Jo Jun 19, 2026
Today, as energy resources are depleted and environmental pollution is a problem worldwide, the development of clean energy and more efficient use of the existing energy resources has become very important in the automotive industry. What is the most important to solve this problem is to design and develop engines with high power output and fuel economy and low level of harmful gas emission.
Air movement inside the diesel cylinder has a crucial effect on the formation of mixtures and combustion processes, thus affecting the dynamical character, economy, combustion noise, and emissions of harmful gases of diesel engines, too. Swirl ratio has a great effect on the formation of fuel-air mixtures and combustion process in the cylinder. This encouraged many studies to optimize intake channels.
However, there are some problems in the literature. Generally, the effect of swirl ratio has not been considered in detail because the flow rate is kept constant when considering the effect of swirl ratio on the engine combustion process. In addition, spiral intake channels are introduced for cylinder head intake channels, which is difficult to implement because the demand for intake tube manufacture is too high.
On the basis of a detailed analysis of the effect of intake swirl on the combustion characteristic of a 12hp direct injection diesel engine, Ho Pong Guk, a section head at the Faculty of Mechanical Science and Technology, improved the combustion characteristics of engines by modifying the cylinder head intake channel to provide high swirl ratio with high flow rate.
The proposed method might be useful in practice because it is not difficult to apply and it provides the swirl ratio suitable for combustion.
For further details, you can refer to his paper “Geometry Determination of Cylinder Head Intake Channel Considering the Effect of Swirl Ratio on Combustion Process in a Direct Injection Diesel Engine” in “Proceedings of KUTIC-2025”.
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Jo Jun 18, 2026
The peel test is widely used for material selection and quality control testing. To learn the properties and adhesion characteristics of material, the test conditions and analytical methods should be used appropriately. The purpose of a peel test is to obtain the main property of the interface, GC, which is usually called fracture energy. The value of fracture energy, GC, should be the main characteristic for the evaluation of bond strength.
There have been many attempts to calculate the fracture energy GC, which reflects bond properties. However, the authors mostly focused on the case of a joint with substrates as adhesives.
Choe Kyong Hyok, a section head at the Faculty of Mechanical Science and Technology, has proposed a method for determining the fracture energy of a polyethylene thermal joint and determined the fracture energy values for several joints.
He performed a finite element analysis to determine the fracture energy values from the peel test data. He used a node release technique to model the crack propagation through the interface of the two membranes. When performing finite element modeling, he accurately reflected the mechanical properties of polyethylene to increase the accuracy of the simulation.
For more information, please refer to his paper “Method for Determining Fracture Toughness of Polymer Adhesive Interfaces Considering Viscoelastic Loss” in “Proceedings of KUTIC-2025”.
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Jo Jun 17, 2026
Spraying mist has been widely used in environmental purification, nanomaterial manufacturing and chemical industry to promote reactivity and improve cooling properties. Therefore, there have been many studies to improve the spray characteristics. To achieve various scientific and technological purposes such as environmental purification with a small amount of water and reagents, effective nanoparticle preparation using fine mist particles, rapid rise of reaction rate, and fogging with low energy consumption, researchers have investigated nozzle structures and spray methods for generating fine spray particles.
Generally, low pressure spraying is widely used rather than high pressure spraying because the latter has some shortcomings such as high energy consumption, severe wear of equipment, nozzle clogging in operation, etc. However, low pressure atomization is often used in conjunction with low pressure air jet because fine mist particles are difficult to obtain in large quantities.
The combined use of compressed air atomization can contribute to improving the efficiency in various processes including environmental purification, nanomaterial preparation, chemical reaction promotion, etc., due to its low energy consumption and high fogging efficiency.
Paek In Chol, vice dean of the Faculty of Mining Engineering, has investigated the spray characteristics and considered the optimum spraying conditions when low pressure air jet is combined with low-pressure water jet.
Using the Taylor Analogue Breaking (TAB) model, he simulated the droplet breaking up process and studied the time-dependent tearing behavior and the suitable pressure conditions.
The results show that most particles in the central part of the spraying zone are 0.8-12㎛ in diameter, and the spray pressure in the combined compressed air is the most suitable from 0.25 to 0.3MPa when the pressure of compressed air is set to be 0.2MPa.
You can find the details in his paper “Numerical Simulation of Water Spraying Characterization Improvement in Low Pressure” in “Proceedings of KUTIC-2025”.
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Jo Jun 16, 2026
The structure of a moisture separator reheater is very complex, and the cycle steam is heated during the film condensation of heating steam inside the tube bundle.
Previous works proposed a thermal calculation model and a calculation algorithm of a reheater tube bundle and linearized the quality variation of the heating steam and two-phase flow, but did not consider the subcooling of a condensate film.
Kim Myong Chol, a researcher at the Faculty of Thermal Engineering, has proposed an improved thermal calculation algorithm considering the nonlinearity of the steam quality inside the tube bundle and carried out a quantitative evaluation of the factors affecting heat transfer to provide a theoretical basis for determining the optimum design parameters of a moisture separator reheater.
He found out that measures must be taken to prevent U-tube bundles from sagging down in the design and manufacture of reheater bundles.
For more information, please refer to his paper “Analysis of Heat Transfer Characteristics of a Moisture Separator Reheater Considering the Variation of Steam Quality Inside the Tube” in “Proceedings of KUTIC-2025”.
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Jo Jun 15, 2026
Friction torque and load capacity of bearings are very important performance indicators. The high speed and precision of machines presupposes the minimization of the friction torque of bearings, and the long service life is guaranteed by the maximization of the dynamic load capacity. However, the friction torque and dynamic load capacity increase and decrease respectively with the changes of the internal geometric parameters of bearings, so a machine with long service life and good friction characteristics can be realized only by multi-objective optimization of the dynamic load capacity and friction torque of bearings.
Many researchers studied to maximize the dynamic load capacity of bearings and to minimize their friction torque, but there is a lack of confidence in the optimization results due to the lack of correlation, many simplified parts and lack of enough constraints
Ball bearings are most widely used because of their small friction torque and relatively simple manufacturing process. Ri Jong Hak, a researcher at the Faculty of Mechanical Science and Technology, fully presented the constraints that reflect the actual conditions of ball bearings and developed a new mathematical model to simultaneously optimize the dynamic load capacity and friction torque. On this basis, he optimized them using the genetic algorithm and verified its accuracy by the FEM.
The proposed method can be applied to the determination of internal geometric parameters to simultaneously optimize the dynamic load capacity and friction torque of ball bearings.
For more information, you can refer to his paper “A Novel Methodology for Determining the Internal Geometric Parameters of a Ball Bearing in Consideration of Load Capacity and Friction Torque” in “Proceedings of KUTIC-2025”.
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Jo Jun 14, 2026
Dimethyl carbonate (DMC) is one of the most important chemicals, which has a wide application range. It is used as the raw material of polycarbonate (PC) plastics, the solvent of electrolyte for energy storage devices, the additives of diesel fuel, etc. The worldwide carbonate synthesis industry is currently dominated by the transesterification method with ethylene oxide as a starting material, which was commercialized in the 1990s. However, the starting material, ethylene oxide, is from the crude oil and causes environmental pollution during production, so recently, the synthesis of carbonate based on urea has attracted attention.
At present, the achievement on the synthesis of DMC from urea and alcohol mainly comes from the research on catalysts and the most widely-used catalyst is ZnO. The reaction of DMC synthesis using ZnO as a catalyst proceeds according to the heterogeneous catalytic mechanism. However, to date, the ZnO catalyst used in previous studies is mostly prepared by the sol-gel method.
Preceding studies imply that 4-needle like nano-ZnO demonstrates stronger catalytic activity than spherical or sheet ZnO crystals, which improves reactions.
On the basis of the analysis, Kim Myong Hyok, a researcher at the Faculty of Chemical Engineering, studied the catalytic use of 4-needle like nano-ZnO prepared by the combustion method to improve the reaction time and temperature of dimethyl carbonate (DMC) synthesis, and the catalyst recovery, aiming to improve the DMC yield.
48g of methanol and 1g of catalyst were put into the reactor and heated to the desired reaction temperature, and then a liquid mixture of methanol 80g and urea 12g was added to the reactor for 10min. Ammonia generated during the reaction was removed three times through the safety valve of the reactor.
When nano-ZnO was used as a catalyst, the optimum reaction time and temperature of the DMC synthesis reaction were 3h and 140℃, respectively, with a DMC yield of 65.1%. The catalyst was recycled up to seven times.
You can find the details in his paper “Improvement in the Yield of Dimethyl Carbonate by 4-Needle like Nano-ZnO”in “Proceedings of KUTIC-2025”.
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