ENGINEERING NEWS IN BRIEF

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                  ENGINEERING NEWS IN BRIEF
                        E-Mail Newsletter

                               No.22
             Issued by the Asian TOP Panel, October 2003

           The Chinese Mechanical Engineering Society (CMES)
           The Institution of Engineers, Indonesia (PII)
           The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers (JSME)
           The Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers (KSME)

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About the Asian TOP Panel (ATOP)
    On August 29, 2001, presidents of four engineering societies gathered　
in Japan to pave the way for stepped-up collaboration. They are Chinese
Mechanical Engineering Society, Institution of Engineers Indonesia,
Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers, and Korean Society of Mechanical
Engineers.
    They agreed to establish the Asian TOP Panel (ATOP), which is a　
voluntary body and open to any Asian engineering society and
institution. At the first meeting, they decided to issue monthly E-mail
newsletter which you are reading now. It will carry short technical news
of Asian countries, and be distributed to all individual members of the
ATOP societies and institutions.
    ATOP will meet every two years. The next meeting will be held in
Korea in 2003.

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[Contents]

(1) S. Korean Company to Set up Plant in China (Source : CMES)
(2) European Gas Heater Manufacturers Eye Chinese Market
     (Source : CMES)
(3) Bosch's New Plant (Source : CMES)
(4) Toyota gears up on engine-making factory (Source : CMES)
(5) High-Power Micropump Using Inertia Effect of Fluid (Source : JSME)
(6) A Prediction Method of the Sound Source Contribution to
    Environmental Noise around a Steel Railway Bridge (Source : JSME)
(7) High-Performance Fiber-Reinforced Composite Materials with Braided
    Fabric (Source : JSME)

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(1) S. Korean Company to Set up Plant in China (Source : CMES)

S. Korea Hyosung Company that holds 60 per cent market shares of heavy
electric machines in S. Korea recently signed a cooperative agreement
with China's largest transformer manufacturer - the Baoding Tianwei
Company for the setting up of a plant with an annual output of 11
thousand sets of 3000 MVA distribution transformers. The project has a
total investment of US$10.34 million, 35 per cent of which is contributed by
the Hyosung Company, and 25 per cent by the Spandex Fibre Company
(Jiaxing City), one of Hyosung's legal persons in China.
Both sides plan to set up the Baoding Hyosung Tianwei Transformer
Co., Ltd. in October, and construct the plant in November. The project is
scheduled to launch into official production at the end of 2004.

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(2) European Gas Heater Manufacturers Eye Chinese Market
     (Source : CMES)

European manufacturers of individual gas heating systems are pinning
high hopes on the booming Chinese market as the country sees rapid
economic growth and greater awareness of environmental protection.
China's ongoing project to build a 4,000-kilometer cross-country gas
pipeline has further encouraged European companies who have occupied
50 percent of the Chinese market in less than five years, defeating their
Republic of Korea rivals who entered China in the mid-1990s.
A total of 120,000 individual gas heating systems are sold in China
annually, with sales of more than 600 million yuan (73 million US
dollars). Most are imported, but in recent years, Sino-foreign joint
ventures have begun to manufacture the heaters in China, while some
local companies are producing the products with foreign technology.
Representatives from 12 European companies and Chinese experts and
officials attended the European Individual Gas Heating System
Symposium, which was sponsored by the Sino-French Professional
Training Center on Energy.
The European companies are Ariston, C&M, Hermman, Aereco, Bosch,
De Dietrich, Immergas, Beritta, Buderus, Frisquet, Rettig, and Wilo.

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(3) Bosch's New Plant (Source : CMES)

Robert Bosch GmbH will invest 600 million euros (US$675 million) to
set up an auto parts plant in China, China Business reported, citing
company officials. The sum equals the total amount Bosch has invested
in China in the past. The plant, to be located in the eastern province
of Jiangsu, will have annual sales of 1 billion euros and will become
Bosch's global production center for fuel injection pumps.

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(4) Toyota gears up on engine-making factory (Source : CMES)

Japanese car-maker Toyota will soon establish an engine-production
facility here.
An official from the Automobile Office under Guangzhou City Government
revealed that the project would soon be approved by the central
authorities.
The facility will be able to produce more than 500,000 car engines
annually, the official said. And most of the engines will be sold to
Southeast Asia when it starts production in the following years.
The Toyota project would settle in Guangzhou within the year.
Guangzhou would try to boost its automobile-part industry as
Guangzhou's whole car production has geared up to the large scale.
Early this year, Guangzhou Automobile Office signed a letter of intent
with Toyota to jointly set up a whole car production facility in the
city's Nansha Development Zone, which is situated at the mouth of the
Pearl River.
The whole car production facility is expected to be a joint venture
between the Toyota and Guangzhou Automobile Group. The joint venture
will produce both economy and luxury sedan cars.
The Toyota project will become the third Japanese whole car production
facility in Guangzhou. The city has attracted another two big name
Japanese car producers- Honda and Nissan.
Toyota's Guangzhou production facility is expected to help the
carmaker reach its goal of grabbing 10 per cent of China's automobile
market.
Toyota is expected to produce and sell between 300,000 and 400,000
cars in China annually in the wake of 2010.
But Toyota will meet fierce competition from other Japanese carmakers
in the southern Chinese region.
Guangzhou Honda Automobile, a 50-50 joint venture between Guangzhou
Automobile Group and Honda Company, is expected to produce more
than 70,000 cars this year and will reach a production capacity of more
than 200,000 next year.
Guangzhou Nissan is another 50-50 operation between the State-run
Dongfeng Motor and Japan's Nissan Motor. The first sedan car of the
16.7-billion-yuan(US$2 billion) joint venture rolled off the assembly
line in June.
The Nissan production facility is designed to reach an annual
capacity of more than 200,000 cars within three to five years.
And Honda also has a production facility which is now under
construction in Guang-zhou.

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(5) High-Power Micropump Using Inertia Effect of Fluid (Source : JSME)

    Takeshi SETO
    Seiko Epson Corporation

　Fluid actuators used in oil and water hydraulics are light in weight
and high in force generation. Moreover they do not consume energy for
maintaining force. A small but high output fluid power source is
indispensable for realization of fluid actuator for the robot finger
or the micromachine.
Although the high energy density multilayered piezoelectric element
is effective as a driving element to realize small but powerful fluid
actuator, displacement is rather limited. However, providing a
displacement magnifier mechanism leads to complicated structure and
large size, resulting in decrease of driving frequency.
　We propose a novel micropump provided with a pipeline element
generating fluid inertia effect in place of check valve of outlet as
a new means producing more flow rate without a displacement magnifier
mechanism. The volumetric efficiency of the pump exceeds 100% with a
simple structure.
The fabricated pump with height of 17 mm and volume of 2.3 cm^3
attained maximum fluid output power of 302 mW and maximum power
density of 131 mW/cm^3. The power density is one order higher than
the conventional high-power micropump using resonance drive.

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(6) A Prediction Method of the Sound Source Contribution to
    Environmental Noise around a Steel Railway Bridge (Source : JSME)

    Mitsuaki ODA
　　Kawasaki Heavy Industries, LTD.

It is very important to know the sound source contribution to
environmental noise in taking a countermeasure. This article describes
a method for predicting the radiation sound power induced by structural
vibration and the traveling sound power of a train running on a steel
bridge. The former is predicted by using Statistical Energy Analysis
method and measured vibration data of the brigde girder. The later is
estimated by using both measured sound level near the bridge and the
above predicted structure borne noise.
Proposed method was used to reduce the environmental noise around an
existing steel railway bridge with open floor and a new designed steel
bride with closed floor.

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(7) High-Performance Fiber-Reinforced Composite Materials with Braided
    Fabric (Source : JSME)

    Tadashi UOSUMI
　　Murata Machinery, Ltd.

Fiber-reinforced composite materials are used in various fields such
as aerospace industries to sport industries due to its character of
ultra lightness, high strength and high-modulus.
However, in the most production process of the composite materials
there remains manual procedure that relied on the personal experience
in quality.
Therefore it is required to develop a new production process to spread
the application of the composite materials.
Braiding is one of the textile techniques for fabricating preforms of
the composite materials.
Braided composites indicate superior mechanical properties, as
reinforcing fibers in a braid are oriented continuously without
cutting them.
The other advantage of the braiding is the flexibility of the design
of the rigidity distribution.
However, to produce the braided composites as the industrial products,
the production by the conventional batch method is not practical and
it is required to develop a new commercial production method.　

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Editor: Chisachi Kato, International Affairs Committee
Published by The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
Shinanomachi-Rengakan Bldg, Shinanomachi 35,
Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 160-0016, Japan

FAX : 81-3-5360-3508
All Rights Reserved, Copyright C 2003
The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
URL:http//www.jsme.or.jp/English/