Table of Content Page Keynote Speaker Session 1 3-8 Keynote Speaker Session 3 9-14 Civil Engineering 15-46 Chemical Engineering 47-79 Mechanical Engineering 80-130 Electrical Engineering 131-150 Biomedical Engineering & Health Science 151-163 Computer Engineering 164-181 Engineering Education 182-192 Civil / Mechanical Engineering 193-197 Keynote Speaker Session 1 COLD-FORMED STEEL USAGE FOR CONSTRUCTION: MAY NOT BE COLD ITEM ANY LONGER ASSOC. PROF. DR. ARIZU SULAIMAN Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) | Associate Research Fellow of Construction Research Center (UTM-CRC). Specialize in Analysis, Design and Construction of Steel Structure , Hot-Rolled and Cold Formed Steel, and Steel Connections ABSTRACT Cold-formed steel (CFS) sections are usually used as secondary elements in comparison to the hot-rolled steel (HRS) sections. This may be due to the fact that typical cross sections of CFS sections are light and thin which in turn create a perception that CFS sections would not be able to sustain larger loadings. However, through the advent of researches and innovations, nowadays, this cold perception may no longer be true. This keynote paper is intended to show some of the efforts and few of the potential usages of CFS sections. A scenario of light- gauge construction of a house is demonstrated. In comparison to the conventional construction, the construction of the house using CFS sections is found out to be more efficient in terms of the reduction in time and cost. In addition, a few evaluations of experimental works carried out at the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia are also presented. The findings can provide some insights to the ability of CFS sections to be utilized as main load carrying elements or components. The first is the experimental investigation of composite beam-to-column joint formed by a composite concrete slab and two lipped CFS C-sections placed back-to-back as beam and column. The second is the experimental investigation of load bearing composite wall frame, while the third is the reinforced concrete beam with CFS section as reinforcement. As the bare CFS sections might not have higher resistance, a composite action with the concrete is utilized and expected to enhance the load carrying capacity and offer significant performance of the joint, the wall and the beam. In the first experiment, two specimens namely the composite joint and non-composite joint are constructed and tested until failure under a point load at a certain eccentricity from the face of the column to induce moment to the joint. The relationship between the load and deflection, and subsequently, the moment and rotation of the joints are obtained, specifically, the ultimate load and the respective moment resistance. As for the load bearing wall, several configurations of CFS frames were cast with concrete and tested under compression. The relationships between the load and lateral deflection were the main results obtained. In the third experiment, two different arrangements of CFS sections have been placed as reinforcement in concrete beam. Tested under bending, the load-deflection relationship was obtained and subsequently the ultimate load. From all of these experimental investigation, it is found out that i) the composite joint yields higher ultimate load and moment resistance compare to the non-composite joint, ii) the wall with vertical studs can carry higher ultimate load, and iii) the CFS sections placed back-to-back yields significant increase in the flexural resistance of the beam. All of these results, collectively, indicate further that the composite construction between CFS sections and concrete could offer potential and significant benefits. In conclusion, based on the efficiency in constructing the light-gauge structure and the potential enhancement of the load-carrying capacity mentioned, the CFS could be another hot item in construction and may not be regarded as cold any longer as the name literally stated. POLY (LACTIC ACID): POLYMER FOR THE FUTURE PROF DR AZMAN HASSAN Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) | Awarded with the Top Research Scientists Malaysia (TRSM) by Akademi Sains Malaysia (ASM) ABSTRACT Bio-based polymers are materials such which are produced from renewable resources and currently hold a small fraction of the total global plastic market. The worldwide interest in bio- based polymers has accelerated in recent years due to the desire and need to find non- fossil fuel- based polymers. One such bio-based polymer which is also biodegradable is polylactic acid (PLA), which is derived from sustainable resources. Due to the good mechanical strength and low toxicity, PLA is considered to be a potential replacement for petroleum based plastics used for various commodity applications. Although PLA has been the focus of much research for nearly decades, their production has still not reached the level of PE, PET and PP due to cost. Lactic acid is not as readily available compared to the starting materials used for current plastics. Despite PLA’s shortcomings, interest in this material has not waned due to its faster degradation time compared to current plastics, which is believed to prevent its accumulation in our environment if implemented on an industrial scale. The other weaknesses of PLA are poor thermal properties limit its applicability at high temperatures, and brittleness. Therefore, further developments are still required before PLA can replace existing plastics. Many researches have been reported on the modification of PLA to further enhance the properties; overcoming the weaknesses without compromising its inherent outstanding properties like good mechanical performances and biodegradability. This presentation will highlight on efforts to reduce the cost of PLA to make it more competitive compared to the commodity synthetic plastics. Besides that, investigations on overcoming the brittleness and poor thermal properties will be discussed. The other important property which is important for PLA to be accepted in many engineering applications is good flame resistance. This aspect will also be covered in this presentation. INTELLIGENT DISTURBANCE OBSERVER-BASED CONTROL FOR DISTRIBUTED FORMATION OF QUADROTORS ASSOC. PROF. DR. ABDUL RASHID HUSAIN Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) | Member of IEEE | Specialize in industrial precision molding and IC trimming process ABSTRACT A quadrotor is known to be sensitive to external disturbances due to its small size and lightweight. This is particularly more critical when multiple quadrotors are flying simultaneously (smarm) in formation close to each other as the disturbances could cause a collision between the quadrotors. In this work, the design and analysis of distributed formation controls with disturbance rejection capability of swarm quadrotors perturbed by external disturbances are discussed. This covers the control scheme that consists of two control loops: inner-loop control and outer-loop control. In the inner- loop control, the feedback linearization technique is employed to linearize the nonlinear quadrotor dynamics. However, the presence of external disturbances may cause inexact linearization resulting in an unknown disturbance. Thus, an improved disturbance rejection, namely intelligent disturbance observer-based control (iDOBC), is implemented in the outer-loop control to estimate and reject the unknown disturbance parts. The iDOBC consists of a disturbance observer (DO) that estimates the unknown disturbance part and augmented with a radial basis function neural network (RBFNN) compensator. In this work, the RBFNN is utilized to improve the disturbance rejection by compensating the estimation error produced by DO when estimating time-varying disturbances. The iDOBC is augmented with distributed formation regulation (FR-iDOBC) and formation tracking (FTiDOBC) control to improve the robustness of the formation control algorithms by using the consensus-based algorithm that only requires local neighbour-to-neighbour communication. The main merits of the proposed methodologies are twofold: the disturbance estimation and rejection using iDOBC requires no prior knowledge of the disturbance, and the introduction of decoupling gain in the formation controls for design flexibility. Several simulation case studies are carried out to show the efficacy of the proposed algorithms. CELLULAR AND AUXETIC STRUCTURE MATERIALS: CONTEMPORARY AND ADVANCE SOLUTIONS IN MECHANICS ASSOC. PROF. DR. SOHAIB ZIA KHAN Islamic University Madina (IUM) Saudi Arabia | Lead team of Mechanical Engineering for ABET accreditation. Author of multiple journals and conference papers. Research interest include Mechanics and characterisation of Materials, laser- materials interaction, additive maanufacturing and Nano- materials ABSTRACT To get the best utilization of material with less relative density or weight ratio, cellular or porous structures are considered one of the promising candidates. Cellular structures have tunable properties and thus have multiple applications in thermal and thermo-fluid, materials strength, acoustic, biomedical, shock and energy absorption, and other areas. These structures are broadly categorized as ‘irregular cellular structure’ and ‘regular cellular structure’. Irregular cellular structures have random connecting lines or surfaces attached to create porosity in the materials. For example, traditional foams. Regular cellular structures can be classified as ‘periodic’ and ‘non- periodic’ cellular structures. The periodic cellular structures have regular or