular to the flow direction. The simulation results show that the drawdown in the wells was reduced when the number of wells has increased due to the distribution of total pumping rate into two or four wells system. The finding indicated that the arrangement of extraction wells in pump and treat system has a major impact on the capture zone induced by the wells. The simulation results can help to improve the effectiveness of extraction well in pump and treat system by optimizing the extraction process and thus minimize the cost of groundwater remediation.

Keywords: Groundwater contamination; pump and treat system; extraction wells; capture zone

Ultrasonic horn plays a vital role in achieving vibration amplitude at tool end (VATE) by enhancing output displacement of piezoelectric ultrasonic transducer suitable for efficient machining of advanced composites. Higher vibration amplitude enhances ultrasonic machining quality, surface integrity and dimensional accuracy of Nomex honeycomb composite (NHC) while reducing cutting forces. Furthermore, low stress concentrations allow ultrasonic tool to have more safety factor and longevity. Ultrasonic horn is designed to enhance displacement amplitude of piezoelectric ultrasonic transducer and get optimum VATE while keeping stresses in acceptable limits to avoid failure at very high operating frequency of ultrasonic machining system. In this research, variety of standard ultrasonic horns (SUH) were designed with same length and end diameters; and were tested under similar operating conditions, using finite element method. The ultrasonic actuation of the horn exploits the first axial mode of horn vibration. Harmonic response analysis was carried out to determine axial modal frequencies (AMF), VATE, stresses, and factor of safety for performance evaluation. VATE attained by step horn was found to be greatest among all other SUHs for frequency ratio greater than one, but may be prone to early failure due to high stress concentrations. VATE achieved by third order Bezier, Gaussian, exponential, catenoidal, conical and second order Bezier horns were found less than that of step horn by 11.7 %, 16.6 %, 16.7 %, 17 %, 16.73 % and 18 % respectively. However, 44.2 %, 43.43 %, 42.5 %, 43.5 %, 42.8 % and 37.67 % reduction of stresses was achieved by Gaussian, exponential, catenoidal, conical, second and third order Bezier horns respectively. Outcomes of present work would be beneficial for designers, researchers, scientists, and manufacturers of ultrasonic machine tool to select appropriate SUH designs according to requirements.

Keywords: Finite Element Analysis (FEA); Nomex Honeycomb Composite (NHC); stresses; Standard Ultrasonic Horn (SUH); Vibration Amplitude at Tool End (VATE).

The contamination created by the discharge of sago waste, a by-product of sago milling activities, must be addressed. Using sago waste, specifically sago fine waste (SFW), as a partial cement replacement can be environmentally responsible with a cost-effective choice. The effect of adding sago waste to cement brick characteristics was explored in this study. SFW was utilised to make five brick mixes with partial cement replacement percentages of 0%, 1%, 2%, 3%, 4%, and 5%. The mortar mix has a 1:3 ratio, consistent with Malaysian brick production regulations. All specimens had a water-cement ratio of 0.6 and had been cured for 7, 28, and 56 days for compressive strength tests and density, while water absorption tests were performed on the specimens at cured 28 days. As a result, SFW2 produces the greatest results compared to control bricks, where the compressive strength is 15.8MPa and density is 2157kg/m3 . SFW generally decreased the strength of the brick. However, it was discovered that replacing a maximum of 5% SFW can be used for load-bearing internal wall class 1 because the strength is more than 7 MPa, according to MS 1933: Part 1: 2007. Therefore, This proves the potential of SFW as a new pozzolanic material that can produce more sustainable bricks.

Keywords: Cement brick; Partial cement replacement; Sago fine waste; Brick strength; Pozzolanic material

Climate change increases the threat of erosion and flooding along coastlines around the world. Engineering technologies are response to protecting coastal communities and related infrastructure becoming increasingly unsustainable in economic and ecological contexts. This issue has led proposal to restore natural habitats, such as sand shoals, saltwater swamp areas, mangroves, seaweed, coral reefs, and shellfish, to provide coastal protection in lieu of or to complement artificial structures. Often coastal management is faced with eroded coastal problems which require decision on the most suitable mitigation option to implement. In this short review article, the application of eco-engineering in nature-based coastal defense is discussed. The obstacle in taking on the naturebased coastal defences is because of the rigorous assessment of their effectiveness compared to artificial protection structures. The assessment of the latest evidence for the effectiveness of nature-based beach protection versus artificial beach protection and future research needs are discussed in this review. Future projects should evaluate the habitat created or restored for coastal defence for its cost-effectiveness compared to artificial structures under the same environmental conditions. A cost-benefit analysis should consider all ecosystem services provided by nature-based or artificial structures in addition to coastal protection. Research among scientists, coastal managers, and engineers are needed to facilitate the experiments needed to test the value of this coastal protection scheme and to support its use as an alternative to artificial structures. This research is urgently needed because the rapidly changing climate requires new and innovative solutions to reduce the vulnerability of coastal communities.

Keywords : Coast protection; climate change; restoration, artificial structure, natural habitat

The objective of this study is to analyze the influence of smog on polymer and ceramic insulators, which can lead to flashovers in the distribution network. An experimental chamber was designed to conduct an aging test on the insulators, where in the chamber was subjected to five different types of artificial environments, including rain, temperature, smog, and dust. The chamber was set to replicate the environmental conditions of a smoggy region based on the last five years data for all environmental factors, such as rain, temperature, humidity, smog, and dust. The accelerated aging test was conducted on 11KV-rated polymer and ceramic insulators. The polymer insulator developed contamination of 0.09 gm, while the ceramic insulator showed contamination of 0.13 gm. Furthermore, a leakage current test was performed on the aged insulators, which resulted in 37uA on the polymer insulator and 201uA on the ceramic insulator. The findings suggest that ceramic insulators are more susceptible to the adverse effects of a smoggy environment compared to polymer insulators. Thus, replacing ceramic insulators with polymer insulators in the distribution network not only reduce losses due to the leakage current but it also improve the cost of installation of new distribution networks that can improve the network’s reliability.

Keywords: Distribution system; polymer insulator; power loss

Mathematical model was used to predict the performance of membrane process. In this study, an updatedmathematical model has been developed to study the forward osmosis (FO) and pressure-retarded osmosis (PRO) processes. This model has been advanced by taking into consideration the reflection coefficient, internal and external concentration polarizations, and structural membrane parameters, as well as the equations of applied pressure and mass transport for feed and draw solutions together. The model was validated through prediction of the water and salt fluxes using the membrane performance data published in other articles. The estimated values of the reflection coefficient ranged from 0.868 to 0.9 for FO and 0.9 to 0.95 for PRO. For this reason, it is not possible to consider the reflection coefficient to be equal to one as normally assumed in membrane modeling study. Other findings have showed that the varying salt fluxes at different concentrations and cross-flow velocities adversely impacted the FO and PRO modules. Internal and external concentration polarizations have been studied and compared with their effect on the effectiveness of the FO/PRO process. The model has demonstrated its ability to predict flux in the PRO greater than FO because of the model primary reliance on the applied pressure to drive the osmotic process. The ratio of must be effectively managed to correspond with operating limits and the value must also be kept to a minimum in order to avert the drastical drop in the flux, the fouling, and the membrane damage.

Keywords: Pressure-retarded osmosis; forward osmosis; reflection coefficient; concentration polarization; mathematical model; specific salt flux ratio.

Polylactic acid (PLA), is a thermoplastic polyester that has many uses in both consumer goods and industrial settings. The mechanical characteristics of PLA specimens created using Fused deposition modeling (FDM), a cost-effective 3D printing process, including tensile strength, shore hardness, and dimensional precision, have been studied for use in specialised engineering applications. Layer height, infill density, and printing speed are the choices made for the specimen’s 3D printing. Design of experiments use Taguchi’s L9 orthogonal array. Using analysis of variance (ANOVA), designers can determine the relative importance and percentage contribution of each process parameter to each answer. Using Taguchi method while conducting test for individual responses result shows that for tensile strength printing speed is 70 mm/s, layer height 0.2mm and 40% infill density as optimum parameters while for the hardness it is 60 mm/s,0.3mm and 40%, and for the dimensional deviation found 60 mm,0.2 mm, 40% respectively. Proposed TGRA method found optimum parameter for all the responses in single test as printing speed is 70 mm/s, layer height 0.3 mm and 40% infill density also validated by conducting confirmation test. Finally, a superior specimen with all-around mechanical characteristics is fabricated using Taguchi based grey relational analysis (TGRA) as a multi-objective optimization technique.

Keywords: FDM; PLA; TGRA; ANOVA

The recent advancement in manufacturing technology in the automotive and aerospace sectors has led to the invention of advanced structured material, which is lightweight and a complex geometry model that can be manufactured. As it is related to human safety and hazards, the need for uncertainty analysis in a structure before and after a manufacturing process is a primary concern. Thus, this paper analyzes the uncertainty parameters of a meshed finite element model in the geometry, boundary condition, load, and material properties. An uncertainty analysis numerical tool, the fuzzy analysis method, is applied in Excel-VBA as the simulation platform. Each uncertainty parameter is in a range of numbers, with a maximum and minimum value as the limit. The α-cuts determine the fuzzy analysis output on the membership function. The deterministic value of the variable is implemented for comparison purposes. The simulation result for the von-Mises stress analysis has significantly impacted the uncertainty analysis as its curve has surpassed the yield strength limit of the material. The simulation output for the displacement has a more considerable uncertainty dispersion when compared to the other results. This study helps to find a better security margin of a structure for its sustainability in the future.

Keywords: α-cut; finite element method; fuzzy analysis; structural integrity; uncertainty

Radicalism among undergraduates in a higher learning institution (is an HLI’s) thing that is already synonymous in most countries, especially in developing nations. The radicalism brought about by the student movement is not triggered, but it is often influenced by the issue of statehood, which is a factor in social change and the formation of community values. However, the involvement of students in higher learning institutions (HLI’s) in Malaysia is now not as intense and aggressive as in the foreign context. Based on scientific studies, student participation in Malaysia lack awareness and concern about the current political issues and problems around them. The enforcement of the University College University Act (AUKU) 1971 in Malaysia, which prohibits students from engaging in politics for five decades, has caused some passivity and paralysis in the students’ interest in political activities. Therefore, this study’s main objective is to develop a resilience model in preventing radicalism in a more student-friendly scenario that does not constrain students’ rights in Malaysia, like the Universities and University Colleges Act (AUKU), by benchmarking the good practices in Indonesia’s Higher Learning Institution (HLI’s) using the Altbach’s theoretical framework. Thus, questionnaires were conducted among students in three HLI’s – UTM, UKM and UM to understand students’ perception of AUKU from the technical and social sciences backgrounds. The study found that students’ perception of the AUKU enforcement model was poorly satisfactory and required a review, as universities function not as controlled factories but as generators of knowledge for producing great and intellectual national leaders regardless of their calibre and performance.

Keywords: AUKU; radicalism; HLI’s; student’s rights

This study presents a deep learning-based solution for audio-visual speech recognition of Bosnian digits. The task posed a challenge due to the lack of an appropriate Bosnian language dataset, and this study outlines the approach to building a new dataset. The proposed solution includes two components: visual speech recognition, which involves lip reading, and audio speech recognition. For visual speech recognition, a combined CNN-RNN architecture was utilised, consisting of two CNN variants namely Google Net and ResNet-50. These architectures were compared based on their performance, with ResNet-50 achieving 72% accuracy and Google Net achieving 63% accuracy. The RNN component used LSTM. For audio speech recognition, FFT is applied to obtain spectrograms from the input speech signal, which are then classified using a CNN architecture. This component achieved an accuracy of 100%. The dataset was split into three parts namely for training, validation, and testing purposes such that 80%, 10% and 10% of data is allocated to each part, respectively. Furthermore, the predictions from the visual and audio models were combined that yielded 100% accuracy based on the developed dataset. The findings from this study demonstrate that deep learning-based methods show promising results for audio-visual speech recognition of Bosnian digits, despite the challenge of limited Bosnian language datasets.

Keywords: Audio-visual speech recognition; deep learning; convolutional neural networks (CNN); recurrent neural networks (RNN); lip reading; Bosnian language

“Slurry infiltrated fibrous concrete” refers to a contemporary, high performing fiber-reinforced concrete and infiltrated with a specially designed fiber bed, cement-based slurry. The material has excellent mechanical properties along with high durability and ductility. The SIFCON Laboratory’s research revealed SIFCON to be a unique building material with improved abilities to absorb energy and resist impact, as well as greater ductility and strength. With all these qualities, SIFCON can repair and fortify both reinforced and unreinforced concrete structures. Ductility is currently one of concrete’s most critical characteristics. The issue of brittleness with concrete has been solved by utilizing a high volume of fibers instead of coarse aggregate, which provides stress-resistant properties and increases the ductility of the structural component. However, due to the placement and mixing challenges because of the high volume of fibers’ interlocking action, there is a necessity to design unique production techniques. Since SIFCON compounds are a novel trend in the fields of areas of civil engineering that have a catalytic effect, it is necessary to highlight the few studies that included it so this review paper discusses and presents the behavior of SIFCON under various external loads. The focus is on the effects of the SIFCON mortar type—which substitutes silica fume and/or fly ash for cement—and fiber type—which uses hooked end fiber and micro steel fiber— are the main topic of discussion. The mechanical characteristics and optimal percentages are also reviewed. All previous studies are noted and summaries are made in comprehensive tables, which display the studied parameters and SIFCON mortar mix ratios. In addition to indicating research gaps, for example, future work in this field needs to focus on developing a detailed analytical model that requires the ability to calculate these factors. A better understanding of the SIFCON’s features can serve as a theoretical foundation for future research projects and engineering applications for creating concrete materials for the construction industry.

Keywords: SIFCON; hybrid concrete; splitting tensile strength; compressive strength; strengthening of concrete

Floods are one of the most occurring disasters in the world. Pakistan gets affected by flooding due to its diverse geography and has to lose several lives of people every year. The main objective of this study was to carry out modeling of riverine flooding using HEC-RAS program to estimate the safe channel capacity of the project reach and identify the vulnerable areas along the project reach for different flooding scenarios. A 9.21 Km long reach of Badri Khawar river, a right bank tributary of Indus River in KPK province has been taken as a case study. Based on the available data, one dimensional steady flow analysis in HEC-RAS has been carried out for different flooding scenarios. By analyzing the simulated results, the safe channel capacity of the study reach was found to be in the range of 125m3/s to 100m3/s from upstream to downstream. Based on the extent of flooding in different scenarios, vulnerable areas have been delineated on a flood map devised by the help of Google Earth. There is more inundation at the left overbank as compared to the right overbank. For the worst-case scenario, the maximum estimated flood extension on left bank side was about 425m while on the right bank side it was 204m. Based on the results of this research, it is suggested to enhance the existing flood protection measures along the project reach and improve the flood warning system and emergency evacuation mechanism in the vulnerable areas for long-term flood safety.

Keywords: Flood disaster; Badri River; Flood Modeling; riverine flooding; flood safety

The construction industry consumes around 55 percent of Pakistan’s annual energy and is the country’s most energy-intensive sector. It is, therefore, significant to devise a novel and effective model of green retrofitting of current buildings based on Building Information Modelling (BIM) which aims to reduce building energy consumption to effectively meet diversified climatic concerns and to promote sustainable structures. This research aims to reform the existing building by modifying the design parameters for an inefficient building envelope based on BIM simulation and data optimization results to optimize the overall energy consumption. BIM tools, such as Autodesk Revit and DesignBuilder have been used for the evaluation of the optimized energy-efficient design by comparing different design alternatives. After a detailed analysis, this research has concluded that the existing building is consuming a high amount of annual energy. With the help of BIM tools, which possess advanced algorithms for an effective optimization process, a list of ‘green’ solutions i.e., optimal designs has been generated, out of which the optimal and cost-effective design saved 46% of energy in total. In this study, the design variables selection has been fulfilled according to the local environmental sustainability.

Keywords: Green Retrofitting; Building Information Modelling (BIM); building energy analysis; data optimization; sustainability

The manufacture of concrete for constructing the structures like highways, bridges, and buildings requires large amounts of cement and aggregates. This high concrete production depletes natural resources like sand and gravel for the construction industry. It also negatively impacts the environment due to cement usage. This study looked at using waste materials like coal bottom ash (CBA) and fly ash (FA) in concrete as substitutes for some of the typical aggregates and cement. The goal was to reduce the environmental impact and preserve natural resources. The study made concrete with regular Portland cement, sand, 10mm coarse aggregate, locally available CBA, and FA. 15% fly ash was selected as an optimal level from initial testing. The CBA was used to replace 0-35% of the fine aggregate sand. Test cubes and cylinders were made with different mixes. Compressive strength, tensile strength, carbonation, and sulfate attack tests were done after curing. Results showed 25% CBA improved the concrete’s mechanical performance. The compressive and tensile strengths increased but not above conventional concrete. This is because CBA needs more moisture for full hydration over longer curing times. Also, the concrete’s durability improved in terms of resistance to carbonation and sulfate attack.

Keywords: Mechanical properties; Fly Ash (FA); durability properties; Coal Bottom Ash (CBA)

The researchers involved in the field of applied mathematics mostly project the efficient and viable solutions of those problems in which have practical applications in science and engineering. The Timoshenko beam model (TBM) is described by a system of ordinary differential equations where the expressions of rotation and displacement of the beam are ultimately required. Most of the work on analytical solutions of beam problems in literature focuses the elastic and Euler-Bernoulli beams, whereas for the TBM the numerical solutions are usually preferred. The analytical expressions for the TBM exist for only very basic load cases and are also not general for any load function. In this paper, we attempt to suggest a novel protocol based on expressing a load function by a polynomial or its power series development, and then use it to develop general analytical expressions for the rotation and displacement of a fixed TBM which is not load specific. The proposed general equations can provide ease of access and handling for the practitioners working in applied mathematics, structural engineering and mechanical vibrations as the developed equations can be used with only constant inputs to tailor particular expressions of rotation and displacement profiles of a fixed TBM under any variable load. For performance evaluations of the proposed general equations, we have also obtained particular expressions for some important variable loads, like: linearly varying loads ((LVLs): triangular and trapezoidal and quadratically varying loads (QVLs): parabolic/square and circular loads. Finally, the proposed protocol for generalization has been validated for fixed elastic beams under uniformly distributed loads (UDLs), and the results match exactly with those expressions available in literature. The contributions of this study, on one hand provide ready, direct and exact general expressions for the rotation and displacement profiles of a fixed TBM, while on the other hand the solution of such problem is achieved with quite negligible computational overhead, execution time and software implementations.

Keywords: Linearly varying loads; quadratically varying loads; Fixed Timoshenko Beam Model; general analytical expressions; rotation; deflection; variable load

Rapid computerization and stakeholder integration in the construction industry stressed the need for a new design methodology that was only possible through BIM. To address the inefficiency and limitations of conventional design flow that lead to design clashes, information loss, delays, and poor stakeholders’ coordination throughout the design phase, as well as the designer’s reluctance to use BIM-integrated software for design. This study aims to develop an integrated design flow using the Autodesk system followed by structural design through the developed flow. Further, the study also aims to identify and resolve design clashes between architectural and structural models and incorporate analysis results comparison of RSAP and ETABS. The results of the study revealed that BIM design flow provided better coordination between stakeholders, speedy clash detection, and resolved bi-directional interoperability issues using an extension (structural analysis toolkit). Furthermore, design through BIM provided better visualization i.e., both 2D and 3D, and final documentation in the shape of structural detailing of designed elements. Navisworks successfully identified coordinate and element clashes between architectural and structural models and provided a virtual 3D representation of the facility before the construction phase. The analysis results of RSAP and ETABS revealed that RSAP gives higher analysis results than ETABS due to the different analysis procedures of the two software packages thus yielding safer design.

Keywords: Building Information Modelling (BIM); Robot Structural Analysis Professional (RSAP); Structural analysis toolkit; Interoperability issues; Federated model; Parametric model; Clash detection

Reservoirs are normally formed by the construction of dams across rivers, but off-channel reservoirs may be provided by diversion structures and canals or pipelines that convey water from a river to natural or artificial depressions. The behaviour of the flow due to construction of dam leads to change in a fluvial process leads to deposition of sedimentation in reservoir. In this research, reservoir modelling has been carried out by using HEC-ResSim for Tarbela reservoir in Pakistan. In Pakistan, the Tarbela Reservoir is the largest reservoir on Indus River and it is the backbone of Pakistan’s agriculture sector and economy. The model was calibrated for year 2014 and validated for year 2020 in terms of outflow and power generation. The results show close comparison between simulated and observed outflow and power values for different scenarios. On the basis of 30-year histogram cycle, the future prediction of releases/outflows, power/energy generation in year 2035 has also been made. After 2035, Tarbela reservoir is expected to become the run-off the river type project due to decrease in the gross storage capacity. As per simulated results of the projected scenario (2035), the releases/outflows from reservoir and energy generation will increase in summer season by 7% and 36% respectively and decrease in winter season by 50% and 37% respectively. Further, the reduction in gross storage capacity due to sedimentation would result in the reduction of annual energy generation by 6.5% in year 2035.

Keywords: Reservoir Modelling; HEC-ResSim; sedimentation; Tarbela Reservoir; energy generation; projected scenario

This paper presents an investigation on the effect of excess air to combustion characteristics in a full-scale, gas turbine combustor, commonly used in power plant. The investigation was carried out using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), and prior validation was made with the actual operation data of a power station, as well as the adiabatic flame temperature of methane. The mass fraction of CO₂, O₂ and NO_x emissions for blended methane with different percentages of excess air explosions was also investigated. The stoichiometric excess air varies from 0% to 30% with air-fuel mixture of 2.7 kg/s. The geometric model of the combustor is extracted from actual gas turbine combustor using 3D scanner and converted into CAD model for simulation. The Navier-Stokes equations were solved using commercial CFD code, ANSYS Fluent, with RNG k-ε chosen to close the turbulence. For reacting species, the species transport model is assumed. Results showed that the addition of excess air during combustor has little effect on the velocity and temperature distribution, both at the combustor interior, as well as at the exit. For the emission of CO₂ and O₂, though there was no clear trend on the relations between the emission of these species and the excess air, the impact was quite significant. The production of NO_x was also found to be independent on the excess air ratio, but instead, was a strong function of combustion and exhaust gas temperature.

Keywords: CFD; methane; excess air; species transport; CO₂, O₂, NO_x

Most of leather tanneries in Pakistan dispose of tannery effluent untreated in sewage lines causing serious harmful environmental impact. Some of tanneries use conventional activated sludge process releasing large quantity of sludge and not effective for treating heavy metal in leather tanneries. The manuscript deals with implementation of electrocoagulation technology for removal of Cr and Pb from Leather tannery effluent, investigation of operating parameters current density, treatment time and pH on removal efficiency. Electrodes was made of Iron having dimension 9.5 cm x 0.6 cm x 0.4 cm and affective surface area of electrode was 76 cm². After conducting different experiments at various operating conditions, pH 3.5 and current density 18.8 milliamp/cm2 was found to be optimized condition for treating 1 liter of synthetic leather tannery effluent. The maximum removal efficiency of chromium and lead was obtained 87.8 % and 62.7 % respectively at pH 3.5 and current density of 18.8 milliamp/cm². The EDX analysis of sludge shows presence of chromium, lead and iron element in sludge and FTIR analysis shows the presence of hydroxyl functional group in sludge, it is strong evidence of iron polymer complexes formation with chromium and lead during treatment of synthetic leather tannery wastewater. Both of these analysis show strong evidence of effective electrocoagulation process. It was proved that electrocoagulation can effectively treat synthetic leather tannery effluent. The SEM analysis shows production of coagulant on surface of electrode.

Keywords: Electrocoagulation; current density; fourier transform infrared radiation spectroscopy; emission dispersive x-ray spectroscopy

The modern assemblies of various machines such as engines, gears trains, and body panels require a highly precise drilling operation. These precisely drilled holes not only ensure the efficiency by constrained motions of these machines’ parts but also ensure longer service life. Moreover, precision drilling shall also ensure no subsequent requirement of reaming resulting in time and cost-saving. The precise drilling operation cannot be achieved unless highly precise machinery (CNC) is being utilized requiring higher initial investment (Pkr 1000000), or highly skilled workers demanding about twice the labor than the semi-skilled person. Being a small-sized industry, for profitability, a low-cost solution was proposed in this current work. To obtain precise drilling operation by the application of a drilling jig (Pkr 3000) on the manual bench drill machine (Pkr 15000), by a semi-skilled worker. In this work, a drilling jig has been designed, fabricated, and analyzed. This jig also can rotate the workpiece in clockwise/counter-clockwise directions. The drilled holes measurements provided the evidence that under the spindle speeds of 340, 700, and 1000 rpm, the closer dimensional values (~0.1mm) can be obtained, resulting in the elimination of rework and extra cost, along with the setup-time reduction by eliminating marking and center punching process, with the application of jig. It was concluded that the jig is quite applicable and can be substituted with high-cost CNC machines as a low-cost solution to the local small and medium-scale manufacturing industries.

Keywords: Design and fabrication; drilling jig; low cost; precise hole location; waste/rework reduction

This paper presents the design of an adaptive active power controller to enhance the power-sharing capabilities of distributed generators (DGs) in an autonomous microgrid. Each DG in an autonomous microgrid consists of a droop-controlled inverter to control active and reactive power by regulating frequency and voltage correspondingly. The high droop gain can be used in the power controller to encourage faster power sharing among the DGs. However, high droop gain can cause undamped growing oscillations during load fluctuations or generation losses. During such events, attaining faster power-sharing between DGs using high droop gains is difficult. So, the problem with an autonomous microgrid is the conflict between faster power sharing and stability. Stability needs to be compromised to attain quicker power sharing and vice versa. Hence, to achieve power-sharing swiftly with high droop gain and to diminish the growing oscillations caused, this paper proposes a fuzzy logic-based adaptive active power controller (FLAPC). The proposed FLAPC is adaptive and easy to implement. It offers faster power sharing for different values of droop gains and step change in load. The FLAPC is developed in MATLAB 2018a/Simulink environment, and time domain simulations are performed to see the efficacy of the proposed controller. The results of time domain simulations are compared with a droop controller without any additional controller, conventional lead-lag power system stabilizer, and proposed controller for step change in load at different droop gains. The results show that the proposed controller enhances the power-sharing performance and also ameliorates the system’s stability by reducing the settling time and overshoot in active power responses of DGs.

Keywords: Power-sharing; stability; autonomous microgrid; power system stabilizer; fuzzy logic

Short-distance walking, alone or with additional modes, is efficient. Well-established public transport may increase the number of pedestrians since they prefer walking to work, travel, and shop because cities are connected by activities and locations. However, pedestrian-friendly paths and public transport in Malaysia have received little attention. Large-scale facilities like stadiums, movie theatres, and amusement parks are driving the need for pedestrian facilities. Thus, this study aims to examines the pedestrian characteristic at Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman, Kuala Lumpur. To discover significant elements, pedestrian behaviour on sidewalks at the indicated location was quantitatively investigated, taking into account general pedestrian characteristics that affect walking speed, such as age, gender, and trip companion. Using a video camera, pedestrian variables like age, gender, and trip companion were calculated for volume, speed, flow, density, and space during weekday and weekend peak hours. Extracted data were then analysed by using SPSS as a statistical software and the Highway Capacity Manual (HCM 2010) was used to classify pedestrian level of services (LOS). Age, gender, and companionship substantially determine the pedestrian flow and the study’s LOS for pedestrian characteristics ranges from D to E, indicating that Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman’s sidewalk relationship varies. This research strongly recommends a dedicated walkway to increase pedestrian space and improve services along Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman, Kuala Lumpur. This study will also serve as a guideline to the transport operator into improving the future of pedestrian walkway design facilities.

Keywords: Pedestrian Walkway; Level of Service(LOS); highway capacity manual; pedestrian characteristic; SPSS Software

The rise of the construction industry nowadays has a lot to do with the production of industrial waste. The needs of the construction industry whether for developing countries or developed countries is something that cannot be avoided. The main objectives were to find the main causes of construction waste generation, assess the level of awareness of 3R concepts and to evaluate the current approach used at the construction site in reducing construction waste. The study involves companies involved in the construction industry, namely architects, consultants and contractors. The research method used is a questionnaire to the construction industry. Results show that most respondents are aware of the benefits of 3R practices but most of them also do not practice the 3R due to lack of knowledge. The finding of this research is the construction waste can be reducing after practising the 3R.

Keywords: Construction waste; waste minimisation; 3R concepts; reduce; reuse; recycle

In the context of Industrialised Building Systems (IBS), precast concrete buildings are composed of multiple structural members that are interconnected through different techniques. The adoption of precast concrete wall panels has gained significant traction in contemporary construction methodologies. Nevertheless, the utilization of dapped connections specifically designed for non-load bearing applications in precast walls incorporating recycled concrete aggregate (RCA) remains largely unexplored and limited in practice. This research proposes a new wall-to-wall connection for precast wall panels to enhance the constructability of IBS for non-load bearing walls. The novel Cross Dapped (CD) design enables horizontal panel installation in confined areas with existing structural frames, while ensuring the connection’s strength as a non-load bearing wall to prevent failure. Uniformly distributed loads are applied until sample failure, recording compressive load patterns, deflection, stress-strain patterns, and crack patterns on the wall surface. The CD connection demonstrates applicability for precast wall-towall connections, improving IBS constructability with its innovative design and locking system. Overall, this research explores and proposes an efficient and structurally sound wall-to-wall connection design for precast wall panels of non-load bearing system, facilitating the adoption of IBS methods, and improving the overall quality and constructability of building systems.

Keywords: Dapped connection; industrialised building system; precast wall panel; recycled concrete aggregate; uniform distributed load

Since 2011, mental workload has been one of the top 10 causes of accidents in Malaysia, accounting for over a thousand fatalities yearly. Mental workload is defined as a comparable mediating variable to attention. The aim of this study is to identify the fundamental causes and influences that affect the difficulty of the road environment and vehicle task, as well as their impact on the driver’s health. In this study, subjective measurement is used to assess the level of mental workload of drivers which includes NASA-TLX and KSS on two different road environment condition namely urban and rural road environment. The findings show that the complexity of the road environment has a significant effect towards the mental workload of a driver. The average NASA-TLX score for urban roads is higher than the average score for rural roads while, the results for KSS level indicates higher drowsiness level among the drivers when driving on a rural road as opposed to an urban road. These results may serve as a guide for future research into the mental workloads of drivers in various types of complex road environments, as well as a practical guide for car manufacturers, agencies responsible for road safety, and researchers to improve the safety design of cars and consider external factors related to road environment complexity when designing roads.

Keywords: Subjective evaluation; mental workload; drivers; NASA-TLX; KSS

A sustainable end-of-life vehicle (ELV) management system requires a well-thought and well-designed process covering strategies, regulations, technologies, and future adaptive systems. Among others is the urgent need for feasible implementation of the integrated vehicle deregistration process, especially to kickstart the process for registered abandoned vehicles (approximately eight million units nationwide in 2018). In line with this aspiration, this study will explore the dynamics, rationale, and opportunity for public services to have a unified digitisation platform. This initiative will integrate networks of public (e.g., Ministry of Transport, Ministry of Housing and Local Government, Ministry of Environment and Water, Local councils, Road and Transportation Department, courts, Royal Malaysian Police), industry (e.g., authorised automotive treatment facilities (AATF), scrapyards) and other related parties. Those entities are critical to developing local ELV management system capacity to address current complex problems and achieve collective goals for the future automotive industry in Malaysia. Based on the Focus Group Discussion (FGD) outputs, literature survey, and relevant proposed frameworks, this study aims to enlighten policymakers on the necessity of having an integrated system in supporting various business, legal and administrative needs of the sustainable ELV Policy in Malaysia.

Keywords: End-of-life Vehicle (ELV); deregistration; public policy; digital transformation

The use of a virtual analysis approach to develop and modify vehicle sub-system is becoming popular nowadays as it is less time consuming, reduces the workmanship and overall testing cost compared to the experimental approach. In this paper, an actual virtual suspension system based on UiTM’s Perodua Eco Challenge (PEC) competition fullbody vehicle named SOLO was modelled using multi-body dynamic software, MSC/ADAMS Car. The virtual suspension system model was developed starting from identifying the components’ hard points, parameter setting, and joint type between the suspension components. The complete model was simulated using a static vertical parallel movement test with 30 mm as the selected bump travel movement. Following that, the values of kinematic and compliance of toe, camber and caster change were obtained. It was found that the front toe change was negative when subjected to wheel bound at 30mm (-0.3^o), while the trend is opposite with the rear toe change (0.2^o). Camber and caster change shows similar trends for both front and rear suspension system. Further analysis was then done to study the dynamic performance and suspension improvement after the virtual suspension system is verified.

Keywords: Virtual suspension system; static vertical test; kinematics and compliance; MSC/ADAMS car

Amidst the sustainability concerns of the industrial sector to fulfil the increase in customer demands, this study emphasizes on the characteristics of integrated inventory supply chains that is closely related to energy efficiency. Environmental and economic perspectives must be given equal consideration to ensure a competitive supply chain (SC). In response to global calls for sustainable energy and lower carbon emissions, the Malaysian government currently provides tax exemptions and allowances for the provision of green technology services and the acquisition of green technology assets. Furthermore, as sources of electricity are highly variable, efficient SC activities can feasibly minimise the cost of energy. Therefore, multiple studies have integrated the green concepts in SCs to develop energy efficient integrated inventory SC models. This present review examined 42 articles that assessed the environmental impact of integrated inventory SC models with a focus on energy efficiency and energy-related issues. A systematic literature review (SLR) was conducted to identify gaps in the existing literature and offer directions for future studies. The articles were categorised according to the SC dimensions of an integrated inventory model; such as categories of SC participants, structures, processes, and decision-making variables. Of the reviewed articles, only 35% examined energy efficiency or energy-related issues in integrated inventory models. Therefore, future studies should examine the energy efficiency or energy-related issues that integrated inventory SCs face.

Keywords: Integrated inventory model; supply chain; energy; review

Plantation of palm oil in Malaysia is one of the top contributor of the economy. In order to match the supply of palm oil fruit with demand, different harvesting methods are used such as the existing motorized cutter. Although it can reduce the harvesting time and the number of labors involved in harvesting process, the tight arrangement of oil palm fronds and long manually adjusted harvesting pole may cause the inconvenient to the labors. Therefore, this project studies the design of a circular cutter and automatically adjusted telescopic pole with rotational mechanism. The concept development of harvester is based on the scientific study on the limitations, customer requirement and engineering characteristics of existing harvesters. It is followed with the selection of best design of harvester that can solve the problems that faced by labors in existing harvester. The analysis of rotational speed, deflection and bending moment for different components in the palm oil harvester. The design of harvester is done with the aid of CAD software in form of part detail design, orthographic view and exploded view. With the rotational cutting mechanism, the harvester can easily reach and harvest the oil palm fresh fruit bunches from the bottom of the bunches.

Keywords: palm oil; harvesting process; circular cutter; rotation mechanism; fresh fruit bunches

The assessment and monitoring of battery health is very crucial for the maintenance and safety of battery-powered applications such as Electric vehicles (EVs). To conduct appropriate battery operation in EVs, the battery capacity should be estimated accurately. In this regard, the State of health (SOH) estimation is conducted for evaluating the battery aging status. This work proposes a hybrid backpropagation neural network (BPNN) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) technique for SOH estimation. A multi-feature input data framework is constructed with 31-dimensional features for the model training by using 4 battery datasets from NASA i.e. B5, B6, B7 and B18. The acquisition of the data samples has been performed with a systematic sampling technique. The presented work is conducted with a training testing ratio of 70:30 and validated with the MIT Stanford battery dataset. The experimental outcomes demonstrated high SOH estimation accuracy compared with the conventional BPNN model. In the case of battery B5, it was observed that RMSE, MSE and MAPE for the BPNN-PSO model are 0.6791, 0.0046, 0.3203 compared with the conventional BPNN model i.e. 0.8796, 0.0077, 0.4881 respectively. Furthermore, the significance of capacity regeneration in B7 and B18 results in high-performance metrics compared with other battery datasets. The research conducted would be beneficial to estimate the battery status regarding battery health i.e. SOH accurately in Battery System Management (BMS) based EV application.

Keywords: Lithium-ion battery; state of health; back propagation neural network; particle swarm optimization; electric vehicles

The automotive remanufacturing industry is the largest remanufacturing sector, accounting for around two-thirds of global remanufacturing activities. Engine parts are a common target for remanufacturing due to their high value and demand. With the introduction of the National Automotive Policy (NAP) 2020 in Malaysia, many small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) are progressively taking part in the remanufacturing industry, especially engine remanufacturing. However, since the remanufacturing process is more complex than the primary production of the same products, challenges partaking in the operations and processes of remanufacturing are common in the industries, especially for independent remanufacturers. There still lacks data that shows the process flows of these engine-remanufactured products being conducted locally. In this study, a qualitative interview has been conducted through focus group discussion (FGD) with the SMEs to determine the processes and practices for automotive remanufacturing, thereby identifying key components of engine remanufacturing. Four different category questions, accompanied by several sub-questions to determine the processes and methods in their aspects of automotive remanufacturing, have been asked. The findings show that engine remanufacturing is a series of intricate processes being done carefully and extensively, from the cleaning process to the final assembly testing for which varies heavily depending on the components and industries. While the remanufacturing processes across the independent remanufacturers are almost the same, findings also suggest there exist additional processes that can be applied to increase the lifespan of the products, such as additive remanufacturing techniques, that these independent remanufacturers know but do not apply to their processes due to the cost and economics of the business. Further research exploring case studies of these independent remanufacturers is recommended to ensure a more holistic and critical aspects of engine remanufacturing to be captured.

Keywords: Automotive; engine; remanufacturing; independent remanufacturer; Malaysia

Borderless world is transforming construction professionals on how to communicate and work across the globe. Many missed communication and different work culture could result in many variation orders and time wastage in construction. This paper looks to discuss the mixed research methodology results on how to administer architect, engineer and contractor (AEC) professionals’ cross-work culture productivity during building deployment. 34 participants were selected for semi-structured interviews and participatory observations were conducted in two multidisciplinary teams of architect, engineer, and contractor from the United Kingdom (UK) and the Malaysia firms for six months. Then, SimVision® simulations were use as the Cognitive Organizational Theory (COT) protocols based on structural system and project dexterity parameters. Statistics corroborations were then conducted to obtain generalization and reliability. The case study results showed that the UK and the Malaysian team have similarities in operating nature of building deployment and differences in practice and value preferences when delivering a project, whilst model MMsRwB is the ideal for replicating UK’s project productivity efficiency. The findings could guide international construction professionals or teams from developed and developing countries to joint venture in their country successfully especially for Malaysian context. The paper would firstly discuss the literature, secondly describe the mixed method methodology and then present the expected result. The paper recommends future research on formalizing communication system for AEC professionals through integrating Malaysian AEC transdisciplinary global practice in a design studio education program.

Keywords: Sustainable design culture; cross-work culture; cultural knowledge; transdisciplinary practice; AEC