Aero-Engine Business and Material Technologies in Japan

Recent Trends of Manufacturing Technology in Japan

Japan Society of Civil Engineers (JSCE) established the Civil Engineering Heritage Award in 2000 to preserve a historical civil engineering project by honoring a Civil Engineering inheritance. About 20 projects have been selected yearly based on recommendations or their application. To overview water projects and technologies in Japan, water-related projects among 448 total recipients of the JSCE Civil Engineering Heritage Award until 2020 are chosen and analyzed to discuss their characteristics concerning project type, time, and location. Among the remarkable features in the field of hydraulic engineering are the notable contributions of Dutch engineers employed during the early stage of the Meiji Era.

Friction Stir Welding (FSW) is the most remarkable welding technology that has been invented and developed in last decade. It made it possible to join a number of light metals that were previously believed difficult to weld in a reliable manner, i.e. without defects including distortion. This summarising report tries to clarify the recent trend of this new technology in Japan. It reveals that the Japanese industry has a strong development potential, particularly in the field of practical applications. Examples of practical products are the rolling stock industry, automobile industry, shipbuilding and aircraft.. Major research works are concentrated on the clarification of the mechanical properties for the particular products. General agreements of their results showed that static and fatigue strengths were distributed between base metal and MIG properties of aluminium. Fundamental research work is also carried out to investigate heat input estimation, microstructural characterisation during FSW and motion of metal using dissimilar aluminium plate combinations including process tolerance.

This study examines whether domestic competition enhances competitiveness in international markets for Japanese manufacturing industries. The study analyzes the effects of competition in Japanese industries, measured as the price–cost margin compared to that in US industries, on export and output market shares in OECD countries. The results show that relative price–cost margins negatively affect both export and output market shares, suggesting that competition contributes to international competitiveness. In addition, high-tech industries in Japan are more likely to have strong competitiveness in international markets in terms of both export and output market shares. The implications of the findings are discussed.

Transfer of environmentally sound technologies from japan to china

Now in its third edition, Jet Propulsion offers a self-contained introduction to the aerodynamic and thermodynamic design of modern civil and military jet engine design. Through two-engine design projects for a large passenger and a new fighter aircraft, the text explains modern engine design. Individual sections cover aircraft requirements, aerodynamics, principles of gas turbines and jet engines, elementary compressible fluid mechanics, bypass ratio selection, scaling and dimensional analysis, turbine and compressor design and characteristics, design optimization, and off-design performance. The civil aircraft, which formed the core of Part I in the previous editions, has now been in service for several years as the Airbus A380. Attention in the aircraft industry has now shifted to two-engine aircraft with a greater emphasis on reduction of fuel burn, so the model created for Part I in this edition is the new efficient aircraft, a twin aimed at high efficiency.

Friction Stir Welding is the most remarkable welding technology that has been invented and developed in last decade. It made it possible to join a number of light metals that were previously believed difficulties to get reliable welds without defects including distortion. This summarizing report tried to clarify the recent trend of this novel technology in Japan. It reveals that Japan industry may have the most active potentials of developments in the world, particularly in the field of practical applications.

The specifics of the historical development of the Japanese gaming industry are considered. A periodization of the history of the gaming industry in Japan is proposed, a description of its main stages is presented: the emergence in the 1970s, access to foreign markets in the 1980s, stagnation and crisis of the 1990-2000s, the global triumph of the 2010s. It is proved that it was accelerated economic development and a high standard of living that allowed Japan to switch to the consumption of such a product as video games. The complex of historical, economic and sociocultural factors that provided Japanese companies with competitive advantages in the global video game market was identified and analyzed. Particular attention is paid to the impact of information and communication technologies on these processes. The role of the American factor in the formation and development of the gaming industry in Japan, as well as in the promotion of Japanese gaming products to foreign markets is disclosed. The constructive potential of the Japanese practice of intersectoral cooperation of game industry companies with large industrial giants and with representatives of the art sphere is shown. It is noted that the involvement in the gaming industry of highly qualified specialists from the entertainment industry (anime and manga) allowed shifting the emphasis from the technological aspects of video games to their content, genre diversity and plot content. The authors come to the conclusion that the historical experience of the gaming industry in Japan indicates the significant role of this industry in the economic and social development of modern states.

A large number of Chinese engineers work in the information technology (IT) sector in Japan, mostly in software programming. Having been recruited in China or Japan, these IT workers do not form a homogeneous group and are subject to very different working conditions. Parallel to this recruitment of Chinese IT workers, Japanese industry “imports” Chinese labour through on-line working. An increasing number of IT workers are employed by Japanese firms without leaving their own country, thanks to systems for on-line transmission of highly compressed data.

General trends and statistics obtained from responses to a questionnaire are reviewed, showing that more than 400 expert systems are now under development or in practical use in Japan. Three expert systems selected as representative examples from among planning-and-design-system candidates are described: IBM Japan's Scheplan, Kayaba's OHCS, and Hitachi's automatic pipe-routing system for a power plant. Current Japanese research in related methodologies, including knowledge compilation, knowledge acquisition, generic methods for building expert systems, the automatic generation of task-oriented expert systems, and machine learning, is examined. It is noted that AI is spreading into almost every Japanese industry, and Japanese companies are seeking the most efficient way of introducing AI technologies, particularly expert systems. >

The BeiDou navigation satellite system (BDS) provides precise positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) services in the Asia-Pacific Region, but the BDS-based structural health monitoring (SHM) approach (SHM) is rarely studied, especially in civil engineering. Moreover, how BDS can be applied to complete the tasks of SHM in a real project is also not fully investigated, especially working in conjunction with other techniques. This study aims to propose a BDS-based approach for SHM in civil engineering. The performance of the proposed approach is investigated through a case study—the Tianhan Grand Theater (TGT). A specific Tianhan system corresponding to BDS is proposed to complete the SHM tasks of TGT. Based on the collected data, the trusses with maximum displacement and stress are found by BDS to evaluate structural health in the construction stage. The results show that the maximum displacement and stress have certain safety reserves and meet the requirements of the specifications and regulations. Thus, BDS can satisfactorily complete the tasks of SHM for Long-span steel structures. This study gives a clear view to engineers and researchers that how to apply BDS in structural construction and provides a valuable real case for evaluating the performance of BDS in SHM.

The Japanese Photovoltaic Power Generation Technology Development Program (so called “Sunshine Program”) was started immediately after the first oil crisis in 1973. Since that time, the meaning of PV technology has been changed from the generation of small-scale electrical energy to the development of bulk electrical power as an alternative to oil and to contribute to the suppression of global warming. As a result of having continuous R&D efforts on the technological development with market expansion aid by the government subsidies, Japanese PV industries have now started to work on self-development. In fact, the PV market in Japan has expanded markedly in recent years in the fields not only of the residential rooftop PV, but also other large-scale PV plants, such as public buildings and so on.

During the Nineties and in recent years the prolonged stagnation of the Japanese economy and the weakness of its financial sector have greatly affected the performance and the competitiveness of Japan's industry. This paper examines how industries and firms have reacted to the challenges posed by new economic conditions at home and abroad. In the first part of the paper, the attention is focused on the dual structure of the Japanese industry, i.e., the co-existence of competitive, deregulated and financially sound sectors with low-productivity, protected and financially weak ones. In the second and third part the issues related to the transfer abroad of manufacturing activities and the undergoing change in the labour market are discussed. Finally, the future prospects of the Japanese industry are discussed on the basis of recent data regarding research and development activities.

Despite most engineers believing that the Middle East has become a more dangerous place to work since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, over half would still recommend a posting there—particularly civil engineers. Richard Spragg of staffing company EPCglobal reports on a recent attitude survey.

Reviewed by: Body Counts: The Vietnam War and Militarized Refuge(es) by Yen Le Espiritu Bunkong Tuon (bio) Body Counts: The Vietnam War and Militarized Refuge(es), by Yen Le Espiritu. Oakland: University of California Press, 2014. Xiv + 249 pp. $29.95 paper. ISBN: 978–0-520–27771-7. Yen Le Espiritu concludes the first chapter of Body Counts: The Vietnam War and Militarized Refuge(es) with the following refrain: "Amid the organized forgetting of the Vietnam War and its people, this book is an act of remembering—and remembrance" (23). A 1.5-generation Vietnamese American, Espiritu began her career writing about Asian American lives, labor laws, Philippine and Filipino American histories, and Asian American panethnicity. It was during the U.S. War in Iraq that "the shock of recognition" brought her back to the American War in Vietnam and the discourse surrounding the refugee figure (172). One of the main goals in Body Counts is to remind the West that refugees do not emerge out of a vacuum; political, economic, and military ties bring refugees to European and U.S. shores. Since the American War in Vietnam, U.S. films and news media have developed a discourse where Vietnamese refugees are portrayed as victims to be rescued and saved by the American government, to be grateful for what Mimi Thi Nguyen terms "The Gift of Freedom." Such kindness and generosity on the part of the U.S. government elides its history of violence and warfare in Southeast Asia, Espiritu argues. Furthermore, this "organized forgetting" justifies and perpetuates American involvement in other parts of the world. This is why Body Counts is timely, required reading for our troubled times. Body Counts comprises seven intricately woven chapters. The first chapter makes two important moves in refashioning the field of critical refugee studies. One, Espiritu shifts her focus away from the dominant discourse of refugees as victims devoid of any kind of agency, the "damaged-centered approach," to one that pays attention to refugees as agents rebuilding their lives and cultural traditions in refugee camps and the United States. Two, while acknowledging the validity of moving the field away from the scope of war and to the study of identities shaped by gender, sexuality, race, class, exile and transnationalism, she worries that such a move engenders a kind of forgetfulness of the [End Page 332] historical and political reasons why Vietnamese refugees are in the United States. Writing against such systematic forgetting, Espiritu proposes a "critical juxtaposition" methodology that traces the silent and ghostly presence of the Vietnamese in American narratives about the war, by "bringing together of seemingly different and disconnected events, communities, histories, and spaces in order to illuminate what would otherwise not be visible about the contours, contents, and afterlives of war and empire" (21). Chapter 2 examines "the most-traveled refugee route via military aircraft [with] a critical lens through which to map, both discursively and materially, the transpacific displacement brought about by the legacy of U.S. colonial and military expansion into the Asia Pacific Region" (26). In a comparative examination of the colonial histories of Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines and Anderson Air Force Base in Guam, Espiritu illustrates how the legacy of U.S. colonialism played a critical role during the war: with planes from these military bases carpet-bombing Vietnam and other parts of Southeast Asia during the war and rescuing Vietnamese refugees at the end of the war. Chapter 3 writes against the discourse of refugees as agentless victims of war by examining the various ways second-wave Vietnamese refugees rebuilt their lives in refugee camps. Using oral histories, blogs, commentaries, and memoires, she demonstrates the particular ways Vietnamese refugees reconstructed their homes while being displaced. In the next two chapters, Espiritu turns her critical lens to "memory-making practice[s]" in the United States. Chapter 4 examines U.S. mainstream press coverage of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Fall of Saigon. Using her methodology of critical juxtaposition, Espiritu places newspaper articles on veterans, "the rescuers," alongside those on the Vietnamese refugees, "the rescued," identifying two interrelated strands: veterans were seen as the innocent and heroic soldiers and Vietnamese...