Journal of Applied Research on Industrial Engineering
Volume:4 Issue: 3, Autumn 2017

Cellular manufacturing is an important tool for manufacturing firms which leads to better productivity, focused and specialized manufacturing process. To utilize this important tool, the machines have to be grouped into cells. This work is related to using cellular manufacturing in a pharmaceutical factory with alternative routing. This adds more choices in the decision making process and presses for a better tool to make optimal selection. Several objectives may be considered to improve the productivity objectives such as the total number of exits and planning and scheduling robustness related objectives like bottleneck utilization and load balance between and within the alternative routes. Analytical hierarchical process (AHP) is used as a multi-objective decision making process to evaluate the best scenario amongst generated using simulation as a tool for modeling and evaluating the output for each scenario. Three customer case studies were considered with different preferences and the AHP evaluated the best scenario to fit these preferences. The best scenario can vary from one customer preferences to another but for the current system it turned out to be the same choice.

Energy is a main factor in developing nations. Energy is almost a must for surviving with dignity. Palestine situation is different from other countries which can import their energy needs from outside. Palestinians are facing a critical shortage in energy due to Israeli Occupation. They must depend on the naturally available energy to survive in dignity and develop their lives. In this paper, the scope of using geothermal energy in Palestine is taken into consideration, its availability and practical applications, as a source of renewable energy, which is identified by the reliability and sustainability. It has been found that the Palestinians should depend on their own free energy; geothermal energy has a notable role in reducing the residential energy consumption especially for the heating and cooling purposes. Geothermal energy could also be used to reduce the electrical bill that overloading the Palestinians shoulders by using low temperature geothermal water in generating electricity.

This work represents a theoretical investigation of a ground coupled heat pump system that is used for domestic heating and cooling purposes of a typical residential house in Tafilah-Jordan. The system is designed to provide heating and cooling loads of 7.39, 7.27 KW respectively. The designed system consists of a ground buried heat exchanger (1.5m depth, 6.5m length, and 2.2cm diameter), indoor heat exchanger, and a 2 HP compressor. The system has been analyzed economically and it was found that the ground coupled heat pump system reduces energy consumption and has a payback period for of 1.5 years.

Life Cycle Costing (LCC) is a methodology used first time by the Department of Defense of United State, it’s an economic calculation of all costs propagated during the life span of any technical system. For Renewable Energy (RE) systems, LCC is a good methodology, which shows the cost-effectiveness of using RE as an alternative source compared to conventional power generations. A LCC model was introduced for Wind generation system. Data collection was done through four different cost data sources. The results shows that the capital investment cost is $1.968/W. For a 20 years PV project life-time, the operation and maintenance cost forms 19% of the total LCC of the system.

Experimental analysis of thermal properties of phase change material was conducted using DCS and TG apparatus. Moderate rang of temperature of phase change material was selected and experimentally investigated. Measurement of melting and solidification temperature at several heating rate are carried out. Furthermore, the stability and thermal decomposition of the selected phase change material are also investigated. Experiment demonstrates clearly the phase change material effect in melting and solidification. The lab test with DSC and TG proves that the catalogue data of the Plus ICE H190 PCM is reasonable to be used for thermal storage devices with great deal of consistency. In general, results showed that the utilization of phase change material in thermal storage is feasible to store and extract heat at constant temperature in the range between 170oC to 200oC which has many applications in engineering and industry.

A micromechanical model is applied to examine the tensile properties of composite materials filled with multi-wall CNT oriented in in-plane and out-of-plane direction and a quantitative micromechanical model for the mechanical behavior of CNT-composites has been developed. Digimat-MF is used to generate a realistic three-dimensional microstructure for the current carbon nanotube/ epoxy composite. The Digimat model simulates a system of aligned carbon nanotubes arranged in-plane and another one having out of plane arrangement of reinforcements. A second model shows a representative volume element for the current nano-composite, in which the carbon nanotubes were simulated as a randomly (fully) dispersed, where all particles have been separated from each other. The predicted mechanical properties are compared with experimental tensile properties of composite materials reinforced with multi-wall CNTs arranged in in-plane and out-of-plane direction. A good agreement between the micromechanical modeling and the experimental part is observed. Results show that the elastic energy stored in -the-through thickness direction reinforced composites is about two times higher than that in the pure polymer.

AISI H13 tool steel is applied widely to produce many kinds of hot work dies, such as forging dies, extrusion dies, die-casting dies and so on. The successful employment of metal in engineering application relies on the ability of the metal to meet design and services requirements and to be fabricated to the proper dimensions. The capability of metal to meet these requirements is determined by mechanical and physical properties of the metal. Burnishing processes is considered as a surface plastic deformation method, which used to improve surface texture (micro hardness, average surface roughness, and maximum surface roughness). This work present the effect of isothermal annealing temperature and roller burnishing process on the surface properties of H13 alloy steel .This steel was annealed at a different temperatures to get different types of pearlite with different grains and grain size. After that, the steel was burnished with different forces, feeds, and burnishing speeds. The effect of annealing temperatures and roller burnishing on the hardness, micro hardness, average surface roughness and microstructure and metallographic analysis have been investigated. The results showed that roller burnishing could increase the surface hardness under the selected specified conditions depending on the isothermal annealing temperatures by 104%, 45% and 90% for the work parts with 3000C, 500 0C and 6200C annealing temperatures respectively. In addition, roller burnishing significantly improves the smoothness of the steel surfaces. The average roughness obtained was ranged from 0.11μm to 0.17μm. In this paper, the microstructure analysis, micrograph of the isothermal annealed H13 alloy steel have been given. It has been shown that depending on the isothermal annealing temperature there are different types of grains and grain size of treated steel in pearlite phase.