The thermo-mechanical interaction between brake block and wheel tread during braking has been found to cause thermal crack on the wheel tread. Due to thermal expansion of the rim material, the thermal cracks will protrude from the wheel tread and be more exposed to wear during the wheel/block contact than the rest of the tread surface. The wheel rim is in residual compression stress when is new. After service running, the region in the tread has reversed to tension. This condition can lead to the formation and growth of thermal cracks in the rim which can ultimately lead to premature failure of wheel. In the present paper, the thermal cracks of railway wheel, one of severe damages on the wheel tread, were evaluated to understand the safety of railway wheel in running condition. The residual stresses for damaged wheel which are applied to tread brake are investigated. Mainly X-ray diffusion method is used. Under the condition of concurrent loading of continuous rolling contact with rails and cyclic frictional heat from brake blocks, the reduction of residual stress is found to correlate well with the thermal crack initiation.

The development of railway vehicles such as new mechanism of railway vehicle or design parameters of suspension have been used the application of scaled roller rig to the study of railway vehicle dynamics. In this paper, the critical speed was compared between full scale and 1:5 scale of numerical model. And to verify the simulation results, the critical speed was confirmed using the 1:5 scaled roller rig. According to the results, we expect that the developed roller rig will be used in the study for the dynamic characteristics of railway vehicle.

To analyze the effect of wear of wheel profile on the running stability of rolling-stock, theoretical and experimental studies were conducted on the profiles used in conventional lines. In experiment using 1/5 scale model to verify the results of the theoretical analysis, the test results of the critical speed for worn wheel profile samples show similar trend. In case of the conical type wheel profile(Profile 40), the equivalent conicity is increased with flange wear. But in case of the arc type wheel profile(Profile 20h), the equivalent conicity is decreased with flange wear. And the critical speed of the bogie was inverse proportion to the equivalent conicity. It is shown that the variation of the critical speed with the wheel wear could be changed according to the design concept and wear pattern of wheel profile. Results of the theoretical and experimental studies are discussed here.

For the safety of railway, it should be evaluated for the running safety by measuring the derailment coefficient. Although railway has run the fixed and maintained rail, some of railway is derailed. This report shows the results that performed the static load test, main line running test on the basis of the derailment theory and experience. It is executed main line test into more than 90㎞/h for estimating the curving performance and running safety of depressed center flat car of 3-axle bogie. As the test results, could confirm the curving performance and running safety of depressed center flat car of 3-axle bogie from the results of the wheel unloading, lateral force, derailment coefficient etc. Derailment coefficient was less than 0.6, and lateral force allowance limit and wheel load reduction ratio were enough safe.

Because most fatigue cracks in wheel and rail take place by rolling contact of wheel and rail in railroad industry, it is critical to understand the rolling contact phenomena, especially for the three-dimensional situation. This paper presents an approach to steady-state rolling contact problem of three-dimensional contact bodies, with or without tangential force, based on the finite element method. The steady-state conditions are controlled by the applied relative slip and tangential force. The three-dimensional distribution of tangential traction and contact stresses on the contact surface are investigated. Results show that the distribution of tangential traction and contact stresses on the contact surface varies rapidly as a result of the variation of stick-slip region. The tangential traction is very close in form to Carter’s distribution.

Curve squealing of inter-city railway vehicle is a noise with high acoustic pressure and rather narrow frequency spectra. This noise turns out to be very annoying for the people living in the neighborhood of locations and the passenger in railway vehicle where this phenomenon occurs. Squealing is caused by a self-exited stick-slip oscillation in the wheel-rail contact. Curve squeal noise of railway vehicles that passed by a factor of the speed limit, so to overcome in order to improve running performance is one of the largest technology. In the present paper, characteristic of squeal noise behavior at the Hanvit-200 tilting train test-site. Curve squealing of railway wheels/rail contact occurs in R400~ R800 curves with a frequency range of about 4~11kHz. If the curve is less than the radius of wheel/rail contact due to |left-right| noise level difference (dBA) shows a significant effect of squeal noise were more likely.

In mechanical cutting process, burr was generated at workpiece by cutting tool generally. It is working disturbance during manufacturing process. Besides burr was taken shape relatively large size more micro scale machining than macro scale machining. Many researches have been studied to remove micro burr(de-burring), because it was negative effect for accuracy of machining shape. However, micro de-burring was constrained by burr height, micro feature and so on. In this paper, experimental research was carried out to compare de-burring characteristics of Al₂O₃ abrasive and polymer.

Accelerometers have been exploited widely in various fields from monitoring vibration of precision machines to detecting an earthquake wave. The precision calibration of the accelerometers is required to maintain the measurement reliability when measuring the vibration of objects with accelerometers for modal analysis. Among evaluation factors for determining sensitivity of accelerometers, phase delay term should be also considered for accurate calibration. In this paper, a new calibration system of accelerometers capable of measuring phase delay as well as magnitude of its sensitivity was proposed and realized in the frequency range of 20 ㎐ to 5 ㎑.

Tip position control of a flexible cantilever is difficult due to the non-minimum phase dynamics that result from the finite propagating speed of a mechanical wave along the cantilever. In this paper, we propose a method for the tip position control using a light and cheap accelerometer that does not bring any significant change to the dynamics of the cantilever system. The linear system identification model of the flexible cantilever is obtained with measurements by a laser displacement sensor. A Kalman estimator is designed with this model and calculates the estimated tip position with the acceleration data of the accelerometer that is attached on the tip of the cantilever. To verify reliability of the estimator, the estimated tip position is used to the feedback control system that uses a fuzzy logic controller. The control results are compared with those of the fuzzy control system where the real tip position is measured by a laser displacement sensor. Also, the performance of the estimator with the accelerometer is presented and discussed.

A 3-D rehabilitation robot system is developed. The robot system is for the rehabilitation of upper extremities, especially the shoulder and elbow joints, and has 3-D workspace for occupational therapy to recover physical functions in activities of daily living(ADL). The rehabilitation robot system has 1 DOF in horizontal rotational motion and 2 DOF in vertical rotational motion, where all actuators are set on the ground. Parallelogram linkage mechanisms lower the equivalent inertia of the control elements as well as control forces. Also the mechanisms have high mechanical rigidity for the end effector and the handle. In this paper, a hybrid position/force controller is used for controlling positions and forces simultaneously. The controller is tuned according to the robot posture. The active motion modes for rehabilitation program consist of active-resisted motion mode and active-free motion mode. The results of the experiments show that the proposed motion modes provide the intended forces effectively.

In this paper, patterns of laser scattering and detection of micro defects have been investigated based on Rayleigh criterion for silicon wafer in solar cell. Also, a new laser scattering mechanism is designed using characteristics of light scattering against silicon wafer surfaces. Its parameters are to be optimally selected to obtain effective and featured patterns of laser scattering. The optimal parametric ranges of laser scattering are determined using the mean intensity of laser scattering. Scattering patterns of micro defects are investigated at the extracted parameter region. Among a lot of pattern features, both maximum connected area and number of connected component in patterns of laser scattering are regarded as the important information for detecting micro defects. Their usefulness is verified in the experiment.

An internal lobe pump is suitable for oil hydraulics of machine tools, automotive engines, compressors, constructions and other various applications. In particular, the pump is an essential machine element of an automotive engine to feed lubricant oil. The subject of this paper is the theoretical analysis of internal lobe pump whose the main components are the rotors: usually the outer one is characterized by lobe with multiple profile(ellipse1, involute and ellipse2) shapes, while the inner rotor profile is determined as conjugate to the other. Also, the design of outer rotor depends on new applications with removing carryover phenomenon. The system generates new lobe profile and calculates automatically the flow rate and flow rate irregularity according to the lobe profile generated. In order to obtain rotor shapes in performance and to find optimize the design parameters, a Taguchi method is proposed in this paper. Results obtained from the analysis enable the designer and manufacturer of oil pump to be more efficient in this field.

Metallic sandwich panels based on a truss core structure have been developed for a wide range of potential applications with their lightweight and multi-functionality. Structural performance of sandwich panels can be predicted from the studies on mechanical behavior of a unit cell of truss core structures. Analytical investigations on the unit cell provide approximated guidelines for the design of overall core structures for a specific application in short time. In this study, the effects of geometrical parameters on mechanical behavior of a pyramidal shape of unit cell were investigated with analytical models. The unit cell with truss member angle of 45 degree was considered as reference model and other models were designed to have the same weight and projected area but different truss member angle. All truss members were assumed to be connected with pin joint in analytical models. Under the assumptions, the equivalent strength and stiffness of the unit cell under compressive and shear loads were predicted and compared. And finally, the optimum core member angle to have maximum mechanical property could be calculated and verified with FE analysis results.

A new tooth profile which is adjusted on the amount of addendum modification factor is proposed for reducing vibration and noise of gears. The transmission error of the new profile can be designed more uniformly than that of the standard involute profile. The basic concepts of tooth profile modification are to reduce the load in contact area and to find the appropriate profile modification factor for operation condition. In this study, gears were estimated to constructive safety of bending strength and contact strength durability by using ROMAX program, and were compared with results by design formula of AGMA standard.

Various approaches directly using vibrations of speakers have been suggested to effectively display the aural information such as the music to the hearing-impaired or the deaf. However, in these approaches, the human can't sense the frequency information over the maximum perceivable vibro-tactile frequency (around 1kHz). Therefore, in this study, an approach via spectral modulation of compressing the high frequency audio information into perceivable vibrotactile frequency domain and outputting the modulated signals through the designated speakers is proposed. Then it is shown, through simulations of using Short-Time Fourier Transform (STFT) with Hanning windows and through preliminary experiments of using the vibro-tactile display testbed which is built and interfaced with a notebook PC, that the modulated signal of a natural sound composing sounds of a frog, a bird, and a water stream could produce the noise-free signal suitable enough for vibro-tactile speakers without causing significant interfering disturbances, Lastly, for three different combinations of information provided to the subject, that is, i) with only video image, ii) with video image along with the modulated vibro-tactile stimuli as proposed in this study to the forearm of the subject, and iii) with video image along with full audio information, the effects to the human sense of reality and his emotion to given audio-video clips including various sounds and images are investigated and compared. It is shown from results of those experiments that the proposed method of providing modulated vibro-tactile stimuli along with the video images to the human has very high feasibility to transmit pseudo-aural sense to the human.