Chee Fai Tan

Adaptive Framework and User Preference Modeling for Economy Class Aircraft Passenger Seat

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.

Total Design of Active Neck Support System for Economy Class Aircraft Seat

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.

An Interactive System for Concurrent Engineering Design

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.

An expert fault diagnosis system for vehicle air conditioning product development

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.

Seat discomfort of Dutch truck driver seat : a survey study and analysis

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.

An Expert Machine Tools Selection System for Turning Operation

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.

A rule-based industrial boiler selection system

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.

CFD Investigation on Long-Haul Passenger Bus

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 Implementation of Product Architecture in Developing Conceptual Design for Passive Grease Trap

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.

An Innovative Method of Harnessing Hydraulic Energy for Mini Cost-Saving Water Treatment Plant Using Hydraulic Turbine: A Mathematical Approach towards Design and Analysis

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.