Chamil Abeykoon

• PhD in Mechanical Engineering
• Associate Professor at The University of Manchester

Polymer extrusion is usually a complex process, particularly due to the coupled nature of process parameters, and hence highly prone to fluctuations. Although a number of different approaches have been attempted in research/industry over the last few decades for extrusion control, it is still experiencing some problems in achieving consistent produ...

3D printing is a popular technique for fabricating three-dimensional solid objects from a digital design. In order to produce high quality 3D printed parts, the appropriate selection of printing parameters is crucial. This research is focused on studying the properties of 3D printed specimens (i.e., mechanical, thermal and morphological) with varyi...

The global plastics production has shown a rapid growth from 1.5 to 367 million metric tonnes from year 1950 and 2020 where it has been predicted that this growth rate might increase further within next few decades. In future, there will be huge demand for polymeric materials due to their superior properties such as high specific strength, ease of...

Undoubtedly, the whole world has been forced to increase the use of clean/renewable energy sources particularly due to the alarming environmental concerns that have been caused by fossil fuels based emissions/pollution and also with the predicted depletion of those fossil fuel reserves. Over the last few decades, the global fossil fuel consumption...

This comprehensive review discusses the recent progress in synthesis, properties, applications, 3D printing and machine learning of graphene quantum dots (GQDs) in polymer composites. It explores various synthesis methods, highlighting the size control and surface functionalization of GQDs. The unique electronic structure, tunable bandgap, and opti...

Melt viscosity is regarded as a key quality indicator of the polymer melt in polymer extrusion processes. However, limitations such as disturbances to the melt flow and measurement delays of the existing in-line and side-stream rheometers prevent the monitoring and controlling of this key parameter in real time. Soft sensors can be employed to moni...

MXenes, a revolutionary class of two-dimensional transition metal carbides and nitrides, have emerged as exceptional materials for advanced composite applications due to their remarkable properties. MXene-based composites exhibit electrical conductivities exceeding 15,000 S/cm, thermal conductivities up to 60 W/m⋅K, and mechanical strengths surpass...

New implementation of phase change materials (PCMs), such as Polyethylene Glycols (PEGs), can alleviate the overconsumption of natural resources and can also be applied in solar-thermal energy conversion applications due to their distinctive semi-crystalline structure. To further enhance the thermal properties of PCMs, carbon-based nanomaterials su...

This study explored the impact of multiple reprocessing cycles on the thermomechanical properties of polystyrene (PS) and low‐density polyethylene (LDPE), simulated through reprocessing with a twin‐screw extruder. Additionally, it compared the thermal and mechanical properties of graphene nanoplatelets (1% w/w) reinforced polypropylene (PP‐GNP) nan...

This review paper comprehensively examines the dynamic landscape of 3D printing and Machine Learning utilizing biodegradable polymers and their composites, presenting a panoramic synthesis of research developments, technological achievements, and emerging applications. By investigating a multitude of biodegradable polymer types, the review paper de...

The present work aims to develop optimized scaffolds for bone repair by incorporating mesoporous nanoparticles into them, thereby combining bioactive factors for cell growth and preventing rapid release or loss of effectiveness. We synthesized biocompatible and biodegradable scaffolds designed for the controlled codelivery of curcumin (CUR) and rec...

Melt pressure is a key indicator of melt flow stability and quality in polymer extrusion processes. The melt pressure level affects the degree of mixing and melt pressure stability which in turn influence the melt quality. Meanwhile, short-term melt pressure fluctuations result in dimensional variations in the extruded products in continuous extrus...

Sri Lanka as a country has tremendous potential for harnessing energy from renewable sources such as solar, wind, and hydro. However, as of 2018, only 39 % of Sri Lanka's energy generation capacity was harnessed through renewable energy sources. The continuous increase in electrical energy demand and the drastic increase in vehicle population over...

This paper presents a numerical framework for modelling and simulating convection–diffusion–reaction flows in liquid composite moulding (LCM). The model is developed in ANSYS Fluent with customised user-defined-functions (UDFs), user-defined-scalar (UDS), and user-defined memory (UDM) codes to incorporate the cure kinetics and rheological character...

This comprehensive review discusses the recent progress in synthesis, properties, applications, 3D printing and machine learning of graphene quantum dots (GQDs) in polymer composites. It explores various synthesis methods, highlighting the size control and surface functionalization of GQDs. The unique electronic structure, tunable bandgap, and opti...

This work explores the use of MXene-embedded porous carbon-based Cu2O nanocomposite (Cu2O/M/AC) as a sensing material for the electrochemical sensing of glucose. The composite was prepared using the coprecipitation method and further analyzed for its morphological and structural characteristics. The highly porous scaffold of activated (porous) carb...

The present numerical study proposes a framework to determine the heat flow parameters—specific heat and thermal conductivity—of resin–graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs) (modified) as well as non-modified resin (with no GNPs). This is performed by evaluating the exothermic reaction which occurs during both the filling and post-filling stages of Liquid C...

Three polymeric materials; polystyrene (amorphous), low-density polyethylene (semi-crystalline), and poly(methyl methacrylate) (amorphous) were used to explore their behavior and properties during processing using a co-rotating twin-screw extruder. Injection molding and compression molding were used for preparing the test specimens. Screw speed and...

Composite phase change materials (CPCMs), consisting of nanofillers embedded inside conventional PCMs such as salt hydrates or paraffins, are emerging andidates for large-scale latent heat storage systems or electro-chemical applications. High thermal conductivity and thermal diffusivity of CPCMs are crucial prerequisites for practical utilization,...

As a 0D material, powder particles can be used to create almost any complicated engineering component by utilizing the high‐performance manufacturing capabilities of additive manufacturing (AM). Although powder‐based AM methods provide an outstanding practical value and development for modern manufacturing world, they continue to face challenges su...

Despite the wide growth of additive manufacturing, it is still very expensive to mass produce 3D-printed parts. The costs can be minimized if the quantity of material required to produce a part can be substantially reduced by introducing hollow cavities into the structure, without compromising its properties. This study investigates the effect of t...

Melt pressure is one of the key indicators of melt flow stability and quality in polymer extrusion processes. Often, process operators monitor/observe the melt pressure in real time to ensure the safe operation of industrial polymer extrusion processes. However, there might be situations where the melt pressure could not be measured using a physica...

The multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) and graphene oxide (GO) were covalently functionalised with imidazolium salt-based ionic liquids. The acid chloride-functionalised MWCNTs and GO were coupled with 1-(3-aminopropyl) imidazole, and then the products were reacted with 1-bromobutane. The bromine anions were exchanged with PF6− and NTf2−. The p...

This paper presents a numerical framework for modelling and simulating convection–diffusion–reaction flows in liquid composite moulding (LCM). The model is developed in ANSYS Fluent with customised user-defined-functions (UDFs), user-defined-scalar (UDS), and user-defined memory (UDM) codes to incorporate the cure kinetics and rheological character...

With the predicted depletion of natural resources and alarming environmental issues, sustainable development has become a popular as well as a much-needed concept in modern process industries. Hence, manufacturers are quite keen on adopting novel process monitoring techniques to enhance product quality and process efficiency while minimizing possib...

Currently, non-renewable resources are heavily consumed, leading to increased global warming resulting from the production of carbon dioxide etc., phase change materials (PCMs) are regarded as a solution to mitigate these global crises attributed to their promising thermal energy storage capability. In this critical review, the thermal properties o...

The automotive sector is undergoing a significant transformation to address critical challenges affecting consumers and the climate. One of the most difficult tasks is reducing the weight of vehicles in order to minimize energy consumption. A ten percent decrease in curb weight is predicted to result in a six to eight percent reduction in energy co...

The filling stage in injection/infusion moulding processes plays a key role in composite manufacturing that can be influenced by the inlet and vent ports. This will affect the production of void-free parts and the desirable process time. Flow control is usually required in experiments to optimise such a stage; however, numerical simulations can be...

Nanocomposites have received significant interest in recent years, as they offer improved properties compared to conventional materials for various applications. Among many available nanofillers, graphene nanoplatelets (GNP) have shown promising results for polymer-based nanocomposites applications. This paper investigates the mechanical and therma...

Advanced expertise and technologies have been devoted to producing high functional materials with a polycrystalline nature, which is transparent to visible light for various manufacturing applications. Materials with a good lattice structure can also be adopted in the manufacturing of transparent ceramics. Observations from the literature showed th...

Considered as one of the most vital components in an electric vehicle, power batteries produce copious amount of heat energy throughout the course of charging and discharging. Battery thermal management system (BTMS) is crucial for the maximum efficiency and is designed to uphold and conserve the optimum temperature and reliability of the battery....

Battery is essential parts in an electric and hybrid electric vehicle. Good amount of heat is generated by charging and discharging actions. For maximum efficiency, reliability it is utmost necessary to conserve the optimum temperature by employing a proper battery thermal management system (BTMS. Uses of phase change materials (PCMs) for thermal m...

Field Oriented Control (FOC) is a widely employed motor control methodology for Brushless DC (BLDC) motors. FOC requires an accurate measure of the rotor angular position for proper operation. Depending on how this rotor position is obtained, FOC can be implemented in either sensored mode or sensorless mode. Typically, sensored FOC employs position...

In this study, a Savonius vertical axis wind turbine (SVAWT) has been developed with omnidirectional guide vanes to increase the performance of the wind turbine. SVAWT is a promising wind turbine for stand-alone power generation to cater the energy demand in rural settings. However, Savonius rotors typically possess low wind energy extraction chara...

Recent developments in the areas of 3D/4D printing have forced to rethink the ways of conventional manufacturing procedures by offering simple but effective alternatives for the product design and manufacturing. The fused deposition modelling (FDM) printing technology, which is one of the main additive manufacture technologies, is widely used in ma...

Egypt has a significant role in the international energy transit being one of the major economies in the African continent, however its energy sector is still overwhelmed with the local energy demands. It has been predicted that Egypt's CO2 emissions could increase by around 125%, over the period from 2012 to 2035, if the nation's energy demand is...

Resin flow through multi-ply woven fabrics is affected by the fibre orientation and laminate stacking sequence during the impregnation process. This is characterised by permeability, which measures the ability of transferring fluids within a 2D or 3D layered woven fibre architecture (i.e., through a porous medium). The work aims to investigate the...

With the rapid depletion of natural resources and increased environmental pollution, nations across the world are in a desperate need of achieving the common goal of sustainable development. Combustion of fossil fuels along with other human activities over the past few decades have resulted in increased greenhouse gas emissions leading to the clima...

Polymer blends is one of the popular methods for producing tailor-made materials by combining the properties of individual polymers. Binary polymer blends have quite commonly been used over the past few decades. Recently, researchers have shifted their focus towards ternary polymer blends and this study aims to investigate a ternary polymer blend s...

Energy conservation is an ever-growing field of research, due to the global energy demands continuously escalating and the need of cleaner energy sources with a reduced carbon footprint. To preserve resources, latent heat thermal energy storage systems, utilizing phase change materials (PCMs) are being researched due to their high heat capacities a...

The purpose of this study is to comprehensively review the extant literature on the application of management accounting practices (MAPs) to the sustainable development of family businesses (FBs), and to identify future research avenues. Academic interest in the field of MAPs in family businesses as well as the concept of sustainable development ha...

Integrated photovoltaic-fuel cell (IPVFC) systems, amongst other integrated energy generation methodologies are renewable and clean energy technologies that have received diverse research and development attentions over the last few decades due to their potential applications in a hydrogen economy. This article systematically updates the state-of-t...

Performance appraisal is one of the key management tools which identifies employees’ strengths and weaknesses. Usually, this is the major mechanism of gathering information for reward-ing/training employees based on their performance, and hence a key to achieve organisational goals by creating a satisfied workforce. Therefore, this study was aimed...

Unitized regenerative proton exchange membrane fuel cell (URPEMFC) performs the functions of an electrolyser and a fuel cell. Currently, power hysteresis effect (PHE) is a key technological challenge for the URPEMFC because it reduces the efficiency of the system as it switches from electrolyser mode to fuel cell mode and vice versa. Here, a modell...

Integrated photovoltaic-fuel cell (IPVFC) systems, amongst other integrated energy generation methodologies are renewable and clean energy technologies that have received diverse research and development attentions over the last few decades due to their potential applications in a hydrogen economy. This article systematically updates the state-of-t...

Unmanned aerial vehicles or drones are becoming one of the key machines/tools of the modern world, particularly in military applications. Numerous research works are underway to explore the possibility of using these machines in other applications such as parcel delivery, construction work, hurricane hunting, 3D mapping, protecting wildlife, agricu...

Energy saving and industrial pollution have become increasingly important issues, therefore the identification and adoption of more energy efficient machines and industrial processes are now industrial priorities, and worthy topics for further development through academic research. Polymeric materials are a major raw material, finding widespread ap...

Over 400 million tonnes of plastics are produced on Earth every year and are the most used materials on the globe. As a result, polymeric material-based waste has been accumulating, and now can be found not only in designated waste tips on land, but also as pollution all over the world. Therefore, it is timely to accelerate global recycling plans t...

Renewable energy is one of the current hot topics in the global energy forum and many of the conventional fossil fuels-based establishments have been replaced with renewable sources over the last few decades. Countries such as China, USA and India have already made huge investments on installing renewable energy infrastructure. Hence, many of these...

A system of transcendental equations (SoTE) is a set of simultaneous equations containing at least a transcendental function. Solutions involving transcendental equations are often problematic, particularly in the form of a system of equations. This challenge has limited the number of equations, with inter-related multi-functions and multi-variable...

The addition of fillers has become a common method of improving the performance of composites. Therefore, many types of fillers are commercially available while several other types are being investigated. The understanding of the effect of additives on the processing and product quality is crucial for manufacturing products economically and with th...

As renewable energy technologies (RETs) replace fossil fuel-based energy systems, the need to address the risks and reliability of emerging RETs suitable for integration into energy infrastructures becomes urgent. The intermittency of renewable energy sources and individual characteristics of the components of RETs are potential causes of power cur...

Thermophotovoltaic (TPV) systems generate electricity without the limitations of radiation intermittency, which is the case in solar photovoltaic systems. As energy demands steadily increase, there is a need to improve the conversion dynamics of TPV systems. Consequently, this study proposes a novel radiation-thermodynamic model to gain insights in...

Polymer extrusion is an important but an energy intensive method of processing polymeric materials. The rapid increase in demand of polymeric products has forced manufactures to rethink their processing efficiencies to manufacture good quality products with low‐unit‐cost. Here, analyzing the operational conditions has become a key strategy to achie...

Modeling and simulation of photovoltaics help to reduce development costs, design turnaround time and facilitates better techno-economic decisions. However, there is a current need to generate new theories, algorithms, applications and software in order to increase the contribution of solar energy to the global energy supply. For future advancement...

Integrated energy systems (IESs) take advantage of the complementarity of their subsystems to improve the overall system functionality, sustainability and performance. Presently, the cost of the recovery of thermodynamic losses from photovoltaic modules has not been addressed. In this study, novel energy and exergy efficiencies enhancement analysis...

Sustainable energy is a current key priority across the globe. Hence, renewable energy sources have been widely accepted as potential substitutes for fossil fuels in the existing energy infrastructures. A recent report showed that photovoltaic power generation constituted around 100 GW out of 2378 GW of the global renewable power capacity installed...

Heat transfer is one of the key aspects of machineries, devices and industrial processes for maintaining their functionality and also for achieving better product quality. Hence, heat exchangers of different types and sizes are used in these applications with the purpose of removing the extra process/device heat to maintain the desirable working te...

Nigeria is the most populous country and the largest economy in the African continent; but its power sector is currently underdeveloped. Remarkably, its economic and energy security depend on dwindling fossil fuel reserves. Yet, the Nigerian landscape experiences an average daily solar intensity of 20.1 MJ/m²/day; and the wind speed across the stat...

Over the years, there have been efforts to understand the thermodynamics of solar cells so that the physics can be better improved. Heat generation in photovoltaic (PV) modules (which contain solar cells for direct electrical energy generation) has been acknowledged in many literatures as a key power degradation parameter. At the moment, an accurat...

In manufacturing industry, process monitoring is a key to observe the product quality, operational health, safety and also for achieving good/satisfactory process control performance. In polymer processing, the level of control of the process operational quality is vastly dependent upon the performance of the process monitoring techniques as it is...

Power generation is one of the major industries or businesses globally. Although, at present, a major attention has been paid towards the sustainable energy technologies, both gas and steam turbines are still heavily used in the power generation sector worldwide. Usually, gas turbines are used to drive an electrical power generator in simple system...

Keynote Presentation

Recent developments of 3D printing changed the ways of industrial manufacturing and have improved the product designs. The Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) printing technology, which is one of the main additive manufacture technologies, is widely used in many fields with multiple materials. It shows a rapid development over the last decade, and hen...

Polymer extrusion is an energy intensive production process and process energy efficiency has become a key concern in the current industry with the pressure of reducing the global carbon footprint. Here, knowledge of the pattern of energy usage and losses of each component in the plant is highly useful in the process energy optimization. Moreover,...

Precise monitoring techniques are invaluable to any process for diagnosing its operational health, safety concerns and also for achieving good process control. In polymer extrusion, it is quite difficult to visually observe the melt inside barrel during the process operation and hence the level of control of the process operational quality is highl...

Gas turbines are one of the most important internal combustion engines in the modern world's transportation. Any possible improvements of the performance of the gas turbine engines would help to minimize the world's annual fossil fuel consumption and hence the emissions of the adverse greenhouse gases. Therefore, modelling and simulation of gas tur...

Due to the predicted scarcity of the fossil fuels and their adverse effects to the environment, currently renewable energy generation is a major focus of the power and energy sector. Wind energy is one of the potential and rapidly growing sources of green energy. This is particularly due to the cost of the wind energy production has reduced by a fa...

Extrusion is a fundamental technique of processing polymeric materials, and the thermal homogeneity of the process melt output is a major concern for high-quality extruded products. Therefore, accurate process thermal monitoring and control are highly invaluable for product quality control. However, most of the industrial extruders use conventional...

Thermal stability is of major importance in polymer extrusion, where product quality is dependent upon the level of melt homogeneity achieved by the extruder screw. Extrusion is an energy intensive process and optimisation of process energy usage while maintaining melt stability is necessary in order to produce good quality product at low unit cost...

In this work, a highly instrumented single screw extruder has been used to study the effect of polymer rheology on the thermal efficiency of the extrusion process. Three different molecular weight grades of high density polyethylene (HDPE) were extruded at a range of conditions. Three geometries of extruder screws were used at several set temperatu...

Polymer extrusion is fundamental to the processing of polymeric materials and melt flow temperature homogeneity is a major factor which influences product quality. Undesirable thermal conditions can cause problems such as melt degradation, dimensional instability, weaknesses in mechanical/optical/geometrical properties, and so forth. It has been re...

Extrusion is one of the fundamental production methods in the polymer processing industry and is used in the production of a large number of commodities in a diverse industrial sector. Being an energy intensive production method, process energy efficiency is one of the major concerns and the selection of the most energy efficient processing conditi...

Melt temperature is one of the key variables in polymer extrusion which determines process thermal stability and hence melt quality. Therefore, melt temperature is commonly measured in polymer processing and point/bulk melt temperature measurement methods are widely used in the present industry. Some thermal profile measurement methods have also be...