Analysis of energy consumption and potential energy savings of an institutional building in Malaysia

The building sector is one of the major energy users and greenhouse gasses emitter. An energy audit is one of the effective approaches to identify efficient energy usages and energy savings. A details walk-through energy audit has been conducted to analyse the energy consumption pattern and potential energy conservation opportunities (ECOs) in Research and Development (R&D) building at Universiti Malaya from March to May 2017. Eight different appliances were categorised to analyse and the audit results were verified with the building’s utility bill which on average were between 160 MWh to 250 MWh and RM 80\ua0k to RM 120\ua0k per month. In this case, it was found that the air-conditioning (34%), lighting (18%) and PC/laptops (10%) are the main appliances that contributed to the total energy consumption for the building. The replacement to LEDs light in three different stages marked as Level A, Level A\ua0+\ua0B and Level A\ua0+\ua0B\ua0+\ua0C revealed to be a good solution for energy conservation which resulted in annual energy savings of 72,750 kWh, 110,381 kWh and 144,386 kWh. It concurrently contributes to annual savings of RM26554, RM40289 and RM52701 based on 9\ua0h daily operating time with the payback period of about 1\ua0year

The facial soft tissue simulation of orthognathic surgery using biomechanical model

This paper describes a surgical planning, simulation and prediction of facial soft tissue appearance with regard to the orthognathic surgery. The facial soft tissue prediction is done by means of mandibular advancement through the osteotomy planning system. Our approach is based on finite element method on 3D facial models of quadrilateral elements. These elements represent different tissue regions of facial bone and skin surface semi-automatically generated from segmented patient-specific computer tomography data. We describe the surface facial model reconstruction from individualized anatomy, surgical procedures and numerical solution for static postoperative facial appearance using linear elastic finite element analysis. The physical computational modeling for the prediction of soft tissue is described. Isotropic, homogeneous and linear elastic tissue models are elaborated. The simulated result which is achieved by the advancement of lower jaw bone through the contact analysis is presented. Discussion on evaluation of the simulated result is performed with the actual findings

Validation of cone beam CT scan for measurement of palatal depth in study casts

The purpose of this study was to validate the use of digital dental study casts obtained from Cone beam CT Scan (CBCT) against gold standard; that is traditional dental study cast measured with digital caliper. Thirty-four study casts of Malaysian Aborigines were selected from Centre of Malaysian Pribumi Studies Databank. Palatal depth of each study casts were measured using Mitutoyo digital caliper. Subsequently, all the study models were scanned using i-CAT CBCT and the palatal depth were measured using i-CAT software. Data were analysed using SPSS version 12.0 where Intraclass correlation and paired T-test were employed. There was no significant difference in palatal depth between CBCT and Mitutoyo digital caliper (p>0.05). Average measures for Intraclass Correlation is 0.753 indicate that it is consistently good. Within the limitation of this study palatal depth measurement produced by CBCT was as accurate as the digital caliper. However, more samples and parameters should be added to further substantiate the result of this study