Mechanical Engineering

The environment friendly natural fibers used in this study are taken from leaf stalk portion of palm tree. Portions of these fibers are alkali treated while the remaining kept raw. Both these fibers are sandwiched separately with glass fibers to form two set of plates by reinforcing into polyester resin matrix blend with coconut shell powder using hand lay-up method. Specimens are tested as per ASTM standards. The results reveal that alkali treatment improved fiber quality and a novel composite was developed to producing automobile parts.

In today’s competitive business scenario manufacturing industries are under the pressure to reduce cost and cycle time. It is a lean manufacturing concept with a systematic approach to identify and eliminate waste through continuous and sustained improvements by manufacturing the product at the pull of the customer in pursuit of perfection. This paper is to Design and Integrate Assembly Lines ‘A’ and ‘B’ based on ‘Lean Concept’ using MTM/UAS analysis for determine the time and to identify the improvement. The study was carried out in 2 assembly lines in a reputed manufacturing industry. The paper concentrates only on assembly line and where assembly line ‘B’ is to be accommodated into assembly line ‘A’. The main focus of the paper is to study the existing system and designing the new solution based on Lean Line Design concept which would follow the standards of the manufacturing industry.

In an automobile, the wheel plays important role. Through reverse engineering process, better alloy wheel disc designs are possible by capturing the physical dimensions of the existing wheel. The objective of the present work is to recommend better material and optimal geometric shape for the wheel disc. The wheel disc is modeled in CATIA and imported to ANSYS. Analysis is done for different models. Analysis results suggest that modified model with smaller radial slots with magnesium zk60 material gives better life. The wheel disc 1.153kg lighter than that in the original design. This design is still in safe condition.

The present paper discusses the development of a Markov model for performance evaluation of water circulation system of a thermal power plant using probabilistic approach. A water circulation system ensures a proper supply of water for smooth working of a thermal power plant. For regular and economical generation of steam, it is necessary to maintain each sub- system of this system to ensure an optimum level of availability. In present paper, the water circulation system consists of five subsystems with three possible states i.e. working, reduced and failed state. Failure and repair rates of subsystems are taken to be constant. After drawing transition diagram, differential equations have been generated. After that, steady state probabilities are determined. The system of equations is solved for steady state availability of the system using Laplace transformation technique. Besides, some decision matrices are also developed, which provide various performance levels for different combinations of failure and repair rates of all subsystems. Based upon various performance values obtained in decision matrices and plots of failure rates/ repair rates of various subsystems, performance of each subsystem is analysed and then maintenance decisions are made for all subsystems. The developed model helps in comparative evaluation of alternative maintenance strategies.

Domain Moderator (DM13) was developed by Che Ghani Che Kob in year 2013 as a part of his Education Doctorate (EdD) research instrument to evaluate engineering students learning and lecturers teaching domains. Domain Moderator is an education instrument to measure the domains of Engineering Learning & Teaching Domains (ELTD). The ELTD model comes out to enhance the whole process of Education Measurement & Evaluation Methods. The data’s of pilot survey among 26 lecturers by using DM13 shown that among engineering lecturer are (61.5% ) at active domain,(38.5%) at reflective domain, (73.1%) at sensing domain, (26.9%) at intuitive domain, (92.3%) at visual domain, (7.7%) at verbal domain, (61.5%) at sequential, and (38.5%) at global domain. This data’s collection hopes can be use as a moderator among engineering lecturers to success in Outcome Based Education (OBE) at Polytechnics & College Community, KPM, MALAYSIA.

The torque of the continuously variable transmission system with friction drive mechanism is transmitted by contacting roller with input and output disks. For the higher transmitted torque, it is necessary to apply large load in order to get higher friction force, which in turn generates severe high stress on the contact surfaces of roller and disks. The ‘Toroidal’ type CVT system has simple component arrays that have three contact points between roller and each input or output disk to get the torque transmitted. This work documents a successfully developed experimental model of a ‘Toroidal’ continuously variable transmission (CVT) by adjusting its geometrical configuration of CVT design and compared the experimental results of speed, torque and power delivered at the output disc with those obtained by a theoretical.

This work is carried out to provide a corrective analysis of a typical water pipeline network with varied flow rates/discharges in order to obtain adequate pressure that must be maintained to cause a pipeline grid balance in a distribution network of a closed conduit. The network was taken to be analogous to a direct-electrical circuit analogy of current flow, which provides a simplified approach to complex distribution network problems. The fluid in the conduit is in a steady-state, hence the work adopts the application of steady-state energy equations of Darcy Weisbach, Hardy Cross and Hazen Williams in the analysis of head losses associated with flow through pipeline of varying sizes, bends, fittings, and surface roughness.

There are many attempts to apply artificial neural networks in mechanical engineering field. In this work an attempt has been made to apply the artificial neural networks in the analysis of automotive tires. The study of tire performance and deformation are challenging owing to the non-linearity associated with geometry as well as composition of material. The tire material is a cord-rubber composite, its properties anisotropic in nature. The present attempt is to analyze the tire using artificial neural network. The tire deformation under various inflation pressures has been modeled by artificial neural network. To train the network, the experimental data has been used. It has been found that the artificial neural network can effectively be used in the analysis of pneumatic tires. The artificial neural network is employed to analyze the displacement of side wall of the tire for various pressures. The pressures are given as the input and the artificial neural network is trained with the displacement of ‘x’ and ‘y’ as the output target. The ultimate purpose of a finite element analysis is to create mathematical behaviour of an actual engineering system. In other words, the analysis must be an accurate mathematical model of a physical prototype. This model comprises all the nodes, element material properties, real constants, boundary conditions, and other features that are used to represent the physical system. In ANSYS terminology, the term model generation usually takes on the narrower nurturing of generating the nodes and elements that represent the spatial volume and connectivity of the actual system. Thus the model generation means the process of defining the geometric configuration of the model nodes and elements.

A data acquisition system is a device designed to measure various parameters. The purpose of the data acquisition system is generally the analysis of the data and the improvement in accuracy of measurements. The data acquisition system is normally electronics based, and it is made of hardware and software. The hardware part is made of sensors, signal conditioners & data acquisition card and computer. The data acquisition system increases efficiency of measurement and lowers the cost for test, through easy to integrate software like Visual Basic. With this system, Engineers can use graphical representation to meet their specific needs – very different from the conventional and traditional measurements. Additionally, data acquisition system capitalized on the ever-increasing performance of personal computers. In test, measurement, and control, the system experiences up to a 10 times increase in efficiency at a fraction of the cost, in a fraction of time, of traditional measurement system. This Dissertation work involves testing of internal combustion engine using data acquisition system . For this the data is acquired from internal combustion engine and send to computer after required conditioning. The parameters of internal combustion engine which can be measured are speed, load, temperature and vibrations . The graphical display on the computer screen can be made by using any software like Visual Basic . This is an attempt to develop a Computerized Test Rig for measurements of Speed , Load & Temperature, Vibrations using Software like Visual Basic , Hardware PCI 1050 Card with Signal Conditioning using INA128 IC and Sensors like Proximity Sensor, Load Cell and RTD .

The optimal tilt angle of solar photovoltaic panel in Ilorin, Nigeria was determined. The solar panel was first mounted at 0o to the horizontal and after ten minutes, the voltage and current generated with the corresponding atmospheric temperature were recorded. The same procedure was repeated for 2o to 30o at a succession of 2o at ten minutes time interval over the entire measurement period. The result obtained shows that the average optimal tilt angle at which a solar panel will be mounted for maximum power performance at fixed position in Ilorin is 22o. This optimum angle of tilt of the solar panel and the orientation are dependent on the month of the year and the location of the site of study.