======================================================================                   ENGINEERING NEWS IN BRIEF                         E-Mail Newsletter                                No.78              Issued by the Asian TOP Panel, June 2008            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) ======================================================================     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 JSME for the year 2008. ====================================================================== [Contents] 1) Development of the Diesel Hybrid Railcar (Source: JSME) 2) Development of Around View Monitor (Source: JSME) 3) Autonomous Blimp Robots for Information Gathering Systems after Disasters     (Source: JSME) 4) Development of Membrane for Highly-efficient Hydrogen Production from Natural     Gas (Source: JSME) 5) Research of HCCI Combustion Control Using Bio-ethanol (Source: JSME) 6) Automatic Mesh Generation for Fluid and Structural Analysis Based on Cartesian     Mesh (Source: JSME) 7) Development of a High Pressure Micro Jet Precise Cleaning System with Realized     Nonmetallic Liquid Contacting Parts (Source: JSME) 8) Technological Development of Cellulosic-ethanol from Herbaceous Plants     (Source: JSME) 9) Metal Spinning Methods for Non-Axisymmetric Products (Source: JSME) 10) Research of Ductile-mode Cutting for Glass (Source: JSME) 11) Development of Onboard Friction Control System (Source: JSME) 12) Design and Numerical Simulation of Radiation Air-conditioning (Source: CMES) 13) Application of Wavelet Transform for Early-stage Damage Detection      (Source: CMES) 14) Approach for Module Partition of Blocks in Shipbuilding (Source: CMES) 15) Injection Molding for a Ultra Thin-Wall Part using Induction Heating      (Souurce: KSME) 16) Optimization of Dies Angles to Improve the Dimensional Accuracy and      Straightness of the Shaped Drawn Product based on the FE Simulation and the      Taguchi Method  (Source: KSME) 17) An Experimental Study of Heat Transfer Characteristics on the Electronic      Module Arrangement (Source: KSME) ======================================================================== 1) Development of the Diesel Hybrid Railcar     Junji KAWASAKI, Research and Development Center of JR East Group Through the innovation of a propulsion system, and by incorporating hybrid technology, East Japan Railway Company has been working to develop railcars that have lower environmental impact. We have developed the world's first prototype of a hybrid electric-diesel railcar, called the "NE Train (New Energy Train)" and began test runs. The prototype is a single-rail car with an onboard engine that employs a series-hybrid system. This article provides information about the train and the results of test runs to evaluate the performance and energy efficiency of the new system. ======================================================================== 2) Development of Around View Monitor     Masayasu SUZUKI, Satoshi CHINOMI, NISSAN MOTOR CO., LTD. Vehicle-mounted camera systems that serve to assist the driver's outward field of view have become increasingly common in recent years. We have been proceeding with development on "Around View Monitor" system, based on the concept that a system capable of showing the circumstances around a vehicle from a single overhead perspective would give drivers easy-to-understand visual assistance. This system provides the driver with an overhead view of the situation surrounding the vehicle as if looking down at it from above, which is obtained by applying eye-point conversion to images taken with four cameras mounted at the front, rear and on both sides of the host vehicle. In developing the "Around View Monitor" system, there were three issues in particular that were addressed. These were (1) optimization of camera setting parameters, (2) flicker reduction, (3) camera calibration. This paper presents examples of their respective solutions. ======================================================================== 3) Autonomous Blimp Robots for Information Gathering Systems after Disasters     Takanori FUKAO, KOBE UNIVERSITY A surveillance system is required to gather the suffering information in the stricken area safely and quickly after disasters,such as, big earthquakes, tsunami, or terrorism. An autonomous blimp is the best platform among the various unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) for this purpose because of its safety, low-sky availability, duration of a flight,and low noise.The only way to gather the detail information of the wide area is to fly in low altitude. Especially, it is very useful in big cities where many building and people are crowded. Kobe University and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) are developing autonomous blimps which fly in high wind.Currently they can fly in mild wind.They are also making some simulators based on an aerodynamic model.The extension of these blimp systems can be applied to communication stations for victims or investigation platforms for damages of constructions. ======================================================================== 4) Development of Membrane Reformer for Highly-efficient Hydrogen Production from     Natural Gas     Yoshinori SHIRASAKI, Technology Research Institute, Tokyo-Gas Co., Ltd Recently hydrogen energy has been attracting much attention due to its potential to reduce environmental impacts and the viewpoint of energy security. Various kinds of fuel cells are expected to be major technologies for hydrogen utilization, and among them polymer electrolyte fuel cells (PEFC) is probably used widely as a power unit for vehicles, residential co-generation and a power unit for mobile items. Hydrogen production technologies using fossil fuels such as natural gas will be utilized as a bridging energy technology to a hydrogen society in the future. A membrane reformer is composed of a steam reformer equipped with palladium-based alloy membrane modules for hydrogen separation, and can perform steam reforming reaction of natural gas and hydrogen separation processes simultaneously in a single-step process, without shift converters and purification systems. A advanced membrane reformer system with a nominal hydrogen production capacity of 40 Nm3/h has been developed under The New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) program. The developed system has demonstrated the potential advantages of the membrane reformer: simple system configuration due to single-step production of high-purity (99.999% level) hydrogen from natural gas, compactness and high energy efficiency of 76% under the rated operating conditions. ======================================================================== 5) Research of HCCI Combustion Control Using Bio-ethanol    Takahiro GUNJI, HONDA R & D CO., LTD. A sustainable energy system such as that provided by bio-fuel should be established to satisfy the COP3 requirements and confer energy security. Bio-ethanol is one of the most promising alternative fuels for vehicles. For reduction of carbon dioxide emissions, it is important to investigate its ignition quality and the optimum combustion procedure. It is particularly important for the application of bio-ethanol to a homogeneous-charge compression ignition (HCCI) engine to investigate the HCCI combustion characteristics of ethanol. In this study, the inhibiting effects of ethanol on the HCCI combustion were investigated by using a rapid compression machine (RCM). The results indicated that ethanol effectively retarded the hot ignition period of HCCI combustion. And this study has explored the effect of ethanol fuels on HCCI combustion using dual-fuel injection (DFI). The results indicated that DFI had the potential for optimizing ignition timing of HCCI combustion. The HCCI combustion using DFI achieved increasing efficiency compared to conventional SI combustion. ======================================================================== 6) Automatic Mesh Generation for Fluid and Structural Analysis Based on Cartesian     Mesh     Toshiyuki IWAMIYA, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency     Paulus R. Lahur, Research Center of Computational Mechanics The use of numerical simulation is prevailing in engineering design due to the widespread availability of increasingly powerful computers. The simulation usually requires the computational domain be covered with mesh (grid). The accuracy of calculated physical quantities depends on mesh quality. At present, manual labor is still necessary to create a high-quality mesh. This is a bottleneck, especially when a large number of numerical simulations are required, such as in optimization design. To overcome the difficulty, we are developing an automatic mesh generator called "HexaGrid", which is based on Cartesian mesh, and enhanced with prismatic mesh near body surface. Our method is tolerant to defects in triangulated surface definition often found in CAD data, such as small gaps, overlapping elements and intersecting elements. The surface can even be represented as intersecting components. These characteristics make the method robust and suitable for design environment. ======================================================================== 7) Development of a High Pressure Micro Jet Precise Cleaning System with Realized     Nonmetallic Liquid Contacting Parts     Yoshiyuki SEIKE, Asahi Sunac Corporation A high pressure micro jet cleaning system, which is used to clean physically by spraying pure water or cleaning liquid out of the high pressure section at mega-pascal (MPa) level, has gotten good fame in the production field of electronic devices like semiconductors and liquid crystal panels with its high cleanability, reliability, economy and environmental protection. Recently, however, the production of more precise electric devices requires higher quality of cleaning liquid than ever. Especially, metallic ingredients in the pure water have to be controlled at ng/L (PPT) level. Usually the high pressure micro jet cleaning system bearing high pressure liquid of mega-pascal level is composed of stainless steal materials (SUS316) to secure pressure durability. But now, in order to comply with such requirement to regulate metallic ingredients in spray pure water at the ng/L level keeping high pressure durability, we have developed new high pressure micro jet cleaning system in which all liquid contacting parts are made of nonmetallic materials. ======================================================================== 8) Technological Development of Cellulosic-ethanol from Herbaceous Plants     Masaki UEYAMA, HONDA R&D CO.,LTD Honda aimes to utilize only inedible parts of plants for ethanol, leaving edible parts for food use, so that biomass needed for ethanol does not compete with food.For the production of cellulosic ethanol, lignin has to be removed first, for it surrounds cellulose, and emicellulose, with strong bonding.Cellulose and hemicellulose are decomposed into glucose, xylose and other sugars. These sugars are then converted to ethanol by microbes.Technical obstacle lies in fore-mentioned lignin-removal process that consumes a great deal of energy, involving heat and pressure. Also, some chemical substances, generated during this process act as another barrier, inhibiting growth of ethanol-producing-microbes.The main challenge for the implementation of cellulosic ethanol being the reduction of energy consumption and yield increase, Honda will take a step forward to solve these problems, in order for practical application of renewable and sustainable energy. ======================================================================== 9) Metal Spinning Methods for Non-Axisymmetric Products     Hirohiko ARAI,     National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) Metal spinning is a plastic forming process that forms a metal sheet by forcing the metal onto a rotating mandrel using a roller tool. Products formed by metal spinning have been inherently limited to round shapes. This article introduces two metal spinning methods to form non-axisymmetric products, i.e., force-controlled metal spinning and synchronized metal spinning. In force-controlled metal spinning, a non-axisymmetric mandrel of a desired shape is used. The pushing force of the roller is regulated so that the roller can track the changing radius of the mandrel. A novel metal spinning machine has been developed in which the roller is directly driven by linear motors. The roller can quickly follow the contour of the mandrel, and the forming time of non-axisymmetric products is significantly reduced. Another method for forming non-axisymmetric products is synchronized metal spinning. The radial displacement of the roller is controlled according to the rotation angle of the work piece. The path of the contact point between the roller and the work traces the desired cross-section shape. This method is especially effective in forming non-axisymmetric tubes since no mandrel is necessary. ======================================================================== 10) Research of Ductile-mode cutting for Glass     Tamotsu IIZUKA, Japan Society for the Promotion of Machine Industry In this report, it explains the outline of basic experiments concerning the ductile mode cutting of glass that uses the facing and the fly cutting Facing was applied to an optical glass disk (BK7) by using the ultra-precision lathe. The result of the experiment realized that surfaces couldn't find machined grooves with the naked eye (Ra 1.9nm). In case of using the diamond tool, that tool's flank wear was about 0.03mm at cutting distance about 6m.In nitrogen atmosphere and argon gas atmosphere, flank wear was decreased and cutting distance was increased. The cutting distance of the Binder-less cBN tool is 13.3m, without any wear marks in the relief face. So the Binder-less cBN has higher wear-resistant ability than the diamond in ductile-mode cutting of optical glass BK7. Fly cutting is an effective technique to the high efficiency processing of the glass because it can make ductile-mode cutting when the amount of the depth of cut is larger than the turning. To verify the ability of the fly cutting, straight grooving was done to the soda lime glass with the carbide tool. As a result, a ductile-mode cutting without the chipping was done and the depth of cut was 15m(Ra 0.1~0.5μm). Next step of this study is to improve the surface roughness. ======================================================================== 11) Development of Onboard Friction Control System     Takuji NAKAI, Sumitomo Metal Industries, Ltd. For railway engineers, controlling the friction between wheel and rail is direct and very effective measures to improve the curving performances of railway trucks, because the curving performances depend much on friction characteristics. In order to realize an effective friction control system, a joint develop group which consists of the University of Tokyo, Tokyo Metro and Sumitomo Metal Industries have proposed a method, "onboard friction control", which utilizes friction modifier (KELTRACKTM HPF ) with onboard spraying system. Newly developed onboard friction control system has been equipped to some commercial train of Tokyo Metro. Field running test showed decrease of lateral force of wheel, squeal noise and acceleration of rail. As an advanced control of friction, a feed back control system detecting yaw moment of bogie has been tested and showed a good agreement with coefficient of friction. With this method, not only friction coefficient, but also friction characteristics can be controlled as expected. ======================================================================== 12) Design and Numerical Simulation of Radiation Air-conditioning     Gao Pan, Zhao Li     School of Mechanical Engineering, Tianjin University A radiation air-conditioning is designed in order to make people feel more comfortable. A radiation board is used to replace the fan in conventional air-conditioning. For a normal indoor room, heat equilibrium equations are obtained with radiation and natural convection. A room of 20�u is set as an example, and the size and the surface temperature of the radiation board is designed in order to meet the usual refrigeration and heating load of the room. The computational fluid dynamics method is used to simulate the temperature field and the velocity field in the room with different heat exchanger ways (the radiation board and the fan of conventional air-conditioning). Comparing the calculating results with different heat exchanger ways, it is founded that the temperature and velocity fields are more homogeneous in the room with the radiation air-conditioning, and its superiority is proved. Key words: Radiation air-conditioning; Design; Numerical simulation ============================================================ 13) Application of Wavelet Transform for Early-stage Damage Detection     Gao Shunde, Tang Yonggang, Wang Xin     School of Mechanical Engineering, Dalian University of Technology The wavelet transform technique is employed for early-stage damage detection. Accordingly, the wavelet transform is then validated to detect structural damage via simulation testing. The damage can be positioned based on the maximal modulus regarding continuous wavelet transform (CWT) coefficient or detailed signal regarding discrete wavelet transform (DWT), i. e. the static or dynamic singularity. In this method, either static or dynamic response signal from damaged structure, rather than undamaged structure, is required for this purpose. Through instantaneous and dynamic signal sampling, this method is used for the finite element (FE) modeling of cracked cantilever to accurately detect the cracking position and quantity. Compared with the traditional methods, this approach possesses feasible, economic and precise strengths. Consequently, the proposed wavelet transform method is proven effective for early-stage structural damage detection. Key words: Wavelet; Cantilever; Damage detection ============================================================ 14) Approach for Module Partition of Blocks in Shipbuilding     Teng Xiaoyan, Kong Fankai, Zhang Jiatai     College of Mechanical Electrical Engineering, Harbin Engineering University To manage the complexities of hull module partitions, a new approach to the partitions of hierarchical modules for shipbuilding is proposed. Based on the assembly and manufacture process, the approach determines the hierarchy and basis of the module partition first, and then according to the type of connection between the parts of the block module, the degree of membership for the rational connection is gained and the fuzzy relation matrix between different parts is then established. They fuzzy clustering technique is used to partition the modules, and then the method of fuzzy comprehensive assessment is used to choose a relative reasonable scheme. Case study proves that the approach is feasible and applicable; especially it obtains the sub-module partition, which sets up the shipbuilding process at a higher-level assembly and has offered effective tools for the modular ship design. Key words: Modular shipbuilding; Module partition; Assembly manufacture; Fuzzy cluster; Fuzzy comprehensive assessment ============================================================ 15) Injection Molding for a Ultra Thin-Wall Part using Induction Heating     Keun Park, Sun Choi, Se Jik Lee, Young Seog Kim,     Seoul National University of Technology Rapid mold heating has been recent issue to enable the injection molding of thin-walled parts or micro/nano structures. Induction heating is an efficient way to heat material by means of an electric current that is caused to flow through the material or its container by electromagnetic induction. It has various applications such as heat treatment, brazing, welding, melting, and mold heating. The present study covers an experimental investigation of induction heating in order to rapidly raise the mold temperature. It is observed that the mold surface temperature is raised up to 200℃ in 2 seconds. This induction heating is applied to injection molding of a flexspline for a plastic harmonic drive, which has difficulty in cavity filling because its minimum thickness is only 0.35 �o. The induction heating is then successfully implemented on this ultrathin wall molding by raising the mold surface temperature around the glass-transition temperature of the molding material. Key words: Induction Heating, Eddy Current, Injection Molding, Thin Wall Molding, Flexspline ============================================================ 16) Optimization of Dies Angles to Improve the Dimensional Accuracy and     Straightness of the Shaped Drawn Product based on the FE Simulation and the     Taguchi Method     Sang-Kon Lee, Jae-Eun Lee, Byung-Min Kim, Pusan National University Recently, rods having irregular sections more complex than a rectangle or ellipse are necessary to produce mechanical parts. The cold shaped drawing process is used to obtain shaped drawn products with high levels of dimensional accuracy and quality. A cross roller guide, considered in this study, is one of the parts produced by shaped drawing process. A cross roller guide has a linear bearing system that rolls along a guide way. A cross roller guide is one of the most important components in terms of equipment because the quality of the product influences the precision linear motion. Therefore, the final dimensional accuracy of the linear rail in the shaped drawing is very important. The objective of this study is to find the optimized die angles to improve the dimensional accuracy and straightness of the final shaped drawn product. In order to achieve the aim of this study, design of experiment, FE-simulation, and the Taguchi method were used. Based on the analytical results, shaped drawing experiment has been performed to verify the result. Key words: Shaped Drawn Product, Dies Angle, Dimensional Accuracy, Design of Experiment, FE-Simulation, Taguchi Method ============================================================ 17) An Experimental Study of Heat Transfer Characteristics on the Electronic Module     Arrangement     Dae Hee Lee, Dae Keun Lee, Yoon Seok Cha, Jun Sik Lee, Inje University Heat transfer from three-dimensional heat-generating modules was investigated. Simulated electronic module in an array configured with dummy module elements were used to measure the average heat transfer coefficients. Various module arrangements were tested using module spacings of 0.85 and 1.15 �p for six Reynolds numbers ranging from 500 to 975. The results show that a module placed in-line with and upstream of a heated module results in the heat transfer enhancement due to high turbulence intensity prompted by upstream modules. The highest enhancement occurs when the separation distance between modules is close to the module length in the flow direction. The laminar flow was observed on the front of the first module, slow recirculation regions on the sides parallel to the airstream, and turbulent flow on the backside. It appears that the first module serves to trip the air stream and produce a high level of turbulence, which enhances the heat transfer rate downstream. Key Words: Electronic Module, Flow Separation, Heat Transfer Enhancement, Nusselt Number, Reynolds Number ============================================================ Editor : 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 2008 The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers URL:http//www.jsme.or.jp [English Version]

 

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