Concrete failure will lead to serious safety concerns in the performance of a building structure. It is one of the biggest challenges for engineers to inspect and maintain the quality of concrete throughout the service years in order to prevent structural deterioration. To date, a lot of research is ongoing to develop different instruments to inspect concrete quality. Detection of moisture ingress is important in the structural monitoring of concrete. This paper presents a novel sensing technique using a smart antenna for the non-destructive evaluation of moisture content and deterioration inspection in concrete blocks. Two different standard concrete samples (United Kingdom and Malaysia) were investigated in this research. An electromagnetic (EM) sensor was designed and embedded inside the concrete to detect the moisture content within the structure. In addition, CST microwave studio was used to validate the theoretical model of the EM sensor against the test data. The results demonstrated that the EM sensor at 2.45 GHz is capable of detecting the moisture content in the concrete with linear regression of R² = 0.9752. Furthermore, identification of different mix ratios of concrete were successfully demonstrated in this paper. In conclusion, the EM sensor is capable of detecting moisture content non-destructively and could be a potential technique for maintenance and quality control of the building performance.

A non-invasive-monitoring of concentration and dielectric properties of calcium hardness in heat exchanger cooling water was conducted with a 2.5 GHz microwave cavity resonator designed and fabricated locally for the experiment. The principle of electric dipole moment theories were used to analyse the sample solution that occurs as a function of calcium ion content. Artificial difference of water hardness was prepared by mixing CaCl₂ in deionised water_. The sample was centrally positioned in the electric field of the TM₀₁₀ mode of a resonant cylindrical cavity. COMSOL simulation package was used to compare and validate the experimental cavity resonator frequency. Transmission signal (S₂₁) measurements via vector network analyser at different concentrations were observed a linear relationship in amplitude with different frequency changes. In addition, calcium absorption provides a first-order change in material polarisation (i.e. real permittivity), and second-order transitions associated dielectric losses (i.e. imaginary permittivity). These research findings introduce a novel technique of real-time monitoring of water hardness concentration by using non-invasive microwave sensor.

Heat exchanger is equipment used to transfer heat from one fluid to another. It has extensive domestic and industrial applications. Extensive technical literature is available on heat exchanger design, operation and maintenance, but it is widely scattered throughout the industrial bulletins, industrial design codes and standard, technical journals, etc. The purpose of this book chapter is to consolidate into basic background and concepts design of heat exchangers, operation, cleaning and green technology maintenance on heat exchanger closely related to the industrial practices.

Now a days, the global warming has increased the temperature in the environment that forced the building occupant to get assisting from the air condition to reduce the heat tension inside the building, this could increase the electricity bill amount. The aim of this study is to measure the optimum thickness of Rockwool insulation to experimentally and numerically to reduce the heating load inside the buildings. Two devices have been used through this research, Infrared Thermometer to measure profile temperature of the walls along with VELOCICALC to measure the air temperature and air velocity. Three different layers of Rockwool insulation have been applied on the roof of wooden room. The data present the two layers thickness of Rockwool is the best selection to reduce the heating load inside the room, the differential between outside and inside is 0.9 °C, the Rockwool of one layer reduced only 0.5 °C and the maximum thickness with three layers reduced only 1 °C, which is not much effective compared to the two layers but even more costly. CFD analysis shows agreement with the experimental result. The results shows if the dimensions of a UCSI lecture room is to be considered, then applying Rockwool insulation with a thickness of 100 mm would cost around RM 1520 as a UCSI lecture room is of 8 m width and 9 m length. However, two layers of Rock wool insulation could save around 29.30% of ROI per annum.

Potential flow formed by doublet flow has been well applied in environmental applications and geothermal designs such as reservoir and fuel injectors. Most of the doublet flow is assumed based on the sink and source with equivalent strength and distance from the origin, forming the well-known Rankine oval structure when a far-field flow is superposed. A semi-analytical method is formulated to systematically investigate the unsymmetrical doublet flow with different strengths of sink and source. The general mathematical expression for unsymmetrical doublet flow is derived analytically before the streamline and the potential line can be visualised via a numerical approach. The results revealed that the doublet flows altered the Rankine oval structure to form aerofoil-like geometry. When the far-field flow interferes with the general Doublet configuration, unique flow structures such as convex, concave, and various wing shapes could be generated. The current study provides new insight on producing aerodynamic curves for the design of bio-inspired structures.