The development of materials and processing technologies for ships and power plants has been very successful. In particular hign valuation has been placed on fields such as the development of high-strength and heat-resistant steels, lifeassessment and non-destructive inspection, and automatic welding technologies for ships, boilers/steam turbines.
Recently, a number of new fields have come to be studied actively, including functional ceramics for SOFC and batteries, new metals such as rapidly solidified aluminum alloy and intermetallic compounds, and new processing technology such as plasma arc spray.