<span>This paper presents surface degradation assessment based on surface roughness condition for various field-aged high voltage polymer insulators that were installed at different locations. The measurement of arithmetical mean surface roughness is done, and statistical analysis is implemented in this study. Three groups of insulators labeled as 6 years, 12 years, 18 years, and with their respective controlled samples are tested using a surface roughness tester. Data measurements from the testing are analyzed in conjunction with visual observation to investigate an indication of surface degradation within the groups. Further statistical analysis is applied for the comparison of the surface roughness conditions. In order to observe the environmental stress factors that will affect the roughness condition, within the installation area, the virtual three-dimensional mapping program represented the Earth based on satellite imagery is utilized. The correlation analysis on all that three groups has indicated the positive outcomes with the roughness increased with respect to the age of insulator that located in quite similar environmental stress conditions. Regardless of the age of an insulator, the degradation due to surface roughness condition can be used to indicate what levels of environmental stress around the installation area have.</span>

This paper presents effects of heat treatment on toughness, hardness and fatigue strength of aluminum alloy 6061. The alloy specimens were heat treated in the furnace at different temperature levels and holding times; and then cooled in different media (water and oil). The mechanical properties such as hardness, impact and fatigue were examined using standard method. Result shows that mechanical properties of aluminum alloy can be improved by the heat treatment. It was found that through ageing processes at temperature 160 °C for one, three and five hours, decreased the hardness, while increased the toughness. The fatigue strength was decreased when the number of cycles increased. The fracture surfaces between specimens have a different appearance before and after heat treatment.

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This paper presents the signal parameter of leakage current based on various surface roughness degradation conditions for field-aged high voltage polymer insulators. The arithmetical mean of surface roughness is measured accordingly, and also the surface leakage current signal is captured effectively using data acquisition device via the electrical stress test. With the variation of field-aged insulators ages which include 6-year, 12-year and 18-year, they have been mechanically tested using a surface roughness tester along with electrical testing by using the standard method of inclined plane test. The surface roughness data are recorded meanwhile the leakage current signals are further analyzed using Spectrogram to extract the signal parameter. These include the instantaneous root mean squared current, the instantaneous total harmonic distortion, the instantaneous total non- harmonic distortion and the instantaneous total waveform distortion. From the results of the comparative study, it has shown that the statistical quantity of leakage current signal parameters is responding in an increasing trend with respect to the incremental of the surface roughness. Thus, the signal parameters of the leakage current are able to indicate the degradation conditions of insulator surface.

This research is focused on the development of a low-cost solar water heater (SWH) system by utilizing solid waste material as part of system elements. Available technologies of the solar water heater systems, heat collectors and its components were reviewed and the best system combinations for low cost design were chosen. The passive-thermosiphon system have been chosen due to its simplicity and independency on external power as well as conventional pump. For the heat collector, flat plate type was identified as the most suitable collector for low cost design and suits with Malaysia climate. Detail study on the flat plate collector components found that the heat absorber is the main component that can significantly reduce the solar collector price if it is replaced with recycled solid waste material. Review on common solid wastes concluded that crushed glass is a non-metal material that has potential to either enhance or become the main heat absorber in solar collector. A collector prototype were then designed and fabricated based on crashed glass heat collector media. Thermal performance test were conducted for three configurations where configuration A (black painted aluminum absorber) used as benchmark, configuration B (crushed glass added partially) that use glass for improvement, and lastly configuration C (black colored crushed glass) that use colored glass as main absorber. Result for configuration B have shown a negative effect where the maximum collector efficiency is 26.8% lower than configuration A. Nevertheless, configuration C which use black crushed glass as main heat absorber shown a comparable maximum efficiency which is at 82.5% of the maximum efficiency for configuration A and furthermore have shown quite impressive increment of efficiency at the end of the experiment. Hence, black colored crushed glass is said to have quite a good potential as the heat absorber material and therefore turn out to be a new contender to other non-metal heat absorber such as plastic and rubber.

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Sustainability concern has brought the idea of exploring the possibility of using water as the hydraulic medium to transfer energy. The abundant resource of water, and its characteristic involving hygiene, safety and low maintenance cost provides a fascinating perspective of choosing water over hydraulic oil, due to concerns over oil disposal, contamination, costly maintenance and flammability. However, in contrast, its low boiling temperature, low viscosity, and simple molecular structure could pose danger to the operation of the hydraulic system. In order to identify these limitations, an experimental study is carried out to explore the effect of water hydraulic system. A test rig of scissor lift is fabricated and put into test by replacing the hydraulic oil with reverse osmosis water. It is found that the water hydraulic scissor lift managed to lift up to 400 kg of load, with workable water temperature of 41.4°C.

Leakage current is one of the critical aspects to consider for overhead transmission line insulator’s condition and performance assessment. As the leakage current increase, the size of the dry band also will increase leads to the dry band arcing, deteriorate the insulator performance and contribute to the development of insulator flashover. Based on the literature study, other than the existence of contaminations on the surface of insulator combined with moisture, the variation in leakage current is also affected by the environmental and electrical stresses. Previous researches have shown the effect of environmental and electrical stresses on surface leakage current based on experimental and simulation results. This paper outlines an analytical approach based on dimensional analysis to propose a new mathematical model of leakage current under environmental and electrical stresses. To justify the applicability of the derived dimensional model, the new model has been validated using previous researcher’s experimental results. The validation indicated that the proposed model had shown a good agreement with the previous experimental results. The proposed dimensional equation for this research work can be potentially used as a predictive performance model to evaluate and monitor the leakage current and insulator’s performance