Journal of Mechanical Engineering - JMechE, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam (2026)

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Faculty Of Mechanical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi MARA

28/08/2026

🚀 JMechE Weekly Sharing – Vol. 23(2) 2026

Category: Sustainable Materials & Polymer Recycling

This week's feature investigates a sustainable blending strategy using Devulcanized Nitrile Butadiene Rubber Glove (dNBRg) waste with virgin NBR (vNBR) to produce value-added rubber products!

🔹 Key Highlights:

✅ Glove Waste Valorization: Repurposes non-biodegradable nitrile glove factory rejects through a combined mechanical–chemical devulcanization process.
✅ Good Compatibility: DSC confirmed a single glass transition temperature (Tg) across all blend ratios (0 to 100 phr), indicating good compatibility between vNBR and dNBRg.
✅ Balanced Properties: Adding dNBRg increased compound hardness by up to 8.5% and improved swelling resistance, reflecting an increase in crosslink density.
✅ Optimal Replacement Window: A substitution of 20–30 phr dNBRg can effectively replace part of the virgin NBR while maintaining key physical-mechanical performance, making it suitable for applications such as safety shoe soles.

🔹 Conclusion:
Incorporating recycled glove waste reduces reliance on petroleum-based synthetic rubber, extends material life cycles, and supports circular economy practices and UN SDG 12.

🔗 Read more:
https://ir.uitm.edu.my/id/eprint/141784/1/141784.pdf

21/08/2026

🚀 JMechE Weekly Sharing – Vol. 23(2) 2026

Category: Structural Engineering & Smart Monitoring

This week’s feature highlights a real-time monitoring method using Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG)-embedded stud bolts for preload and strain monitoring in bolted fl**ge joints!

🔹 Key Highlights:

✅ The Problem: Conventional torque-based tightening can result in inconsistent bolt preloads due to frictional variations, increasing the risk of joint leakage.
✅ The Solution: Embedding optical FBG sensors into shallow longitudinal grooves along M18 carbon steel grade 8.8 bolts for real-time strain and preload monitoring.
✅ High Linearity & Sensitivity: Achieved near-linear torque-to-wavelength responses (R² = 0.939–0.974) with sensitivity up to 0.0123 nm/N·m under torque loads of 10–80 Nm.
✅ Maintaining Mechanical Integrity: The shallow groove-based design enhances strain transfer while helping maintain the bolt’s load-bearing capacity.

📝 Conclusion: FBG-embedded bolts demonstrate strong potential for real-time preload monitoring, fl**ge integrity assessment, and predictive maintenance in high-reliability piping systems.

🔗 Read more:
https://ir.uitm.edu.my/id/eprint/141783/1/141783.pdf

14/08/2026

🚀 JMechE Weekly Sharing – Vol. 23(2) 2026

Category: Sustainable Materials & Structural Dynamics

This week’s feature explores how a stochastic inverse vibration-based method improves the identification of mechanical properties and dynamic behaviour of eco-friendly To***co Natural Fibre Composite Panels (TNFCP)!

🔹 Key Highlights:
✅ Eco-Friendly Composites: To***co natural fibre composites offer lightweight and sustainable alternatives to synthetic materials, with potential applications in automotive and structural engineering.
✅ Overcoming Uncertainty: Natural fibre composites are inherently heterogeneous and variable, making accurate prediction of their mechanical and dynamic behaviour challenging using conventional deterministic FE models.
✅ Stochastic Inverse Updating: Integrates Finite Element Modelling (FEM), Experimental Modal Analysis (EMA), and Latin Hypercube Sampling (LHS) to account for material and structural uncertainties.
✅ Exceptional Accuracy: Reduced the initial model’s total error from 35.05% to just 3.12% using the stochastic model with LHS. The FE and experimental mode shapes also demonstrated MAC values above 0.95.

📝 Conclusion: Stochastic inverse modelling provides a reliable, uncertainty-informed pathway for improving the prediction of natural fibre composite behaviour and supporting sustainable structural design.

📌 Read more:
https://ir.uitm.edu.my/id/eprint/141782/1/141782.pdf

06/08/2026

🚀 JMechE Weekly Sharing – Vol. 23(2) 2026

Category: Nanomaterials & Water Treatment Technology

This week's featured article presents a green and eco-friendly approach to converting agricultural rice husk waste into Graphene Quantum Dots (GQDs) for sustainable water treatment applications.

✅ Key Highlights:
✔️ Sustainable Biomass Upcycling: Utilizes abundant rice husk agricultural waste as a renewable carbon precursor through a simple, low-cost boiling method.
✔️ Stable Graphene Quantum Dots: The optimized 2.5% w/v filtered GQDs exhibited green fluorescence under UV light and a zeta potential of −20.6 ± 1.0 mV, indicating good colloidal stability.
✔️ Heavy Metal Removal: Reduced the electrical conductivity of a copper sulfate (CuSO₄) solution by 54.2%, demonstrating effective copper ion adsorption.
✔️ Organic Dye Removal: Successfully decolorized Methylene Blue (MB) solutions, highlighting the potential of GQDs for removing organic contaminants from water.

📌 Conclusion:
By transforming agricultural waste into functional nanomaterials, this study offers a sustainable and scalable approach to water purification, supporting clean water initiatives and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

🔗Read more:
https://ir.uitm.edu.my/id/eprint/141781/1/141781.pdf

31/07/2026

🚀 JMechE Weekly Sharing – Vol. 23(2) 2026
Category: Renewable Energy & Energy Harvesters

This week's featured study presents a novel Friction-based Rotating Triboelectric Nanogenerator (FR-TENG) that converts rotational mechanical energy into sustainable electrical power through the triboelectric effect.

🔹 How does it work?

⚡ Contact Electrification: Repeated contact between polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) and textured copper plates transfers electric charges, generating alternating electrical output.
📐 Dielectric Optimization: Segmenting the triboelectric layers into four radial trapezoidal sections enhances charge localization and increases the potential difference, improving energy harvesting performance.
🔋 Enhanced Performance: By stacking five vertically aligned FR-TENG units connected in parallel, the device achieved a maximum output of 285 V and 27.6 µA at 200 rpm, representing a significant improvement over a single-unit design.
💡 Real-World Application: The harvested energy successfully powered an array of LEDs directly, demonstrating its potential for battery-free, self-powered electronic devices.

Conclusion: This innovative layered nanogenerator design demonstrates a promising approach toward sustainable energy harvesting for smart sensors, wearable electronics, and Internet of Things (IoT) applications.

Read more:https://jmeche.uitm.edu.my/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/8.JMECHE-2025-OJS-9195.pdf

24/07/2026

🚀 JMechE Weekly Sharing – Vol. 23(2) 2026

Category: Alternative Fuels & Clean Combustion Technologies

This week's feature explores a rotary-blade real-time emulsification system (RTES) that generates surfactant-free water-in-diesel emulsion fuel on demand, offering a practical approach to reducing harmful diesel exhaust emissions.

🔹 Key Highlights:
✅ Surfactant-Free Innovation: Produces a 10% water-in-diesel emulsion (E10) in real time, eliminating storage instability and the need for chemical surfactants.
✅ Up to 39.5% Lower NOₓ Emissions: Consistent reductions across all idle speeds, with the highest decrease recorded at 2000 rpm.
✅ Over 50% Less Smoke at Low Idle: Smoke opacity decreased by 53.9% at 800 rpm and 51.3% at 1000 rpm, driven by enhanced atomization through micro-explosions.
✅ Emission Trade-Off: Lower combustion temperatures increased CO emissions, while smoke reduction diminished at higher engine speeds.

🎯 Conclusion:
The rotary-blade RTES provides a simple, surfactant-free solution for reducing NOₓ emissions, with the best overall emission performance achieved under low-idle urban driving conditions (800–1000 rpm).

Read more:
https://jmeche.uitm.edu.my/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/7.JMECHE-2025-OJS-8853.pdf

17/07/2026

🚀 JMechE Weekly Sharing – Vol. 23(2) 2026

Category: Green Building Technology & Passive Cooling

This week, we explore how Phase Change Materials (PCM26-29) can be utilized as a passive cooling strategy to reduce heat transfer and improve thermal comfort in tropical buildings.

🔹 Key Highlights:
✅ Developed a 3D numerical attic model to evaluate the thermal performance of macro-encapsulated PCM tubes under Malaysian tropical conditions.
✅ PCM functions as a thermal energy storage material, absorbing excess heat during the day and releasing stored energy during cooler periods.
✅ The integration of 12 kg PCM achieved a 7.8% reduction in peak ceiling temperature (approximately 3.2°C), demonstrating effective heat mitigation.
✅ Increasing PCM quantity to 24 kg further improved performance to an 11.4% reduction, highlighting the influence of PCM configuration and heat transfer efficiency on cooling effectiveness.
✅ The study emphasizes that maximizing PCM performance requires optimized design, geometry, and thermal interaction, rather than simply increasing material quantity.

📝 Conclusion:
Optimized PCM integration provides a promising pathway towards energy-efficient tropical buildings by reducing thermal loads and lowering dependence on active cooling systems.

Read more:
https://ir.uitm.edu.my/id/eprint/141721/1/141721.pdf

10/07/2026

⚙️ JMechE Weekly Sharing – Vol. 23(2) 2026

Category: Aerospace Engineering & Rocket Flight Performance 🚀

In rocket engineering, every gram matters! A recent study published in the Journal of Mechanical Engineering (JMechE) demonstrates how the selection of an internal thermal protection liner can significantly influence a rocket's final design and flight performance.

🔹 Key Highlights:
✅ Utilized OpenRocket for preliminary rocket design and trajectory simulations.
✅ Conducted thermal analyses using ANSYS Steady-State Thermal to evaluate three liner materials: ceramic fibers, carbon fibers, and refractory ceramics.
✅ To maintain the Inconel 718 casing below its safe operating temperature (700°C), the required liner thicknesses were 4 mm (ceramic fibers), 9 mm (carbon fibers), and 23 mm (refractory ceramics).
✅ Weight Penalty: Using refractory ceramics increased the rocket's total mass by 197%, reducing the apogee from 1602 m (ceramic fibers) to 880 m.

📝 Conclusion:
Liner material selection extends beyond thermal protection, it directly influences rocket weight, structural design, and overall flight performance, making it a critical factor in the success of a flight mission.

📌 Read the full open-access article:
https://ir.uitm.edu.my/id/eprint/141720/1/141720.pdf

03/07/2026

⚙️ JMechE Weekly Sharing – Vol. 23(2), 2026

Category: Smart Manufacturing & Advanced AI

How can engineers achieve smoother, higher-quality machined surfaces? ✨🔩

Surface roughness (Ra) plays a crucial role in determining the performance, durability, and precision of machined components. Selecting the right machining parameters, however, remains a challenging optimization problem. This study compares three nature-inspired optimization algorithms to identify the most effective approach for minimizing surface roughness in CNC milling.

🔹 Highlights:

✅ AI-Driven Prediction: Uses the Group Method of Data Handling (GMDH), a self-organizing AI model, to accurately predict surface roughness from machining parameters.

✅ The Swarm Advantage: Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), inspired by the collective behavior of bird flocks, achieved the fastest convergence and most stable performance, outperforming Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Simulated Annealing (SA).

✅ Practical Insight: Feed rate (f) was identified as the most influential machining parameter, accounting for nearly 80% of the variation in surface roughness, with changes across the tested range increasing Ra by approximately 40%.

Conclusion:
By combining AI-driven prediction with intelligent optimization algorithms, manufacturers can improve machining quality while reducing costly trial-and-error parameter tuning, paving the way for smarter and more efficient manufacturing.

📌 Read more:
https://jmeche.uitm.edu.my/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/4.JMECHE-2025-OJS-7790.pdf

26/06/2026

⚙️ JMechE Weekly Sharing – Vol. 23(2) 2026
Category: Advanced Manufacturing & Engineering

How do we machine metals that are built to withstand extreme heat and pressure? 🛠️🚀

Inconel 718 is a nickel-based superalloy widely used in aerospace and energy industries, but its exceptional strength and heat resistance make it difficult to machine. This featured study compares dry and wet cutting conditions and identifies the optimal wet machining parameters to improve machining performance.

Highlights:
✅ Investigates the machining challenges of Inconel 718, a difficult-to-machine nickel-based superalloy.
✅ Compares tool wear and surface roughness under dry and wet cutting conditions.
✅ Optimizes cutting speed and feed rate using Response Surface Methodology (RSM).
✅ Provides practical machining guidelines for improving tool life and surface quality in high-performance manufacturing.

Conclusion:
The study demonstrates that optimized wet machining significantly improves surface finish while reducing tool wear, offering practical guidance for efficient machining of Inconel 718.

Read more:
https://jmeche.uitm.edu.my/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/3.JMECHE-2025-OJS-9147.pdf

Journal of Mechanical Engineering - JMechE

28/08/2026

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31/07/2026

24/07/2026

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