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The rapid energy consumption around the world has resulted in the shortage of fuel supply and overconsumption of the energy sources, thus worsening the environmental impacts. The overall energy consumption of residential and commercial buildings in the developed countries has reached between 20% and 40%. This figure has exceeded those in the industrial and transportation sectors. Growth in population, increasing demanding for building services and comfort levels and increasing time spent in the buildings indicate that energy demand will continue to increase in the future. For this reason, energy efficiency in buildings is the main goal for energy policies globally.

This paper discusses in detail on the behaviour of T-frame under specific loading obtained experimentally to investigate the deflection of the vehicle B-pillar. A series of T-frame were designed with inner diaphragm at various location in the sill member in order to investigate the effect of inner diaphragm and non-continuous closed hat section in the sill member. These two types of specimens were employed to show the effects of different types of sill member on the stiffness of the overall structure. The finite element analysis and experimental test were carried out on the in-plane bending. The experimental results were compared with the finite element analysis results to demonstrate the effectiveness of the inner diaphragm in the automotive B-pillar. Based on the results obtained from the experimental work, location of baffles for the specimens do not gives any major influences for in-plane bending case due to the shape and direction baffles are not suitable. From the results, the specimen with baffles located at the weld line is stiffer than the other specimens.

Compact high powered semiconductor chips require greater heat dissipation and more effective thermal cooling systems have to be devised such as incorporating vapor chambers and thermoelectric. As a first step, the performance of two conventional fin heat sinks with flat metal base and an array of cooling fins on top are determined under force and natural convection air cooling and with various heating power input. Fin temperatures and heat transfer coefficients were determined for different size heating elements producing different area aspect ratios. This paper reports on the effect of thermal heat spreading effect and determination of the thermal heat spreading resistance. Heat spreading and contact resistances are small compared to the thermal resistance of the FHS itself.

The procedure, by which the functional and physical elements of a product are arranged, is known as the product architecture. It highlights the interaction between parts of product. It is a phase where the function of a product is assigned to its physical. The role of product architecture in a product development is very vital since a comprehensive choice of the product architecture provides a good idea on how the functions are understood and how a standardization is achieved. In this regard, this paper presents the following: the product schematic, product cluster, product geometry, and fundamental and incidental product elements interactions of a grease trap design.

River pollution has been a global issue and the consequences of polluted rivers are significantly affecting human health and well-being. Meanwhile, water treatment plants (WTP) are often related to high energy cost. Nevertheless, there is an abundance of hydraulic energy stored in the flowing water, which can be converted into mechanical energy to operate the WTP. The focus of this paper is to describe an innovative method of harnessing buoyancy force to save the energy cost of commonly used motorized equipment in the conventional WTP. The benefit of this product is to create a green environment by utilizing a readily available hydraulic energy and restoring river water quality. This study has shown that a cost-saving water treatment plant operating based on buoyancy force is feasible. This product enables electricity cost to be minimized while treating river water at the same time.

River pollution has been a well-known worldwide issue and the impacts of polluted rivers are greatly affecting the health well-being of people worldwide. Meanwhile water treatment plants (WTP) have increasing energy cost. However, an abundance of hydraulic energy is stored in the flowing river water. The hydraulic energy can be harvested to be converted into mechanical energy to operate the WTP. This paper is focused on explaining an efficient and green method to harvest hydraulic energy to reduce the energy cost incurred by the usage of motorized equipment in conventional WTP. This product has dual purpose with dual benefit of restoring the quality of river water quality as well as harvesting readily available hydraulic energy to reduce energy cost.

Travel with long hours will create discomfort feeling for passenger especially express bus passenger. Long hour travel will create physiological stress on passenger. It may due to seat space limitation, noise, vibration, seat hardness as well as seat comfort. Seat comfort is a subjective feeling that related to psychological aspect of passenger. In this project, the bus passenger seat is integrated with air-based and gel-based material. In Malaysia, most of the express coaches are using polyurethane foam based cushion in the seat padding. This type of the seat padding may cause a bus passenger who sit for long journey will feel uncomfortable and fatigue. There are two main causes which lead to seating discomfort which is vibration and pressure distribution on the seat. The new design a bus passenger seat is using air-based cushion to improve the seating comfort. The air-based seat was validated by using MatLab SimuLINK software. In the model validation process, the parameters of air cell height gave effect on the pressure change rate of air cushion model. The comfortable level of the air cushion could be improved by reducing the pressure change rate and cell height.

This product is specially designed to solve the current typical river pollution by tackling the pollution at the river inlets' stage. It is equipped with all conventional water treatment technologies with innovative energy cost-saving technique using gravity and buoyancy forces. The product is functional in term of saving the environment, particularly river and its flora and fauna and in saving the energy that normally used in operating the motorized processing equipment as normally used in current product in the market. The free and readily available gravity and buoyancy forces of water are manipulated efficiently to save the energy cost.

Travel by air with long hours will create discomfort feeling for aircraft passenger especially economy class aircraft passenger. Long hour air travel will create physiological stress on aircraft passenger. It may due to seat space limitation, noise, vibration, cabin humidity as well as seat comfort. Seat comfort is a subjective feeling that related to psychological aspect of aircraft passenger. The current aircraft passenger seat is equipped with a passive function where the passenger themselves needs to adjust the seat for comfort seating position. The aircraft passenger will not able to adjust the seat when the aircraft passenger is in the low activity condition. The active seat support system was developed to support the aircraft passenger actively. The first prototype of active seat support system is focus on neck section. The head position of the aircraft seat was embedded with the system to detect the head position of the passenger. During the development of the active seat support system, total design technique was used. Five conceptual designs were generated for selection. To determine the final design of active neck support system, the matrix evaluation method was used. The weight of the concept was obtained through weight analysis.

The paper presents an integrated steering system design for bus drivers drowsy driving behaviour change. Busses involved in accidents due to drowsy driving is increasing nowadays and those accidents involved a lot of people due to the number of passengers it carries. In order to decrease the rate of accidents for bus driver due to drowsy driving, an integrated steering system that can change their driving behaviour is developed. The developed integrated steering system is then being validated through surveys conducted on drivers with valid driving licence. The survey results have shown that the integrated steering system is a feasible system to the drivers.

Current UTeMs fire fighting machine is developed to operate indoor only. It is not efficient when it is operating on rocky surfaces (outdoor) as it faces the problem of shock and vibration reduction. The track system of the machine cannot move smoothly because the rollers are fixed to the chassis. This paper describes the method of up-scaling and optimising the track system for the current fire fighting machine. The new track system concept is firstly developed by using Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) software. Subsequently a prototype is built to validate the functionality of the new track system which is more efficient in absorbing the vibration and shock. Analysis and optimisation of the prototype is performed using CAD method with the CATIA V5 R16 software.

The methods in delivering engineering design have gone through evolvement where the effectiveness of conventional methods is decreasing. However, the importance of concurrent engineering design approach has tremendously increased due to the ever competitive world today. This is the reason why engineering designers are concern about the methods of delivering design and one of the recent interests is using interactive system to deliver design. In this paper, the construction of interactive system will be discussed followed by the experimental setup. Experiments will be conducted in the form of performing few selected tasks with the interactive system and comparison will be made with the conventional design approach. Comparison will be done by collecting feedback through questionnaires from the participants who are involved in the experiments. Feedback will be analysed to identify the feasibility of interactive concurrent engineering design system.

A fin heat sink (FHS) is a thermal heat transfer device employed to dissipate heat from a high temperature heat source to a lower temperature surrounding. A typical FHS consists of a flat metal base with an array of cooling fins on top. A problem normally encountered in thermal management of electronic packages is thermal heat spreading resistance which occurs as heat flows by conduction from a high temperature heat source to a low temperature heat sink with different cross-sectional areas. As high powered semiconductor chips are made more compact and requiring greater heat dissipation, more effective cooling systems have to be devised. There are various methods employed to minimize this heat spreading resistance. These include increasing the thickness of the base of the FHS or height of the fins. Another method is to use more expensive highly conductive materials like aluminum, copper and diamond which would increase cost. A more economical alternative would be to combine a flat heat pipe (HP) sometimes termed a vapor chamber (VC) with a conventional FHS to increase effective thermal conductivity at the base. Thermoelectric (TE) is the direct conversion of temperature difference between the junctions of two dissimilar materials (thermocouple) to electricity. The converse is true. A voltage applied between the junctions of the thermocouple creates a temperature difference between them. This effect could be utilized as a heat pump to transfer heat from the cold junction to the hot junction. A dc voltage imposed across a thermoelectric (TE) module causes a temperature difference to be imposed across the surfaces of the resulting in one face to be at a temperature higher than the other face. Heat is absorbed from a heat source in contact with the cold surface and dissipated to a heat sink in contact with the hot surface. This paper presents the results of an investigation conducted to evaluate the performance of VCs and TEs for the thermal management of LEDs.

This paper presents the conceptual mechanical analysis of the all-terrain mobile robot (AMoBo). The locomotion concept for all-terrain mobile robot is based on six independent motorized wheels. The mobile robot has a steering wheel in the front and the rear, and two wheels arranged on a bogie on each side. The front wheel has a spring suspension to guarantee optimal ground contact of all wheels at any time. The steering of the vehicle is realized by synchronizing the steering of the front and rear wheels and the speed difference of the bogie wheels. A prototype AMoBo was designed and fabricated. The developed prototype is about 66 cm in length and 23 cm in height. Testing size results show that the prototype able to overcome obstacles of same height as its wheel diameter and can climb stairs with step height of over 10 cm. Finite element analysis was used to analyse and verify the strength of each critical part of AMoBo. The base plate appeared to be the critical part with the highest shear stress and the lowest safety factor. Kertas kerja ini membincangkan analisis mekanikal bagi robot mobil semua medan (AMoBo). Konsep gerak alih untuk robot mobil semua medan adalah berdasarkan kepada enam roda yang bermotor. Kenderaan tersebut mempunyai roda kemudi di bahagian hadapan dan belakang, dan dua roda yang diaturkan sebagai bogi di kedua-dua belah. Roda hadapan mempunyai suspensi pegas untuk memastikan sentuhan permukaan yang optimal di setiap roda pada sebarang masa. Kemudi kenderaan diselaraskan dengan kemudi hadapan dan belakang dan juga perbezaan kelajuan pada roda bogie. Prototaip telah direka bentuk dan dihasilkan. Kenderaan yang dibangunakan berukuran sekitar 66 cm panjang dan 23 cm tinggi. Keputusan saiz ujian menunjukkan bahawa ia berupaya mengatasi halangan yang mempunyai ketinggian yang sama dengan diameter rodanya dan mampu memanjat tangga yang mempunyai ketinggian yang melebihi 10 cm. Analisis elemen terhingga telah digunakan untuk menganalisis dan mengesahkan kekuatan setiap bahagian yang kritikal pada AMoBo. Pinggan dasar adalah bahagian kritikal yang mempunyai tegangan ricih yang paling tinggi dan nilai faktor keselamatan yang paling rendah.

The paper describes the development of the vehicle air-conditioning fault diagnosis system in automotive industries with expert system shell. The main aim of the research is to diagnose the problem of new vehicle air-conditioning system development process and select the most suitable solution to the problems. In the vehicle air-conditioning manufacturing industry, process can be very costly where an expert and experience personnel needed in certain circumstances. The expert of in the industry will retire or resign from time to time. When the expert is absent, their experience and knowledge is difficult to retrieve or lost forever. Expert system is a convenient method to replace expert. By replacing the expert with expert system, the accuracy of the processes will be increased compared to the conventional way. Therefore, the quality of product services that are produced will be finer and better. The inputs for the fault diagnosis are based on design data and experience of the engineer.

Product architecture is a method to translate the physical element of the functional requirement within the product system and describe the connection between these physical elements. Physical element will be interpreted through parts, component or subassemblies. Method of product architecture is an effective way in determined the conceptual design because it is not only considered the way of the product to be designed but it also focused on how the product will be made, used and even maintaining the product. This paper presents the methodology of the design and development of mini hydrogen cell for petrol powered internal combustion engine through the product architecture method. This method is applied based on the four stages of the product concept development process which is product element, product cluster, product geometry and the morphological chart. From this method, the best option of the concept is selected.

Companies worldwide are striving to reduce the costs of their products to impact their bottom line profitability. When it comes to improving profits, there are in two choices: sell more or cut the cost of what is currently being sold. Given the depressed economy of the last several years, the “sell more” option, in many cases, has been taken off the table. As a result, cost cutting is often the most effective path. One of the industrial challenges is to search for the shorten product development and lower manufacturing cost especially in the early stage of designing the product. Knowledge-based system is used to assist the industry when the expert is not available and to keep the expertise within the company. The application of knowledge-based system will enable the standardization and accuracy of the assembly process. For this purpose, a knowledge-based design for assemble system is developed to assist the industry to plan the assembly process of the vehicle seat.

This paper describes the development of Hole Recognition System (HRS) for Computer-Aided Process Planning (CAPP) using a neutral data format produced by CAD system. The geometrical data of holes is retrieved from STandard for the Exchange of Product model data (STEP). Rule-based algorithm is used during recognising process. Current implementation of feature recognition is limited to simple hole feat ures. Test results are presented to demonstrate the capabilities of the feature recognition algorithm.

Building air conditioning is a demanding trend nowadays. It gives maximum comfort working and leisure environment to the occupant as well as it reduces the indoor temperature. This project describes the use of an expert system shell to develop a fault diagnosis system for building chillers. For the building chiller, services and maintenances of the machine are heavily depending on human expertise, which is costly and critical. Hence, the main goal of the developed system is to diagnose the problems of building chillers. With the developed system, the diagnosis process for building chillers is standardized, precise and faster compared to the normal way. The developed system is useful for the inexperienced staff as a training module as well. The constraint values for this developed expert system are based on building chiller design data and expert’s experiences. A case study was also conducted to verify the capability of the developed system.

Nowadays, robots can be used for different applications and environment. The capabilities and specification of the robot will determine its usage. The large number of the robot in the market has made the selection of the suitable robot becoming difficult. This paper presents the development of knowledge-based system for robot selection using expert system shell. The aim of the work is to select the suitable industry robot for manufacturing industry. The selection criteria are based upon application, payload, maximum reach, number of axes, repeatability and mounting position. The system consists of several modules such as knowledge acquisition module, inference engine module and user interface module. The development system helps the industrial engineers to select the most appropriate robot for an application.

The development of new technology enables the comfort service becoming an important requirement in the air travel industry. Long haul air travel may cause different physiological and psychological discomfort of aircraft passenger. Most of the aircraft company treats the passenger comfort as a main priority for the user’s acceptance of their airline. In order to improve the aircraft passenger body comfort during long haul air travel, an adaptive body support system was developed and embedded in the economy class aircraft seat. In this paper, we describe the development of adaptive body support system.

The degradation of poly(3-hydroxybutyrate), P(3HB), was determined in two conditions namely, a non-aqueous condition of chloroform–methanol mixture in the presence of either one of the two following catalysts, 4-toluenesulphonic acid and imidazole, and secondly in an aqueous condition of increasing pH. From our study, a random chain scission of PHB occurred in the non-aqueous condition while the degradation of PHB in the presence of water occurred through surface hydrolysis with no change in the molecular weight. In the surface hydrolysis of the polymer, the rate was increased with higher pH values.

Technology has changed significantly over the years. As a result, consumer expectations, in terms of performance, have risen. In Western society, the comfort of products has developed into important issue. Air travels, especially long distance, expose passengers a number of factors that may cause both physiological and psychological discomfort. Passenger comfort is clearly a main factor in user's acceptance of transportation systems. In order to reduce the stress in air travel, an intelligent system is proposed to integrate into the aircraft passenger seat. The paper describes the development of smart neck support system that will improve the aircraft passenger comfort. We conducted experiments in the aircraft cabin simulator to validate smart neck support system. Surface electromyography is used to measure the sternocleidomastoid stress. The results showed that smart neck support system able to reduce sternocleidomastoid stress adaptively.

Today, air travel is popular as a way of transportation for different purpose such as business and tourism. The numbers of air travel passengers are increasing every year. At the same time the flight distance is increased because of better fuel efficiency and technology advancement of airplanes. Sitting is the most common activity during the flight. The US Department of Health advised the disable people to change their sitting posture frequently to relieve sitting pressures at least every 1 hour, and every 15 minutes for normal people. Decubitus is widely recognized as serious complication for a person with spinal cord injury. Motor paralyses affected a person’s ability to respond unconsciously to potential noxious stimuli. Decubitus affect the quality of life of spinal cord injury patient. For the spinal cord injury patient who travels with long haul flight, which is more than 5 hours, the decubitus risk will increase. The paper describes the development of an adaptive posture advisory system for spinal cord injury passengers. The aim of the system is to reduce the decubitus risk of the spinal cord injury patient during long haul flight.

This paper described a survey that was designed to examine the seat discomfort and travel time factors for Dutch truck driver seat to reduce discomfort. Truck drivers were at risk of body discomfort for long hours sitting, and experience significant discomfort at different body parts. For the truck seat questionnaire, 217 Dutch truck drivers completed self administered questionnaires. Statistical methods were applied to analyze the surveys. Body discomfort level after one hour and five hours were studied. The outcomes from the analytical results were important and required more attention to reduce the body discomfort for long hour sitting.

The paper describes the questionnaire study that was designed to unfold the relationship between different body back discomfort levels over time. One hundred and four anonymous self administered questionnaires were completed at Schipol International Airport, the Netherlands from October through November 2008. Long haul economy class aircraft passengers are at risk of uncomfortable for long hour sitting and experience significant uncomfortable at different body back parts such as arm, neck and lower leg.

In this paper, we present a new approach to facilitate test subjects to achieve a high level of presence in a long haul flight simulator. The approach not only addresses the likeness of the static infrastructure, but also highlights the importance of integrating the dynamic services, such as flight attendant service, flying simulation service, etc. with the static infrastructure to create a dynamic flight virtual environment for test subjects. The integration procedure is a time driven unified process. User experiment result shows that the approach helps test subjects to achieve a high level of flight presence in the flight simulator.

The paper presents an experimental study on precipitation of 6061-T6 aluminum alloy to determine the effects of artificial ageing on the effect of strength. The precipitation hardening usually undergoes a thermal treatment, which consists of a solution heat treatment (550°C for 1 hour), quenching (water, at room temperature) and artificial ageing. The experimental study is focused on artificial ageing upon which the temperature is varying between 175°C to 420°C at different period of time. The Vickers hardness test was carried out to evaluate the hardness before and after ageing. The optimum ageing time and temperature were also determined at the end of this experiment to obtain reductions in energy and total cost. The study leads to the conclusion that the optimum aged can be achieve within 175°C to 195°C with 2 to 6 hours of ageing time.Copyright © 2009 by ASME

Air travel is becoming increasingly more accessible to people both through the availability of cheap flights and because the airlines are now able to cater for individuals of all ages and disabilities. Air travels, especially for long haul, may cause both physiological and psychological discomfort to passenger. Passenger comfort is clearly a main factor in user’s acceptance of transportation systems. The paper presents an adaptive framework and user preference model for economy class aircraft passenger seat. The adaptive framework is based on the passenger’s current and target sitting comfort states to reduce the sitting discomfort. The system uses a seat feedback system to regulate the passenger sitting comfort. The user preference model is used for personalized seat service delivery systems.

Faktor persaingan dalam reka bentuk kejuruteraan automotif boleh dibahagi kepada empat kategori utama: kos, prestasi, keselamatan, dan penggunaan bahan api. Keempat–empat faktor ini ada kaitannya dengan berat kenderaan. Sekiranya kos dipertimbangkan, berat yang berlebihan merupakan satu pembaziran wang, tetapi, jika isipadu keseluruhan tidak dikurangkan, pengurangan berat kenderaan adalah lebih berkos tinggi. Kenderaan yang lebih ringan mempunyai penjimatan bahan api yang lebih baik dan melindungi alam sekitar. Tambahan pula, dalam meningkatkan keselamatan penumpang semasa perlanggaran, kenderaan ringan dapat mengurangkan beban maksimum yang terjadi semasa perlanggaran. Kertas ini membincangkan pengetahuan terhadap sikap struktur kerangka–T di bawah bebanan khas yang diperoleh melalui kaedah uji kaji bagi menyiasat pesongan pada kenderaan tiang–B atau struktur kerangka–T. Selain itu satu siri kerangka–T telah direka dengan diafragma dalaman di lokasi yang berlainan di dalam anggota ambang yang bertujuan untuk menyiasat tindak balas diafragma dalaman dan bahagian ambang yang bersambungan. Analisis unsur terhingga dan ujian eksperimen dijalankan ke atas pesongan dalam permukaan. Keputusan daripada kedua–dua kaedah ini dibanding dan dikaji. Kata kunci: Kerangka–T kenderaan, diafragma, bahagian ambang bersambungan, kaedah uji kaji, analisis unsur terhingga, pesongan dalam permukaan The competing factors in automotive engineering design may be divided into four main categories: cost, performance, safety, and fuel economy. All four are related by vehicle weight considerations. As far as cost is concerned, heavy vehicle weight is a waste of money, but, if overall volume is not to be reduced, reducing vehicle weight can be more expensive. Lighter vehicles have better fuel efficiency. Furthermore, in improving the safety of passengers in collision, it will be of benefit to decrease the load that occurs during the collision. The paper discusses the knowledge on the behaviour of T–frame structure under specific loading will be obtained by experimental methods in order to investigate the deflection of the vehicle B–pillar or T–frame structure. In addition, a series of Tframe structure as designed with inner diaphragms at various locations in the sill member in order to investigate the effect of inner diaphragm and continuous sill member. Finite element analysis and experimental test were carried out on the in–plane bending. The results from both methods are compared and examined. Key words: Vehicle T–frame, diaphragms, continuous sill member, experimental methods, finite element analysis, in–plane bending

In the modern world, computing is essential in all aspects of manufacturing activity. Computers have brought to life terms like artificial intelligence, and have played a critical role in reinvention of manufacturing industry. In continuing quest to decrease the interval time between conceptualization of a product, information technology has been fused with manufacturing practice. This paper describes the use of expert system shell to develop a rule-based expert for an auto wire bond machine fault diagnosis system for hi-tech semiconductor industry. The main aim of the expert fault diagnosis system is to diagnose the problem of auto wire bond machine. In semiconductor industry, production equipment and machine have depended heavily on the use of human expertise for maintenance and it is costly. Without an expert system, his/her experience is lost when human is unavailable. With the developed expert system, the diagnosis process for the auto wire bond machine is standardized and accuracy will be increased compared to the conventional way. Therefore, the quality of products that are produced will improve. The constrains values for the fault diagnosis are based on design data and experience of the engineer. The expert fault diagnosis system is to improve bonding quality by reducing the production yield loss.

Building energy audit examines the ways actual energy consumption is currently used in the facility, in the case of a completed and occupied building and identifies some alternatives to reduce current energy usage. Implementation of energy audit are practically used to analyze energy consumption pattern, monitoring on how the energy used varies with time in the building, how the system element interrelate, and study the effect of external environment towards building. In this case study, a preliminary energy audit is focusing on Air-Conditioning & Mechanical Ventilation (ACMV) system which reportedly consumed 40% of the total energy consumption in typical building. It is also the main system that provides comfortable and healthy environment for the occupants. The main purpose of this study is to evaluate the current ACMV system performance, energy optimization and identifying the energy waste on UTeM's academic building. To attain this, the preliminary data is collected and then analyzed. Based on the data, economic analysis will be determined before cost-saving methods are being proposed.

Boiler is a device used for generating the steam for power generation, process use or heating, and hot water for heating purposes. Steam boiler consists of the containing vessel and convection heating surfaces only, whereas a steam generator covers the whole unit, encompassing water wall tubes, super heaters, air heaters and economizers. The selection of the boiler is very important to the industry for conducting the operation system successfully. The selection criteria are based on rule based expert system and multi-criteria weighted average method. The developed system consists of Knowledge Acquisition Module, Boiler Selection Module, User Interface Module and Help Module. The system capable of selecting the suitable boiler based on criteria weighted. The main benefits from using the system is to reduce the complexity in the decision making for selecting the most appropriate boiler to palm oil process plant.

Indoor air flow distribution is important as it will affect the productivity of the occupants. Poor air flow distribution not only cause discomfort to the occupants but also influence their ability to conduct their activities. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the indoor air flow inside lecture rooms through CFD simulation approach. Two types of air-conditioning configuration system in lecture rooms have been selected for this study which includes the split unit and centralized system. The air flow distribution between these two systems are analyzed and compared. Physical measurement is conducted using a velocity meter for validation purpose. CFD simulation is developed by using ANSYS Fluent software. The results specifically the air velocity and temperature data are compared and validated. Based on the findings, design recommendation is proposed with the aim to improve on the current air flow distribution in the lecture rooms.

Air flow distribution is one of the important factors that will influence the bus passenger comfort during long haul travel. Poor air flow distribution not only cause discomfort to the bus passenger but also influence their travel mode as well. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the air flow performance of the bus air-conditioning system through CFD simulation approach. A 3D CAD model of air ducts was drawn and hence analysed by using CFD software, namely ANSYS Fluent, to determine the airflow rate for every outlets of the air-conditioning system. The simulated result was then validated with experimental data obtained from prototype model of air duct. Based on the findings, new design concepts is proposed with the aim to meet the industry requirement as well as to improve the bus passenger comfort during long haul travel.

The turning machining process is an important process in the manufacturing industry. It is important to select the right tool for the turning process so that the manufacturing cost will be decreased. The main objective of this research is to select the most suitable machine tools with respect to user input requirement. The selection criteria are based on rule based expert system and multi-criteria weighted average method. The developed system consists of Knowledge Acquisition Module, Machine Tool Selection Module, User Interface Module and Help Module. The system capable of selecting the most suitable machine along with its full specification and ranks the machines based on criteria weighted. The main benefits from using the system is to reduce the complexity in the decision making for selecting the most appropriate machine tools to suit one requirement in the turning process for manufacturing industry.

In the design world, complex parts are commonly used for both functional and ergonomics purposes. These parts are difficult to machine due to its irregular surface curvatures and the complex features. This paper presents the application of CAD/CAM in modelling, process planning and fabrication of a complex mechanical part called "landing gear connector fitting". The part is modelled using UniGraphics CAD/CAM system. The process planning is developed and tool path simulation is carried out. NC codes are then generated for machining using CNC milling machine. The best modelling method and tool path sequence for the part are determined. The recommended cutting parameters are also highlighted.

Data exchange and system integration have become important considerations in computer-aided systems in order to improve productivity. This has led to the development of a neutral format that is used to facilitate product data exchange between manufacturing components. This paper describes a methodology to extract feature information from a STEP file and recognize features using a rule-based technique.

This paper presents an application of automation for low cost aircraft cabin simulator. The aircraft cabin simulator is a testbed that was designed for research on aircraft passenger comfort improvement product. The simulator consists of an economy class section, a business class section, a lavatory and a galley. The aircraft cabin simulator is used to simulate the general flight condition, such as taxi, take off, descending and landing. In order to simulate the aircraft flight condition, the automation technique was used to control the motion platform of the aircraft cabin simulator.