Director
Kazuhiro Ogawa
Our research institute was founded in 1964 as Research Institute for Strength and Fracture of Materials. Since then, academic foundations of strength of materials, fracture mechanics under various complicated circumstances have been developed and the institute was reorganized as Research Institute for Fracture Technology in 1989, Fracture Research Institute in 1999, and Fracture and Reliability Research Institute in 2004, respectively. In 2014, we cerebrated our 50th anniversary. To mark the 50th anniversary, International Symposium was held in Sendai, where is the birthplace of "Strength of Materials". And then, from 2015, New Fracture and Reliability Research Institute has been started for sustainment of safety and reliability for advanced materials and components.
In the case of the advanced materials and components, properties such as high temperature, high pressure, high speed, high density, miniaturization are required. Therefore, required properties are complicated. Our staffs and students have been challenging to evaluate and to predict the such complicated phenomenon and unexperienced events by logical consideration and experience to date and present with a unified voice.
Now our institute consists of 6 research division: Strength Reliability of Advanced Energy and Environmental Materials, New Energy System Science, Design and Evaluation of Performance and Reliability of Advanced Functional Materials, Nondestructive Monitoring and Evaluation Research, Materials Strength under Extreme Environment (Guest Division), and Advance Electric Power Research (Joint Research with Tohoku Electric Power Co., Inc.). Various interdisciplinary research activities have been conducted actively; development of new evaluation and design methods for long-term reliability of materials, electronic devices, equipment used in various energy plants strength and reliability of earth energy system and energy cycle, development of on-line monitoring system for evaluating integrity of materials and structures, explication of fracture mechanics in nano-scale based on multi physics computational science etc.
For the establishment of the world leading research and education bases, not a few international collaborative research have been continuing. These international collaborations mainly consist of the integration of experimental and analytical researches on the explication of the dominant factors of the integrity of structures and materials under operation of power plants on the bases of atomic scale analyses. The expression mechanisms of the performance and reliability of advanced materials and their degradation mechanisms have been elucidated quantitatively based on the scientific rationale. International symposiums are organized every year with these collaborators and hundreds of students have attended the symposiums in this decade. This kind of exchange program activates the interdisciplinary and international researches among young researchers and students, and thus, the world-leading researchers and engineers have been produced continuously through research activities in our institute.
We would like to continue contributing the establishment of the safe and reliable society in the 21st century through the academic basis of security science for energy systems and producing the next generation of young leaders in both academic and industrial fields. I really thank all the precursors and supporters of our institute over the years from the bottom of my heart and I look forward to your further guidance and encouragement in the future. Thank you very much in advance for your continued support.
Kazuhiro Ogawa, Director, FRRI