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JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) has been conducting a research on a future commercial tilt wing VTOL (Vertical TakeOff and Landing) transport under JAXA's "Sky Frontier" Program aiming to develop technologies for aircraft innovation. The research focuses on QTW (Quad Tilt Wing) civil VTOL transport, which features tandem tilt wings with propellers mounted at the mid-span of each wing. The goals of the research in the present phase are to propose a concept of a QTW business VTOL transport system and to pursue the essential technologies development such as OEI (One-Engine-Inoperative) safe recovery, transition flight control and cruise efficient aerodynamic design. Nine passengers business QTW concept was designed and trade-off analysis of the propulsion system architecture for OEI safety was conducted. The result suggests the architecture having no cross-shaft mechanism with auto-failure-compensation is the most effective in terms of the system weight and operating cost.

We have been developing the mixed-potential type NOx sensor which can detect the total-NOX concentration directly in exhausts for automobiles. It has been confirmed that the sensor is capable of detecting wide concentrations of total-NOx from 20 to 1000 ppm under the condition from rich-burn (A/F=12) to lean-burn without any interference from reducing gases, such as HC and CO. In addition, it has been confirmed that the sensor output is correlated fairly well to NOx concentrations from the analyzer in the engine test at any rotations. The results obtained here indicate that the present sensor has great possibility of being utilized as an on-board NOx sensor for practical use.

A semiconductor capacitance -type accelerometer utilizing a pulse width modulation (PWM) electrostatic servo technique has been developed. Highly accurate detection of very small and low frequency acceleration became possible with the PWM sensing method. The limited air gaps between the movable and fixed electrodes ensured compatibility between high sensitivity and durability, while transverse sensitivity and temperature coefficient were reduced due to the symmetric structure of the sensing device. This sensor has been designed for the measurement range of 0 to ±1g, ±2g and 0 to 50Hz. The accelerometer is composed of two chips: the sensing device made by silicon micromachining technology and the custom IC made by bipolar CMOS technology. In this paper, we present the fundamental sensing principle, the sensing device, the custom IC and the characteristics of the new accelerometer.

As a direct result of the mining industries need to improve efficiency and production in open pit type operations, the size of dump trucks has increased. In addition, the increase in vertical lift and resultant grades, and the in crease in hauling distances are making the demand for mechanical drive dump trucks. With these mining requirements, we have developed the mechanical automatic transmission, controlled by microprocessor, with 8 forward speeds and 1 reverse speed, which suit 120 mton class dump trucks and 160 mton class dump trucks. This paper shows the design concept and progress made in development of these transmissions.