ENGINEERING NEWS IN BRIEF

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                  ENGINEERING NEWS IN BRIEF
                        E-Mail Newsletter

                               No.30
             Issued by the Asian TOP Panel, June 2004

           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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    According to the agreement made in the 2nd Asian TOP Panel Meeting,
the ENGINEERING NEWS IN BRIEF (E-mail newsletter) has now been edited
by the KSME for the year 2004.

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[Contents]

(1) Material Handling China 2004 (Source: CMES)
(2) Schuler Group Making Further Investment in China (Source: CMES)
(3) 2005 IDPT Conference (Source: CMES)
(4) Fabrication of 3-D shape by use of focused ion beam (Source: JSME)
(5) Research Group on Engineering in Medicine and Biology at the
    Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo- The Way
    Technological Minds Explore Biomechanisms (Source : JSME)
(6) A New Way to Manufacture Ultra Light Metal Structures
    (Source : KSME)
(7) Assessment of Image Registration for Pressure-Sensitive Paint
    (Source : KSME)

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(1) Material Handling China 2004 (Source: CMES)

Sponsored by the Chinese Mechanical Engineering Society (CMES),
Material Handling China 2004 was held at Shanghai Everbright
Convention & Exhibition Center on June 8-11, 2004. Over 300 exhibitors
from 17 countries and regions participated in it. With floor space of
12,000 sqm, 20% up in its area than last year, the show attracted
20,000 visitors. Among them, over 300 people came from overseas.
Japanese Material Handling Society lead a delegation to the show. They
also brought some Japanese exhibitors there.
During the show time, the 5th Material Handling Engineering Forum was
held at Shanghai Everbright International Hotel, on June 9-10, 2004.
With the theme of "Advanced Material Handling Equipment & Application
Technology", experts from high education, industrial sectors,
government department concerned and foreign professional organizations
delivered presentations at the forum. Vice President of Material
Handling Industry of America, Mr. Ward, introduced the industry status
in USA. There were about 100 attendees being present.

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(2) Schuler Group Making Further Investment in China (Source: CMES)

Schuler Group, member of the visiting German mission to the "2004
Beijing International Automotive Exhibition", recently announced in
Beijing that it would expand its production capacity in China by
spending 100 million euros in building a second branch plant in
Taichang, Jiangsu province. The new branch plant to be inaugurated on
June 11 reportedly covers a land area (for phase one project) of
15,000 square meters and is mainly devoted to producing rolling
bearings, wheel components and auto-driving components. The whole
project will be completed for production in 2006.

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(3) 2005 IDPT Conference (Source: CMES)

The Eight World Conference on Integrated Design & Process Technology
sponsored by Society for Design & Process Science (SDPS), Chinese
Mechanical Engineering Society (CMES), Software Engineering Society
(SES) George Kozmetsky Endowment (GKE) and The Academy of
Transdisciplinary Learning & Advanced Studies ( TheATLAS) will be
held on June 13-17, 2005 in Beijing, China.
The theme of the conference is: the future of software engineering
in the network world.
The main topics of the year 2005 IDPT Conference are:
Safety critical systems; Component technologies; Software Agent
technologies; Distributed intelligent system; Distributed sensor
system and network, Telework and enterprise engineering; Mobile
computing, Software Architectures; Telecommunications; Healthcare
engineering; Electronic Commerce and Web Technology; Computer and
Software Engineering; Design and Process Engineering and Science;
Integrated Design and Manufacturing; General Design, Business process
Re-engineering and Science; Process Management and Improvement,
Information Systems Engineering; Data Warehouse Technology; Technology
Transfer and High Pressure Technology and Science.

The deadline for the paper is:
abstract submissions due    October 15, 2004
full paper submission due   February 11, 2005
final acceptance            February 28, 2005
final manuscript due        March 11, 2005

For more information please visit www.cmes.org

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(4) Fabrication of 3-D shape by use of focused ion beam (Source: JSME)

    Hiroyuki NOGUCHI, Masao MURAKAWA
    Research and development center for advanced materials and
    technology
    Nippon Institute of Technology

Diamond is believed to be a suitable candidate material for micro-
and nanotechnology due to its extreme hardness. However, this very
property of diamond also makes its processing very difficult. More
specifically, processing of diamond by grinding with fine powder of
diamond itself is indeed possible if the grinding shape is a planar
one, but the processing of diamond into a 3-D shape by grinding is
very difficult.
Furthermore, in the case of diamond processing by means of ion
milling, the shape is limited to a 2.5-D one and the processing speed
is very low as well. The use of a focused ion beam (FIB) device could
be an alternative means for processing diamond. It has been generally
used as a means for preparing specimen materials for electron
microscopy by sectional cutting along a certain area of the material
or slicing the material into very thin flakes ranging from 50 nm to
100 nm in thickness. Although FIB device technology has been
advancing in that the device can now deal with nanometer sizes due to
the very fine diameter of the ion beam, it is not, generally speaking,
very suitable for precision processing of 3-D shapes.
We have recently developed an FIB device which has been designed to
enable the precision processing of diamond into 3-D body shapes.
This has been made possible by the introduction of various additional
features of the device for precision 3-D processing of any kind of
specimen including even the hardest material, diamond. The features
of the device include: a U-centric mechanism whereby we can retain
the focused point on the specimen even when the specimen is inclined;
processing capability of any configuration on a plane; processing
using bit map data; controllability of irradiation period of each
single beam.
These combined features render the device optimally suitable for use
as a tool for fabrication, e.g., micromachines of any 3-D shape
fabricated of any material including diamond. We demonstrated several
fancy demonstrations of diamond single crystal and very thick DLC
having a 3-D configuration, which are made possible for the first time
by the use of this sophisticated FIB device.

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(5) Research Group on Engineering in Medicine and Biology at the
    Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo- The Way
    Technological Minds Explore Biomechanisms (Source : JSME)

    Teruo FUJII
    Institute of Industrial Science
    The University of Tokyo

Since the interdisciplinary area has been rapidly spreading out over
engineering and biotechnology research field, it is important to
discuss the applicability of the well-established engineering
discipline to the bio-related research fields. Some challenging
research projects, such as biomimetic approach in organic synthesis,
studies on hybrid tissues and organs, etc. have been already launched
at the Institute of Industrial Science (IIS), The University of Tokyo.
Moreover, the advanced technologies incubated at IIS, such as
microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), electronics device technology,
and computational fluid dynamics are seeking for new applications in
the bio-related field.
A Research Group on Engineering in Medicine and Biology (RG-EMB) was
organized in 1999 to explore the frontiers of engineering in the
field of medicine and biology focusing on the fundamental
relationships between shapes and functions in biological components.
A novel engineering discipline for elucidation and utilization of
such fundamentals should be established through the activities of the
group.

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(6) A New Way to Manufacture Ultra Light Metal Structures
    (Source : KSME)

Prof. Ki-Ju Kang of Chonnam National University reported a new way to
construct an ultra light structure in the recent issue of KSME
Transactions (Vol. 28, no. 3). The ultra metal structure with
periodic and three dimensional truss elements takes attention because
of its multi-functionality and substantial heat resistance. However,
the complicated fabrication process leading to high cost has been a
major obstacle to wide applications. A new idea for constructing an
ultra light structure with periodic, three dimensional truss is based
on the use of metal wires. To prove the practical validity, a
Kagome-like structure was fabricated from stamped wires and punched
face sheets. It was assembled by soldering. Through three-point
bending and compression tests, the strength was evaluated and compared
with the theory.

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(7) Assessment of Image Registration for Pressure-Sensitive Paint
    (Source: KSME)

Prof. Hyung Jin Sung of KAIST recently published a paper on the
pressure measurement technique using pressure sensitive paint (KSME
Transactions Vol. 28, no. 3). Assessment of image registration for
Pressure Sensitive Paint (PSP) was performed. A 16 bit camera and LED
lamp were used with Uni-FIB paint (ISSI). Because of model
displacement and deformation at "wind-on" condition, a large error
of the intensity ratio was induced between "wind-on" and "wind-off"
images. To correct the error, many kinds of image registrations were
tested. At first, control points were marked on the model surface to
find the coefficients of polynomial transform functions between the
"wind-off" images. The 2nd-order polynomial function was sufficient
for representing the model displacement and deformation. An automatic
detection scheme was introduced to find the exact coordinates of the
control points. The proposed automatic detection algorithm showed
more accurate and user-friendly than the manual detection algorithm.
Since the coordinates of transformed pixel were not integer, five
interpolation methods were applied to get the exact pixel intensity
after transforming the "wind-on" image. Among these methods, the
cubic convolution interpolation scheme gave the best result.

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Editor : Professor Mansoo Choi of Seoul National University,
           Director of General Affairs, KSME
           ksme@ksme.or.kr