Application of Hybrid Sugar Palm-filled Polyurethane Composites in Conceptual Design of an Automotive Anti-roll Bar

Forest products are important sources of income in developing countries like Malaysia and research on utilizing them has intensified. One of the forest products that is investigated at Universiti Putra Malaysia is sugar palm (Arenga pinnata). Biocomposites made from sugar palm fiber and biopolymers have been developed using different types of plasticizers. In addition, sugar palm fiber alone can be a good raw material for various domestic products like brooms, ropes, roofs and headgear, just to name a few. The most recent work on sugar palm bio-composites was devoted to fabricating an automotive component, i.e. an anti-roll bar, from hybrid glass/sugar palm fiber-filled polyurethane composites. The conceptual design of the automotive anti-roll bar was developed and refined. The conceptual design was developed according to the design requirements and characteristics of the sugar palm composite. Reinforcement of the rib in the anti-roll bar’s design showed an improvement in terms of the stiffness of the anti-roll bar.

THERMAL STRESS ANALYSIS OF HEAVY TRUCK

While braking, most of the kinetic energy are converted into thermal energy and increase the disc temperature. This project consists of thermal stress analysis on heavy truck brake disc rotor for steady state and transient condition. The heat dissipated along the brake disc surface during the periodic braking via conduction, convection and radiation. In order to get the stable and accurate result of element size, time step selection is very important and all of these aspects are discussed in this paper. The findings of this research provide a useful design tool to improve the brake performance of disc brake system

Numerical investigation of soot mass concentration in compression ignition diesel engine

Soot particles, carbon monoxide, oxides of nitrogen, oxides of sulphur, and hydrocarbon are the emissions produced from diesel engine combustion. Those emissions species are undesirable since they give detrimental impacts to the atmosphere and human well-being. Several numerical investigations conducted by various researchers provide different soot mass concentration values. As an alternative, this study was carried out to investigate the soot mass level produced by a single cylinder diesel engine, using a commercial multidimensional computational fluid dynamic software. The result obtained from simulation effort was then validated by experimental testing during the same engine condition (engine speed of 1600 rpm at 40% load). Soot mass predicted by simulation gives a value of 3.43 × 10-8 kg at end of simulation, while measured soot mass via experimental testing gives a value of 1.52 × 10-8 kg. Both results differ by 56% thus indicating that the simple soot model applied was not sufficient to represent the actual soot mass emitted through exhaust manifold. This leads to the conclusion that more detailed soot model is needed to make the simulation results more meaningful and comparable to the experimental testing

An investigation of using grey scale image analysis for predicting the amount of deposited electrospun nanofibres

When electrospinning, the amount of electrospun fibres deposited is difficult to determine due to the extremely small size and light weight of the fibres. Several methods have been used to predict the amount of deposited fibres including weighing, imaging and direct measurement. Although these methods work to a certain extent, they all have drawbacks that make them unsuitable for commercial scale process control. The methods are generally time consuming, destructive and only examine a small area of web. In this study, an image analysis method is used to predict the amount of electrospun fibres deposited over a significant area. When images of electrospun fibres are converted into grey scale images, it is suggested that the amount of fibres deposited can be predicted by measuring the grey scale intensity. A conventional weighing method was used to validate the image analysis results. The weighing method was found wanting when the deposition time was short (p>0.05). This was because the measured fibre masses were insignificant compared to the weight variation of the collector substrates. Statistical analyses showed that there were a strong correlation between grey scale intensity and deposition time especially at short deposition times. The results suggest that image analysis method could be used to predict the amount of deposited electrospun nanofibres. Further test on different polymers and different coloured substrates showed that the method was still capable to distinguish the samples. The developed method has the potential to be applied as an in-line non-destructive quality control method for electrospun fibre manufacture

Computation of Eigenvalue-Eigenvector and Harmonic Motion Solution for Laminated Rubber-Metal Spring

This paper presents the modeling of multi-degree-of-freedom on laminated rubber-metal spring in axial direction displacement. Two methods are used which are firstly the eigenvalues and eigenvectors solution and secondly called harmonic motion solution. In eigenvalues and eigenvectors approach, equation of motion of laminated rubber-metal spring is developed using spring-mass system. Then, the equation was rewritten again in matrix and harmonic motion in order to reduce the difficulty and become realistic to be solved using characteristic equation. On the other hand, harmonic motion approach is started from governing equation in term of mode shape. By using this concept, two important equations are finally derived which are displacement and velocity. Using these two methods, finally the maximum displacements of laminated rubber-metal spring are plotted as well as in frequency domain axis. Two types of analysis are considered in this study which are undamped and damped system. Based on the results obtained, the maximum displacement occurred at undamped system. By increasing the number of degree-of-freedom, the displacement is slowly reduced

Product Design Improvement of Water Dispenser Tap using Triz Method

To produce the best solution for improving any product design that should be able to satisfy the design requirements (i.e., faster, better and cheaper), there were several stages typically involves the root cause analysis and idea generation activities. In this paper, product design improvement of a water dispenser is demonstrated using Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ) method. The objective of this study was to find out the design solution which was able to solve the problem of water spill out that occurred after dispensing water from the dispenser tap. TRIZ Function Model and Engineering Contradiction method were used to model the problem, followed by TRIZ Contradiction Matrix and 40 Inventive Principles to generate potential solutions. The design improvement process based on the TRIZ method generated new concept design of water dispenser tap component which was able to eliminate the water spill out problem, while maintaining the existing dispensing function. In addition, the new dispenser tap conceptual design also required less component to operate compared with the existing design, hence, lowering the product cost

Thermal Analysis of Ventilated Disc Brake Rotor for UTeM Formula Varsity Race Car

A new design of disc brake using ventilated rotor was developed for the UTeM Formula Varsity racing car. Compacted graphite cast iron (CGI) was proposed as the material for the disc brake rotor. Thermal analysis was performed in this project to assess the component performance using ABAQUS/CAE v6.7-1 finite element analysis software both in transient condition. Results from the analysis show that the maximum temperature generated on the disc brake surface at the end of the braking procedure for transient condition was within the allowable service temperature of the ventilated rotor material. Thus, the new disc brake rotor is safe for operation and is expected to perform successfully as per design requirement