The effect of the visual correction with glasses on the brain activation by reading sentences with characters presented in a stimulus image were measured by the fMRI. In order to move the lens unit inside the fMRI equipment, we choose the suitable materials for the lens holder and jigs. As the results, when stimulus images can be seen clearly, the brain activations are found in the classical language areas. On the other hand, when the visual correction was clear but the target images were blurred, or when the target images were clear but the correction was not sufficient, little activation was found in those areas, although lower visual areas and the frontal eye field / premotor area were activated. The activations in the classical language areas would be much sensitive to whether the character images are readable or not.

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   Photoelasticity is applied to measure the residual stress of the pincher portion of light bulbs for automobiles. The difference of principal stresses is measured in the pincher portion on the assumption of plane stress condition. The difference of principal stresses is also measured in the vicinity of lead wires both on the assumption of plane stress and by a three-dimensional method. The measurement results say that the average value of the difference of principal stresses is 3.5MPa, which is smaller than the strength of glass of 60-170MPa. However there exists the region of high residual stress in the vicinity of lead wires where the difference of principal stresses is close to the fracture strength of glass.

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   A method for correcting the effect of rigid body displacement for electronic speckle pattern interferometry (ESPI) is proposed. In this method, not only translation but rotation are detected using digital image correlation (DIC). Then, the position of the speckle pattern is corrected using the detected rigid body displacement. In addition, the phase is corrected through calculating the phase change distribution caused by rotation. Experiments are carried out for investigating the validity of the method. Results show that the interference fringe produced by the rotation can be eliminated and the image corrected by the proposed method shows only the interference fringe by the deformation. It is concluded that the application of ESPI measurement for deformation with rigid body displacement including rotation is possible.

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Vibration measurement method is utilized simply to evaluate bridge's structural performance. Structural properties are mainly influenced by fatigue, material deterioration and earthquakes. These factors cause the changes of frequency characteristic due increasing of lateral displacement and decreasing of stiffness. Therefore, damage identification of a structure can be assessed by grasping its vibrational property. Conventional vibration measurement was generally conducted by using accelerometers. In recent years, a long distance, non-contact, and easily-assembled LDV (Laser Doppler Velocimeter) has been developed. Without requiring on-structure sensor installation and having huge flexibility under variety of measurement environments made LDV measurement technique attractive and to be considered as better than other non-destructive investigation methods. This study targeted in-service bridges by measuring their natural frequencies and displacements using two LDV devices. Measuring numerous spots with two LDV devises enables to achieve high accuracy and reliability to verify the most-scrutinized structural vibration mode shape. Furthermore, the field-measured-based analyzed results were compared with three-dimensional FEM model analyses to evaluate the validity of the analytical model and to grasp the structural vibration characteristics of measured-bridges.

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   A decrease of pre-stress is greatly influenced the load carrying capacity immediately and leads to the decrease in safety in the pre-stressed concrete (PC) structure. It is necessary to know existing action stress accurately to maintain the PC structure . In this study, new existing action stress measurement technique was developed by the digital image correlation method and stress relief technique and the proving test of a developed method was done by using pre-tension concrete beam. Results, existing action stress was able to be measured in high accuracy.

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   A low-cost simple machine vision system is developed for exclusive use of surface temperature distribution measurement using temperature sensitive paint (TSP). The measurement system consists of 14-bit commercial digital single-lens reflex camera, LED arrays an excitation light source for TSP and note-book size personal computer for image analysis. The total weight of the system is less than 5.0 kilo grams. Therefore, it has portability. Moreover, the total cost of the system is less than \500,000. The image analysis is done by using Matlab (Mathworks, inc.) which is commercial data analysis software. In this study, as an application of new measurement system, the measurement of temperature distribution on a heated aluminum flat plate installed in a test section of a wind tunnel is done. The measurement results show that the measuring resolution of temperature is less than 0.1 degree C and it has a possibility to measure the average and instantaneous temperature distribution. From these results shown above, simple and low-cost temperature measurement system is realized and it is expected to be used in various in-situ temperature measurements.

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   A new probe for the simultaneous measurement of fluctuating velocity and static pressure has been developed. To improve the accuracy of the simultaneous measurement of the velocity and static pressure, it is necessary to suitably arrange the hot-wire and static pressure probes. In this study, the tip of the static pressure tube is first changed from the previous conical shape to the hemispherical one. Next the static pressure probe is mounted between the X-type hot-wire probe. There is no difference between the measurement results of the static pressure obtained using two previous and present static pressure probes which consist of conical tip and hemispherical tip tubes respectively. In addition, at high-frequency ranges, the -7/3 power law can be verified more clearly in the power spectra obtained using the new (hemispherical tip) combined probe. Therefore, it is concluded that by changing the arrangement of probes, the smaller fluctuations in turbulent flows can be measured by the new combined probe.

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   An experimental-numerical hybrid method for analyzing stresses in a local region is proposed in this paper. Strains along the boundary of the local analysis region are measured using strain gauges. The tractions along the boundary are obtained from the measured strains and they are used as the boundary condition for the local model. Then, the stress distributions within the local region can be obtained by finite element analysis. The proposed method is applied to the stress analysis of a bicycle frame. By measuring strains of the bicycle frame using multiple three-element rosette strain gauges, the boundary condition for a local finite element model is obtained. Then, the stress distributions are obtained by finite element direct analysis using the measured boundary condition. It can be considered that the reliable results are obtained by the proposed method because the measured values are used as the boundary condition.

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  As a recycling technique for the waste GFRP, authors have proposed the manufacturing process of the porous glass fiber reinforced tile by mixing the clay and the crushed waste GFRP and by firing the mixture. In this paper, the influence of the particle size of GFRP on properties of tiles produced by the proposed process was investigated. First, several types of tiles were produced by changing the particle size of the crushed GFRP, the mixing ratio of the GFRP and clay, and the firing temperatures. Then the density, water absorption and bending strength of the specimens were examined by the experiment. From obtained results, it was found that the bending strength of tiles was higher, as the particle size of the GFRP was smaller, and that the effect the particle size of the GFRP on bending strength of tiles was bigger, as the firing temperature was higher. It was also found that the mixing ratio of the GFRP and clay and the firing temperature greatly affected the water absorption of tiles, and the particle size of the GFRP was not effective for the water absorption. It was demonstrated that tiles with both the high strength and water absorption could be made when GFRP with the particle size of 1mm or less was used and the firing temperature was over 1000 degrees.

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   From the viewpoint of energy conservation, typical cooling methods such as air-atomized mist cooling or forced air cooling, which use a large amount of compressed air, are required to reduce the power. Super heated water, when it is injected under atmospheric pressure from the nozzle, makes quite uniform mist jet by sudden boiling, and can easily be made from low-grade waste heat in the steel manufacture. This study, using superheated water jet as a cooling device, experimentally determined its cooling properties and compared them with those of the air-atomized mist jet cooling.

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   Simultaneous measurements of local velocity and temperature in a vertical bubble driven plume have been done by using a Laser Doppler Velocimetry(LDV) on velocity measurement and thermistors on temperature measurement. In the first, instantaneous velocity including turbulence and fluctuation induced by bubbles was revealed, and counter-gradient diffusion of momentum. In the second, scalar transport in a vertical bubbly plume was measured and it was found that bubble movement generated isotropic mixing.

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   The cross-correlation method based on vibration measurement is widely used to detect and locate water leaks in underground pipes. However, it cannot be used in noisy condition such as steelmaking works because the leak signal is interfered by the noise. In order to solve this problem, a new leak detection and location technique using digital signal processing has been developed. This technique enables us to extract useful signal and cancel useless noise from measured vibration data. The validity of this technique has been verified by proof-of-concept experiments. Also a water leak in real underground pipes has been successfully detected and located in a steelmaking works.

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   A piezoelectric impedance-based structural health monitoring technique, which enables us to monitor structural integrity in-service and on-line, was developed at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Its experimental implementation has been successfully conducted on several complex structures to detect incipient-type damage such as small cracks or loose connections. However, there are still some problems to be solved before full-scale development and commercialization can take place. One of the most crucial problems is that the sensing area is small. In order to extend the sensing area, a new technique using electrical transfer admittance has been developed. The validity of the technique has been verified by proof-of-concept experiments.

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