Study level

  • PhD

Faculty/School

Faculty of Engineering

School of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Topic status

We're looking for students to study this topic.

Research centre

Supervisors

Professor Tommy Chan
Position
Professor in Civil Engineering
Division / Faculty
Faculty of Engineering

Overview

We are looking for an appropriate PhD candidate working for a recently awarded ARC Discovery Project. The PhD candidate will work on the further improvement of the previously developed Synergic identification of prestress force [1] and moving force applying to continuous supported prestressed concrete bridges using regularisation techniques [2-7] and corroborative substructural modelling.

Research activities

Substructural modelling is a technique which subdivides a structure into different substructures for further analysis of the substructures [8]. A substructure has a considerably smaller number of degrees of freedom (DOF) in comparison with the whole structure and the number of unknown parameters is also reduced. As the substructures are not isolated from the remaining structure, so various assumptions are made or interfacial responses are required to measure in order to analyze them correctly. However it is almost impossible to measure the interfacial responses so it prompts the need to identify the interfacial forces, which could ensure the substructure to be analyzed statically and dynamically. This kind of substructural modelling which involves the identification of interfacial forces is defined as Corroborative Substructural Modelling.

References

  1. Xiang, ZR, Chan, THT, Thambiratnam, DP and Nguyen T, 2016. Synergic identification of prestress force and moving force on prestressed concrete beam based on virtual distortion method, Smart Structures and Systems, 17(6), 917-933.
  2. Law SS, Chan THT, Zhu XQ, Zeng QH 2001, Regularisation in moving force identification, J. Eng. Mech., 127(2), 136-148.
  3. Chen Z, Chan THT, Yu L, 2020 Comparison of regularisation methods for moving force identification with ill-posed problems, J. Sound Vib. 478, 115349.
  4. Chen Z, Chan THT 2017 A truncated generalized singular value decomposition algorithm for moving force identification with ill-posed problems, J. Sound Vib. 401, 297-310.
  5. Chen Z., Qin L.F., Zhao SB, Chan THT, Nguyen A (2019), Toward efficacy of piecewise polynomial truncated singular value decomposition algorithm in moving force identification, Adv. Struct. Eng. 22(12), 2687-2698.
  6. Chen Z. Chan THT, Nguyen A, Yu L. (2019) Identification of vehicle axle loads from bridge responses using preconditioned least square QR-factorization algorithm, Mech. Syst. Signal Process. 128, 479-496.
  7. Chen, Z., Chan THT, Nguyen A (2018) Moving force identification based on modified preconditioned conjugate gradient method, J. Sound Vib. 423, 100-117.
  8. Jamali S, Chan THT, Koo KY, Nguyen A, Thambiratnam DP. 2018, Capacity estimation of beam-like structures using substructural method, Int. J. Struct. Stab. Dyn., 18(12), 1850162.

Skills and experience

An honours civil/structural engineering degree with knowledge and skills in structural dynamics, finite element methods and experimental techniques. A candidate with some publications in Q1 journals will definitely be an advantage.

Scholarships

You may be eligible to apply for a research scholarship.

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Contact

Contact the supervisor for more information.