Industrial Training as Gateway to Engineering Career: Experience Sharing

AbstractToday's engineering education demands in-depth theoretical knowledge as well as hands-on exposure to the profession. Traditionally, theoretical engineering education is achieved in campus through direct teaching and laboratory learning. However, hands-on exposure or real world confrontation provides engineering students with on-the-job experience. This helps them to decide whether their skills and industry are a good match. For specialised industries, such as manufacturing, aerospace and electronics, industrial training provides the opportunity for students to gain the most rewarding and enlightening working experience in related companies. This paper examines the industrial training experience gained by the students through a 12-week attachment period specifically looking at whether the companies have been successful in providing a relevant engineering workplace experience. A few industrial training experiences by students will be shared highlighting the positive and negative aspects. This study also suggests some steps that can be taken to ensure companies run industrial training programs that do meet the faculty's expectation

myBas driving cycle for Kuala Terengganu city

Driving cycles are series of data points that represent vehicle speed versus time sequenced profile developed for specific road, route, city or certain location. It is widely utilized in the application of vehicle manufacturers, environmentalists and traffic engineers. Since the vehicles are one of the higher air pollution sources, driving cycle is needed to evaluate the fuel consumption and exhaust emissions. The main objectives in this study are to develop and characterize the driving cycle for myBAS in Kuala Terengganu city using established k-means clustering method and to analyse the fuel consumption and emissions using advanced vehicle simulator (ADVISOR). Operation of myBAS offers 7 trunk routes and one feeder route. The research covered on two operation routes of myBAS which is Kuala Terengganu city-feeder and from Kuala Terengganu to Jeti Merang where the speed-time data is collected using on-board measurement method. In general, driving cycle is made up of a few micro-trips, defined as the trip made between two idling periods. These micro-trips cluster by using the k-means clustering method and matrix laboratory software (MATLAB) is used in developing myBAS driving cycle. Typically, developing the driving cycle based on the real-world in resulting improved the fuel economy and emissions of myBAS

Reaction optimization of Aspergillus niger α-L-arabinofuranosidase for improved arabinose production from kenaf stem

There are abundant of lignocellulosic biomass readily available with varying compositions. Kenaf (Hibiscus cannabinus) is one of this lignocellulosic biomass that has a high content of hemicellulose. This particular hemicellulose is composed of high arabinoxylan, which is a xylan backbone with arabinofuranosyl branches. In order to hydrolyze arabinoxylan, a branching enzyme is needed. Therefore, α-L-arabinofuranosidase from Aspergillus niger ATCC120120 (AnabfA) was used to hydrolyzed pre-treated kenaf and the reaction conditions were optimized using central composite design (CCD) to produce a significant amount of arabinose. There were 20 experiments conducted with 1.68 star points and 6 replicates at the centre points. The reaction conditions that were optimized are enzyme loading, substrate concentration and reaction time in which resulted with 88 U AnabfA activity, 0.9% (w/v) and 48 h, respectively. These optimized conditions managed to increase the yield of arabinose with 47.17 mg/g arabinose produced

Modification of polypropylene filter with metal oxide and reduced graphene oxide for water treatment

A hydrothermal method for the synthesis of reduced graphene oxide/titanium dioxide filter (RGO/TiO2) and reduced graphene oxide/zinc oxide filter (RGO/ZnO) by using polypropylene (PP) porous filter is reported. Field emission scanning electron microscopy illustrated that the nanoparticles were uniformly distributed on the reduced graphene oxide nanosheets. Flexural tests showed that the physical properties of the modified filters have greater strength than the original filter. Thermogravimetric analysis revealed that the thermal property of the modified filters is the same as that of the original filter. Under a halogen lamp, the modified filter exhibited excellent photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue. The RGO/TiO2 filter maintained its ability to degrade MB efficiently, even after five cycles of photocatalysis

Mechanical and morphological properties of sterate modified layered double hydroxide blend with polyhydroxybutyrate/poly(lactic acid) nanocomposites

In this study, poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) (PHB)/poly(lactic acid) (PLA)/stearate modified magnesium aluminum layered double hydroxides (SMALDH) nanocomposites were prepared from PHB/PLA blend and SMALDH by solvent-casting method. The ratio of PHB/PLA was fixed at 90/10 as it gave the optimum tensile properties among the blends. Mg/Al layered double hydroxide (MALDH) was first synthesized via a co-precipitation method from nitrates salt solution and then modified with sodium stearate via an anion exchange process. X-ray diffraction (XRD) result showed an incensement in d-spacing of MALDH from 7.88 to 30.26 Å after it was modified with sodium stearate, suggested that the intercalation of stearate ions into the interlayer of MALDH. The addition of 1.5 wt% of SMALDH improved the tensile strength and tensile modulus of PHB/PLA blend by 23% and 13%, respectively. Those improvements were attributed to the improved interfacial adhesion of blend components as illustrated in scanning electron micrograph. XRD result and transmission electron micrograph showed that the nanocomposites produced are of mixture intercalated/exfoliated types

A new hybrid multilevel inverter topology with harmonics profile improvement

A new hybrid multilevel inverter topology with harmonics profile improvement is presented in this paper. From the literature, it is agreed that hybrid multilevel inverter with its DC sources configured in trinary fashion presents the largest output levels and the lowest Total Harmonics Distortion (THD) percentage. However the output contains low order harmonics due to the impossibility of modulating all adjacent voltage levels at high frequency. With this proposed topology, all adjacent voltage levels are possible to be modulated at high frequency. As a result, the output voltage waveform presents better harmonics profile. The proposed topology and its modulation scheme are presented and verified with simulation results

Design of power stage and controller for DC-DC converter systems using PSPICE

4 complete set of SPICEcompatible design equations for design buck converter system is developed in this paper. In this approach, the power stage and controller design equations are programmed in PSPICE. For this purpose, an option available in PSPICE called Analog Behavioral Modeling (ABM)is used. In this manner, the parameter of power stage and the component values of the error amplifier can be easily obtained by means of PSPICE bias point analysis. The obtained parameters can be passed to other circuit models to perform frequency response and transient analysis. The methodology of development is presented in details. A design example is included to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in designing DC-DC converter systems

Simple PI fuzzy logic controller applied in DC-AC converter

In this paper, a simple proportional integral fuzzy logic controller (PI-FLC) applied to a DC-AC converter is presented. This approach uses signed distance method, where the multiinput single output (MISO) system can be reduced to single input single output (SISO) system without degrading the original performance of MISO PI-FLC system. The input-output relationship of SISO PI-FLC system then can be simply mapped using piecewise linear approximation. A comparison with the original PI-FLC is carried out by MATLAB-Simulink simulation to verify the performance of the proposed approac