The great earthquake and tsunami hit the Tohoku, Central and north of Japan on March 11,2011. Also many strong aftershocks occurred in the long term until June in 2011. The earthquake including aftershocks and tsunami awfully damaged the buildings and building facilities. This paper provides a summary of the investigation, mainly carried out by the Japan Elevator Association, and a summary of the typical damages of elevators' and escalators' equipment and of the building walls concerned with elevators and escalators, in order to contribute to improve the earthquake-resistant design for the forthcoming earthquake.

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A huge earthquake of Mw 9.0 hit the Tohoku district of Japan on March 11, 2011. The earthquake, which was named as "the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake", caused serious damage to industrial facilities. Based on the damage investigations conducted by the JSME, the damage to the mechanical structures were due to the strong ground motion, soil deformation and tsunami. Many kinds of damage caused by strong motion, such as the damage at the base of machines, the failure of pipe supports, buckling of tanks and the failure of hook bolts were commonly observed. Soil deformation caused break of buried pipes and misalignment of gantry crane rails. The tsunami also caused various kinds of damage, such as broken equipment due to collisions with floating objects and damage of tanks due to water pressure. Power system damage caused by electrical short circuiting also occurred. Although the earthquake caused a great deal of damage, seismic measures taken before the earthquake could mitigate damage of some facilities. This paper provides an overview of the damage of industrial facilities caused by the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, their typical damage cases, and the effects of the earthquake resisting methods.

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This paper describes a new vibration reduction device utilizing elastic body as dynamic vibration absorber. In case the devise is applied for railway vehicle carbody, it is necessary to design the shape and material of elastic body. Therefore, finite element method (FEM) simulation is applied to compute a vibration property of arbitrary-shaped elastic body. In this study, at first, the validity of an FEM simulation is verified by comparing experimental result for elastic cylindrical vessels. Then, a torus vessel models as an example of arbitrary-shaped elastic body is investigated. Vibration property of the model is computed and method to estimate its natural frequency is studied. Furthermore, a torus model whose natural frequency fits to a target frequency is designed and its vibration damping effect as a dynamic vibration absorber is computed by FEM simulation.

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An elevator is an important lifeline in low-rise building to the skyscraper. Sometime, vibration of traction machine propagates to near-by living room and produces acoustic noise and vibration in the room. Recently, due to downsizing of the magnetic flux density increases and stiffness of the structure decreases. These yields increase of unit magnetic energy of electro-magnetic vibration. If in design phase, whole simulation of vibration and acoustic noise from the motor to the living room with anti-noise structure is performed, reduction measures are provided effectively at noise source, propagation path and noise radiation points. Conventional estimation (simulation) calculates acoustic noise by decay of distance in energy method. This calculation provides low accuracy in noise level. This procedure does not have enough accuracy for predicting of acoustic noise of sitting room in an apartment by three-dimensional scale. In this paper, total simulation from vibration of elevator motor to noise at sitting room with anti-vibration measures is confirmed in design stage. This procedure also presents decrease of acoustic noise in sitting room. In this simulation, FKM calculates wave motion, such as wave phase, interference, diffraction and natural frequency mode of sitting-room wall. As a result, these procedures demonstrate the ration between vibration of elevator motor and acoustic noise in sitting-room. These are described in this paper.

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Recently many super high rise buildings have been built in the rising nation. Elevator lateral vibration is one of the main problems affecting ride comfort. In the ultra-high-speed elevator, peculiar vibration is activated and it is difficult to maintain ride comfort by the conventional vibration suppression technique. We have developed a new active vibration reduction system to suppress the lateral vibration of ultra-high-speed elevators. In this research, the application of mu synthesis to this system is dealt with, so that the performance to suppress vibration and the robustness about several parameter errors are investigated. We manufactured the active vibration reduction system and the experimental device to verify vibration reduction effect in ultra-high-speed elevators. Experimental results show that the active vibration reduction system is capable of reducing the lateral vibration.

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While the transport volume has remained unchanged, the number of truck drivers has decreased in recent years. As a result, the time an individual truck driver spends on the road has increased, exposing driver to increased vibration. The burden on drivers has increased and ride-comfort decreases. Thus, improvement of ride-comfort is important by vibration reduction to truck driver. However, a method to quantitatively evaluate ride-comfort in the truck and cars has not been established. The purpose of this study is to improve the ride-comfort of trucks using a semi-active seat suspension and quantitatively evaluate the ride-comfort using the ride coefficientAccording to the results, a semi-active seat suspension which uses HQO control showed better ride-comfort than a passive seat suspension. Additionally, a control system which focuses on the prevention of chattering was more effective for ride-comfort than a control system which focuses on vibration reduction.

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In order to achieve an efficient and orderly air traffic flow in the future air traffic systems, realization of Trajectory-based Operation (TBO) is expected. In TBO, all aircrafts are managed by ATM (Air Traffic Management) operation along 4-DT (4-Dimensional Trajectory) which introduces time-based management in all phases of flight. This operation enables us to address an increased air traffic capacity by attaining trajectories. To introduce TBO, researches on aircraft trajectory prediction considering meteorological influences are necessary. As a preliminary study, we simulate the flight trajectory using BADA in ISA (International Standard Atmosphere) condition and non-ISA condition in which temperature differential for ISA is considered. Analysis of the data that obtained by SSR mode-S system is also performed. This paper reports the preliminary study on the indeterminacy of trajectory prediction by meteorological influences.

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In transfer crane system container terminal, the important thing is a support function of effective knowledge-based vessel planning system. The vessel plan consists of instruction of vessel location and loading plan. The operation efficiency is affected by traveling and re-handling of a transfer crane traveling, work interference of transfer cranes and gantry cranes. This report made up an instruction of vessel location and loading plan by consideration of these factors. Especially the loading plan includes an algorism for picking containers up one by one. Adopting these plans it expects that a system support function may overcome effectual skills of human planners with refined knowledge.

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[in Japanese]

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This paper describes a proposal of new steering system which can provide easy and safe operation of vehicle to all drivers. We attached a steering bar as a new steering system instead of conventional steering wheel. We conduct preliminary experiment with steering bar, steering wheel and steering wheel of high gain by the driving simulator. As a result, it is proved that operating by steering bar have advantage of tracking performance and smoothly control. After that, proposal and conventional input system was compared from the view of task performance and sensory evaluation resulted from the experiment conducted by the small electric vehicle. It is found that by using the steering bar, even not-experienced driver can drive the vehicle as well as the experienced driver who uses steering wheel. And the experienced drivers evaluated that the steering bar is more maneuverable than the steering wheel.

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To examine sitting comfort is important to decrease fatigue due to long-term sitting on the train seats. We focused on leg swelling which occurs during sitting, and investigated it with use of both bioelectrical impedance method and sensory testing. Sitting experiment was performed by using four kinds of footrest angle, three kinds of cushion firmness, and two kinds of experimental timing (AM or PM). From the results, we found that leg swelling decreased while sitting under the condition of 30 degree for footrest angle. It is considered that there is an appropriate combination of footrest angle and cushion firmness.

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Series 300 of Shinkansen trains was used as 'Nozomi express' in commercial, from the time of major train operation schedule change in March, 1998, until it retired on March 16, 2012.1n series 300, reducing the mass of the rolling stock was the most important point.The bolster less bogie was adopted in series 300, and as a result, the mass of 300 series bogie was reduced by 30 percent from that of 100 series. From the inspection on the hollow axis and bogie frame,no defects such as cracks have been observed for 20 years in service. We were certain that the bogie of series 300 had sufficient reliability. The results obtained in series 300 are fed back to the next development of Shinkansen aiming for higher reliability, and we will continue to conduct a research for the Safety and the Stability of shinkansen rolling stock.

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Wheel tread shapes change depending on the running mileage. Thus, we managed wheels of the Shinkansen trains with understanding correlation between running mileage and ride comfort. Recently, running condition is varied by speed-up and other reasons, we investigated the correlation between wheel tread shapes and ride comfort with focusing on changing of wheel tread shapes.

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Hunting stability is one of the most essential characteristics for high speed trains, and it has been investigated by roller rig testing at testing bench and numerical simulation. Those ways have their own problems in their accuracy, cost and flexibility. We propose a new approach, Hardware-In-the-Loop Simulation (HILS), to test hunting stability for railway vehicles. HILS is a kind of simulation that uses some actual devices. It enables us to increase simulation accuracy, keeping its cost and flexibility reasonably. In this paper, we demonstrated hunting stability tests by HILS that shows the test works properly. Furthermore, we also demonstrated simulation studies to identify excitation devices responsiveness for quantitative evaluation of hunting stability.

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The objective of this research is to construct a dynamics model of the seat and the passenger in sitting state which reproduce the accurate vibration properties. This paper describes verification of the model in the case of other passengers. First, seat excitation experiments are carried out to acquire vibration characteristics of more than one passenger. Next, the parameters of the passenger model are identified from the experimental results as well as literature survey. Finally, simulation results agree partially with the experiment, but the difference between them appears, depending on each subject.

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Car shake is one of many kinds of vehicle vibration that causes customer dissatisfaction. Uniformity of tire and wheel assembly affects the vehicle vibration including car shake. In this study, the authors developed the estimation method to calculate the radial force vibration of tire and wheel assembly. The parameters used in this method are the radial force variation of tire, the radial runout of wheel, and so on. This estimation method is based on the complex functions and the Monte Carlo calculations. The complex functions are used to study the assembly condition of a tire and a wheel. The Monte Carlo calculations are applied to calculate the parameters from their statistical data such as averages and standard deviations. The estimated results are in good agreement with the experimental results. The authors concluded that this method is an effective tool to reduce car shake.

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This paper deals with a dynamic analysis of a racing kart considering an elastic deformation of the kart frame. In this work, we have used a flexible dynamic analysis to evaluate the dynamic behavior considering the flexibility of the kart frame. As the first step of this research, an FEM karl frame model was created and validated by means of dynamic tests. The dynamic response of the frame was evaluated by hammering test, and the test result was compared to that of the modal analysis. Next, a flexible multibody vehicle model was developed with this FEM frame model. In this process, model reduction based on the modal analysis was applied to reduce the degree of freedom of die flexible body. The running tests with actual racing kart were carried out to evaluate the handling characteristic, and the comparison between simulation and experiment are discussed.

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Steering is one of the key systems for having good vehicle maneuvering. In order to simultaneously satisfy various requests for steering performance, it is necessary to design properly transfer characteristics of the steering component parts. It has been working on to clarify the relationship between the steering performance and the characteristics of the steering component parts, and to establish a process that can be designed quantitatively the characteristics of the elements. In this paper, a physical model that represents the steering performance is proposed. Then, a design method to achieve the target performance of the steering elements corresponding to the type of steering system performance is described.

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The extended Kalman filter was employed to estimate vehicle side-slip angle accurately even under the condition of low road friction and the large lateral gradient road. The direct integration method is the base structure of this estimator, and the longitudinal equation of motion was included to augment the system , and to configure the Kalman filter. For compensation of estimation value drifted by the sensor signal offset , a nonlinear map between actual yawrate and the yawrate value for calculation was proposed. The performance of the extended Kalman filter and the non-linear map was validated in the simulation.

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Varying of parameter of vehicles has much influence on performance of vehicle control. Accurate parameters of vehicle are required to achieve high performance of driving control. Yaw moment of inertia of vehicle such as truck is varied largely depending on the loaded condition. Therefore it is important to identify the yaw moment of inertia of truck by loaded condition to accomplish high performance of steering control. In this paper, a method to identify the yaw moment of inertia of truck is proposed, and performance of the proposed identification method is examined through numerical analysis using Trucksim of commercially available software.

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In this paper, roll angle and pitch angle control method using positive and negative anti-dive force for electric vehicle (EV) which has four in-wheel motors is proposed. The proposed method can generate the roll moment and pitch moment by properly allocating the driving force of each wheel. This method improves vehicle stability, safety and riding comfort during braking and cornering. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by simulation and experimental results.

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The authors have proposed the lane keeping system using road-side markers and onboard laser sensor to achieve safer and smoother road traffic in adverse weather conditions. The system acquires the relative position of road-side passive markers by the laser sensor, and the absolute position of them by communication with road-side active markers. The system estimates a vehicle position in the lane from the both positional information of the markers and warns the driver of a lane departure risk to assist the driver to keep the lane. This paper explains the actual running test system to examine the system operation and performance.

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There is currently a demand for vehicles with high stability and fuel efficiency. The authors have conducted research into camber control that aims to achieve both vehicle stability and fuel efficiency enhancement. In previous studies, using a model vehicle, camber was confirmed to be effective for improving cornering ability and energy conservation. For the purpose of further improving fuel efficiency, the proper combination of camber control and tires with partitioned low-loss/high-grip treads was implemented, and shown to result in both reduced fuel consumption and improved braking performance. The aim of the current paper is to show a quantitative improvement in driving stability due to camber. Because it was difficult to show the effect quantitatively using real vehicles, a computational model was constructed. The camber effect was demonstrated quantitatively by analyzing the vehicle model tire lateral force.

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It is important to determine experimentally and theoretically the dynamical behavior of a railway vehicle which derails or overturns due to natural disaster, in order to reduce its damage. The authors manufactured a model vehicle of 1 to 10 scale, and carried but tests on vibrating track on which the vehicle standing still or running might derail or overturn. Based on these experiments we have developed a numerical simulation program, which is able to calculate the dynamical behavior of a vehicle when it derails or overturns exceeding the numerical criterion of derailment. By using this program, we computed the vehicle motion and prepared the limit diagram of derailment or overturning, which coincided well with the test results.

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Railway vehicles traveling on curved track with cant are affected by inertial force. This study constructs local coordinates movimg along curved tracks with cant on absolute coordinates to express mathematical model of the motion for the railway bogie. This study also uses the model of the bogie with coupling motion between the roll angle of bogies and the yaw angle of wheelsets due to link structure. The traveling characteristics of bogies are investigated by numerical simulations. This study investigates the effects of curve radius of track and cant angle on the traveling stability and the critical speed of hunting motion through time historical responses and eigenvalue analysis.

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Condition monitoring of railway vehicle dynamics whilst in operation is a necessary tool in order to detect current or predict future faults. This method of fault detection requires advanced analysis of signals from sensors attached to the key vehicles components, such as the vehicle body, bogies and the wheelsets. In this paper, a number of model based parameter and state estimation techniques are introduced and applied to fault/condition detection in the areas of low adhesion in the wheel/rail contact.

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Most elevators applied to tall buildings include compensating ropes to satisfy the balanced rope tension between the car and the counter weight. The compensating ropes receive tension by the compensating sheave, which is installed at the bottom space of the elevator shaft. The compensating sheave is only suspended by the compensating ropes, therefore, the sheave can move vertically while the car is traveling. This paper shows the elevator dynamic model to evaluate the vertical motion of the compensating sheave. Especially, behavior in emergency cases, such as brake activation and buffer strike, is investigated to evaluate the maximum upward motion of the sheave. The simulation results are validated by experiments and the most influenced factor for the sheave vertical motion is clarified.

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Because in high-rise buildings the natural period of the elevator ropes may be close to the natural period of the structure, the large displacement of the rope may cause damages to the equipment and the shaft. In this paper, an elevator rope lateral vibration analysis system has been developed. Moreover, an analysis of the seismic response of a building represented by a single mass, and an analysis of the deflection of the elevator rope have been carried out. In the results of ground motions containing long-period component, the maximal displacement of the rope increase and the three first modes appear.

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Congestion is a critical issue at most hub airports. This paper tackles this problem occurring at the airport with most passengers in Japan, i.e. Tokyo International Airport. This airport has four intersecting runways which nterfere with each other. Although the runway an aircraft uses is determined by its destination or departure airport to reduce air traffic controllers' (ATC) workload, this general rule can increase aircraft waiting time. To make runway operations more efficient, the runway operation is modeled by a queueing model, which calculates the average waiting time on each runway. The arrival traffic is optimized using the model, and it is shown that about 100 minutes of waiting time can be saved by appropriate runway allocation on a sample day.

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This paper presents the technique of improving the accuracy and reliability of localization of an autonomous mobile robot. Localization based on 2D LIDAR is not always satisfactory due to occlusion. Use of 3D LIDAR improves the reliability thanks to greater field of view. However, lack of 3D object around the robot may result poor matching. Even in that case, different brightness of the ground surface helps localization. In this paper, authors introduce a 3D LIDAR with swing mechanism and propose efficient expression of 3D map with consideration of LIDAR intensity. Experiment result shows successful localization in a trail through open grass fields.

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This paper deals with a feasibility study of sensor systems for automatic driving in a private road. The energy-saving ITS project has been researching for the automatic platooning driving of heavy-duty vehicles using several sensing systems. In this research, a usability of the sensing system is examined by a long term measurement environment. Therefore, the sensing system for the long term measurement is constructed in a trailer-type heavy duty vehicle. The sensing systems work during the vehicle running in the private road.

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This paper describes a fault-tolerant flight control method using PID-SAC (Simple Adaptive Control) controller. The PID-SAC has the capability to adjust in an online manner not only feedback gains but also feedforward gains those are attached to a conventional PID flight controller. PID-SAC can generate control signals to follow the output signals of an original system with PID controller even if the dynamic characteristics change due to faults during flight. Numerical stimulations are investigated for a pitch angle controller of experimental aircraft MuPAL-a under the following fault cases; (1) decline in elevator effectiveness and (2) loss of longitudinal static stability. The simulations reveal the effectiveness of the proposing PID-SAC controller as a fault-tolerant flight controller.

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The operation of overhead crane are required the vibration suppression of the suspended load and the accurate transport to the target position. In the previous study, we derive an analytical model of the overhead crane as a linear parameter varying (LPV) system, and good control results were obtained by combined control using Dual Model Matching (DMM) control method, but we have to input the target trajectory. Therefore, in this study, we realize of practical crane control system that reduces vibration suppression of suspended load from Crane operator by designed controller. In this paper, we implemented in the push button controller as an example of the typical human interface device of the crane to overhead crane to simulate the practical situations. Then, we verify the effectiveness of DMM controller to LPV system, by the experiments in the similar to actual crane operating environments.

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