The Dress Code for Muslim Women: A Linguistic Analysis of the Qurānic Verses and the Prophetic Traditions

It is not uncommon to find cases of Muslim women being harassed or bullied in many of the Muslim-minority countries because of their dress. These Islamophobic attacks, unfortunately, are not merely conducted by radicalised individuals; but the subjugation of the rights of Muslim women also comes from institutional bodies and governments. Secular nations, such as France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Bulgaria, Switzerland, USA, UK, Canada, China, and Russia have either imposed restrictions on Muslim women regarding their dress code. They see veil as a non-acceptance of progressive or cumulative values which is unsurprisingly not welcomed by the Muslim community. In such environment, it is inevitable for the Muslims to understand what the Qur’ān and Sunnah really say about the dress code for Muslim women in order to explain what their religion really requires from them and to communicate it appropriately to the government officials, journalists, politicians, and other relevant stakeholders. It is also essential from the perspective of segregating cultural aspects from the religious aspects. Many of the commonly used words for the dressing of Muslim women are more rooted in culture than the religion. It is accordingly vital to understand what the Qur’ān and Sunnah really command about the women dressing and how it has been interpreted in various Islamic societies and cultures. This paper accordingly presents an analysis of all the relevant Qur’ānic verses and the prophetic traditions (from the 6 most renowned books of ahadith). The linguistic analysis employed in this paper results in the identification of items of dress that were worn by Muslim women to safeguard their modesty during the times of Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ). The same principles are relevant for today’s age and time and the Muslims can use those guidelines to delineate cultural practices from the religious injunctions.

Optimal Design of a Coreless Axial Flux Permanent Magnet Synchronous Generator for the Wind Power Generation

Renewable power generation from wind and solar are gaining popularity to overcome energy crisis nowadays. A lot of advancement has been focused on wind power generation instead of fossil fuels that are degrading to the environment since last two decades in order to increase electricity generation, efficiency improvement, reliability and cost reduction. The generator used in windmill can be an induction generator (IG), synchronous generator (SG), doubly fed induction generator (DFIG), radial flux permanent magnet synchronous generator (RFPMSG) and axial flux permanent magnet synchronous generator (AFPMSG). Furthermore, due to the variable speed of wind turbine, a fully rated power converter handles the extracted energy in direct drive systems or a coupled geared system. However, with geared system, the cost of the overall system increased a lot and proved to be rather less reliable. In this regard, AFPMSG are most suitable for the direct drive applications due to its disc shape structure. The design of AFPMSG is derived from the design of RFPMSG. By using the desired value of parameters like power, speed, efficiency, number of phases, frequency, rated voltage and by taking some assumptions, inner and outer diameter of the rotors can be computed using sizing equation. Furthermore, in order to get balance three phase output and suitable winding factor a proper combination of the coils and poles is required. A 1 kW dual rotor single coreless stator AFPMSG, with concentrated winding is designed by using sizing equation in this research work. In order to analyze the characteristics of an electric machine analytical method formed on the solution of Maxwell equations and Finite Element Method (FEM) are used. The FEM results are more reliable as compared to the analytical method. However, FEM take long computation time as compared with the analytical method. This thesis presents a 2D analytical method to calculate the no load voltage of the coreless dual rotor AFPMSG. Furthermore, to decrease the no load voltage total harmonic distortion (VTHD), initial model of the coreless AFPMSG is optimized by using the developed analytical method. The back EMF obtained by using the 2-D analytical method is confirmed by time stepped 3-D FEM for both the initial and xi optimized models. Finally, VTHD, torque ripple and output torque are compared for the initial and optimized models by using the 3-D FEM. It is demonstrated that the VTHD and torque ripples of the optimized model are reduced as compared to the initial model. Optimization by utilizing the 2-D analytical method reduces the optimization time to less than a minute. Furthermore, an AFPMSG model to reduce torque ripple is presented in this thesis. The proposed model uses arc-shaped trapezoidal PMs. The proposed model reduced cogging torque and torque ripple at the expense of lower average torque. Time stepped 3-D FEM is performed and the results are compared with the conventional model. It is demonstrated that the torque ripple of the proposed model is reduced as compared with the conventional model. To further improve the performance of the designed machine with proposed magnet shape, it''s PM shape is optimized. The Latin Hyper Cube Sampling (LHS), Kriging Method and Genetic Algorithm (GA) are introduced and employed in the proposed machine for the optimization. Asymmetric magnet overhang, interpolar separation of PMs and axial height of PMs are considered as the design variable for the optimization. The volume of the PMs is kept equal to the conventional shape magnet volume during optimization. It is demonstrated that the torque ripple of the optimized model is reduced and the average torque is increased as compared with the conventional and proposed models. The optimized model shows improvement in terms of the quality of the torque along with average output torque. The proposed coreless AFPMSG presents a suitable alternative to meet increasing energy demand as compared to the conventional AFPMSG due to its reduced cogging torque and torque ripple and increased output power and torque. The research work presented in this thesis seems to be an attractive option in the field of axial flux machine to be utilized for wind power applications.