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Outcome-based Education (OBE) emphasises on two main components in terms of student achievement in an academic programme. One is the Programme Outcomes (POs) which is measured at the point of graduation, and the other, the Programme Educational Objectives (PEOs) is assessed over a longer period of time (around 4-5 years) after graduation. This study focuses on the establishment of a systematic procedure adopted by the Department of Mechanical, Materials and Manufacturing Engineering at the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus (UNMC) to formulate PEOs assessment criteria with integration of stakeholders' input, methodology for an unbiased measurement of graduates' long-term attainment rate, as well as analysis and identification of a set of strategies for continuous quality improvement (CQI). These PEOs are mapped using the guidelines set by the Engineering Council to those required by the Engineering Accreditation Council (EAC), Malaysia. The outcome of the mapping exercise was used to formulate an anonymous online questionnaire survey as a measure of the PEOs' attainment. Key outcomes from this study revealed that graduates are broadly satisfied with their achievement in all eight PEOs. Strategies were also proposed to improve the attainment level in four PEOs with relatively lower attainment rate, as part of the CQI process adopted in the department.

Recent studies have demonstrated that it is feasible to harvest energy from raindrop. A challenge in designing a raindrop energy harvester is the rain droplet would accumulate on the surface of the harvester and affect its performance. In a previous work, we have modelled the dynamics of a piezoelectric beam subjected to water droplet impacts with a water layer formed on the surface. This work presents a theoretical model to describe the transient dynamics during the formation of water layer on the beam. The average water droplet impact force is described by a partially inelastic impact coefficient that varies during the formation of water layer. The maximum root mean square voltage measured experimentally is 0.05 V with an average percentage error of 6.94% compared to the theoretical model. Experimental result revealed that the optimal performance of the harvester occurs before the water layer spreads to the width end of the beam.

A variety of nonlinear dynamic responses for a new electro-vibro-impact system is presented, with indication of chaotic behavior. By mathematical modeling of the physical system, an insight is obtained to the global system dynamics. The modeling has established a good correlation with experimental data, and hence can be used as a numerical tool to optimize the system dynamics. In particular, with respect to impact forces and progression rate, may then be achieved with minimal computational cost.

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Rain impact energy harvesting using piezoelectric energy harvester has gained much attention recently. However, previous works have only considered the effect of single water droplet. In the case of raindrop, water would accumulate on the surface of the energy harvester and form a shallow water layer. This article models the dynamics of a piezoelectric beam, served as a raindrop energy harvester, subjected to water droplet impact with water layer formed on the surface. The impact of water droplet on the tip of the energy harvester is modelled as an impulsive force, and the water layer on the surface of the energy harvester is modelled as an added mass to the energy harvester. An attempt to model the force generated by the water ripple as a distributed load on the piezoelectric beam is presented. Numerical studies have been conducted based upon the proposed mathematical model verified by experimental results. The results showed that the presence of the water layer affects the output voltage and the dominant frequency of the energy harvester. It reveals that the effect of water (or rain) accumulation on the piezoelectric surface should be considered in deriving an optimal operating condition of such energy harvester.

In an effort to advance the knowledge and understanding of biodiesel combustion characteristics in compression ignition engines, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling has been utilized to study the in-cylinder physical and chemical events. The development of combustion kinetics and thermophysical properties of biodiesel in CFD modeling is crucial, since both of these govern the in-cylinder combustion and emission formation processes. As such, this review reports on the advances attained within three key aspects of CFD modeling of in-cylinder biodiesel combustion. The key aspects are surrogate chemical kinetic mechanisms, mechanism reduction methods, and biodiesel thermophysical properties models. Because of the complex fuel compositions, combustion modeling of biodiesel fuel largely depends on the surrogate chemical kinetic mechanisms. Recent developments in biodiesel chemical kinetic mechanisms have shown a progression from small detailed mechanisms toward large detailed mechanisms. The main challenge facing in-cylinder biodiesel combustion modeling is the limited data available for validation of the modeling results. In order for biodiesel surrogate mechanisms to be coupled to CFD modeling, it is necessary to reduce the detailed mechanisms to manageable sizes. A number of methods are currently available for this purpose, each with its own advantages and disadvantages as reviewed here. However, detailed understanding of these reduction methods is necessary before any reduction work is carried out. In addition to the reaction kinetics in the surrogate mechanisms, successful simulation of the in-cylinder biodiesel combustion using CFD is dependent on the thermophysical properties of the fuel. The models used to determine these thermophysical properties for CFD studies, as reported in the literature, are also appraised.