M.Z. Akop

Soft skills development of Engineering undergraduate students through Formula Varsity

This paper examines the seven elements of soft skills promoted by Institute of Higher Learning (IHL). These soft skills are demonstrated in one of the event organized by Faculty of mechanical Engineering, Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka (UTeM) which is kwon as Formula Varsity. The event had been participated by a number of IHL in Malaysia and received good feedback from participating institution, staff and students. In order to study the effectiveness of the event and relate it to the soft skills elements, soft skills matrices for each team has been developed and discussed. The result show good relation and fulfil all the element of the soft skills.

Recent Advances in Polyethylene-Based Biocomposites

Abstract Polyethylene (PE), part of the polyolefins group, is one of the major sources of commodity plastics used as the matrix in the development of biocomposite materials. PE-based biocomposites have been extensively used in both for nonstructural and structural applications, due to the low cost, recyclability, and processing advantages as compared to synthetic based composites. In this chapter, the overview on the application of PE-based biocomposites is explained which includes its role to the biocomposite formulation, various processing methods involved, and the characterization techniques applied to determine the properties of the final composites. In addition, this chapter also describes examples on the application of PE-based biocomposites in several fields such as such as structural, packaging, coating, biomedical, and medical.

Challenges and Developments of Rubber Materials as Vibration Isolator

Rubber materials have been well known as a vibration isolator to dissipate vibration energy. Most of existing works on the vibration isolator especially the mathematical models only consider the performance of the vibration isolator due to the static force. This study is focused on the antivibration isolator due to the effects of rubber materials in a massless isolator. It also covers the fundamentals of control theory, recent developments in vibration isolators, and challenges of rubber materials as a vibration isolator. At the end of the study, it has been shown that, by increasing the number of degrees-of-freedom in massless isolator, the performance of the vibration isolator can be improved.