We constructed a prototype of the basin and crustal structure model for the Kinki area, southwest of Japan, for the simulation of strong ground motions of hypothetical crustal and subduction earthquakes. We collected results of the deep seismic velocity profiles obtained by the reflection experiments and seismic imaging results, which were conducted in the Kinki area. The obtained profiles give underground velocity structures of the crust, from the surface to the subducting slab. We also gather the basin velocity structure information of the Osaka, Kyoto, Nara, and Ohmi basins. To examine the applicability of the constructed velocity structure model to the ground motion simulation, we simulated waveforms of an intermediate size event occurred near the source area of the hypothetical subduction earthquakes. Simulated ground motions using the basin and crustal velocity structure model are fairly well reproducing the observations at most of stations, and the constructed basin and crustal velocity structure model is applicable for the long-period ground motion simulations.

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Japan’s national education policy puts importance on children learning to program. In fact, course guidelines published by the government in 2008 made the programming of the measurement and control compulsory in junior high schools, and learning programming will be made compulsory in elementary schools in 2020. This research studies robotics classes for elementary and junior high school students. The tasks set for the robots used in each class are familiar to children, and they were set with the aim of inspiring a proactive learning attitude in the children. The objective of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of robots in teaching programming to children.

For easy and practical simulation of microscopic nonlinear mechanical behavior of composite materials, new homogenization analysis procedure named macro-micro uncoupled method is proposed. In this procedure, microscopic simulation of material strength test is carried out first, then nonlinear homogenized material properties are obtained. Both the homogenization method and RVE (Representative Volume Element) approach are shown for this microscopic simulation. Macroscopic nonlinear behavior of a structure made of composite materials can be analyzed by only referring the pre-calculated homogenized material nonlinearity. As an example, microscopic fracture propagation for textile composite materials and microscopic large deformation for porous elastic materials are analyzed.

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In order to manufacture high-quality products it is necessary to regularly monitor the performance of the control loops that regulate the quality variables of interest. This paper describes a design scheme of performance-adaptive controllers which are based on the above control strategy. According to the proposed control scheme, the output prediction error is monitored regularly and system identification is initiated if this error exceeds a user-defined threshold. Subsequently proportional-integral-derivative (PID) parameters are updated for the new model. Optimal PID parameters are calculated based on the linear quadratic Gaussian (LQG) trade-off curve obtained for the reidentified process model. The behaviour of the proposed control scheme is numerically evaluated by some simulation examples.

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