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Abstract  In this study, a numerical model of 7-day forecast of sea ice produced by the Japan Meteorological Agency was improved by the following approaches. First, a new ice dynamic model was introduced: the distributed mass/discrete floe model. The model takes account of discrete characteristics of ice floes and well simulates the ice edge location at low computational cost. Secondly, the grid size was reduced to 5 � 5 km for the future high resolution forecasts. Next, the sea surface current data was examined because it significantly influences sea ice movement. We applied two new datasets of HINO and Okhotsk Ocean General Circulation Model (Okhotsk OGCM), which are estimated by numerical simulations, for the 7-day forecast of sea ice. Ice southward speed in January and the whorl formations in February and March were well reproduced with Okhotsk OGCM datasets. Finally, the ocean heat flux at the ice-ocean interface was refined. As a result, we achieved an ice edge error reduction from 30.8 km to 23.5 km. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract A new method for designing propeller blade sections is presented. A vortex lattice method is used to evaluate the performance and the time-dependent pressure distribution on the blade surface in a non-uniform flow, while efficient optimization algorithms are used to modify the blade sections. Two different designs were carried out in this study. The first was a design to realize a target pressure distribution in a rotating three-dimensional flow. A two-dimensional wing theory was used to obtain the target pressure distribution. The predicted increase in efficiency and the reduction in the cavity volume were confirmed by model experiments. The second was a design to maximize the propeller efficiency. By this method, the propeller efficiency was improved by 1.2% under the constrains of constant thrust and a prescribed margin for face cavitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]