A ME PhD student received the 14th HKIE outstanding paper award for young engineers/researchers announced in the award ceremony on 20 Sep 2019 held by the HKIE Transactions Committee, The Hong Kong Institution of Engineers (HKIE).
Structural health monitoring is a critical engineering issue attracting a lot of R&D strength from the literature and engineering areas in the past decades. Various complex structures including truss structures and satellites in space engineering, bridges and building structures in civil engineering, offshore structures in ocean engineering, water supply pipe systems, and railway systems etc are usually business-critical but may often suffer from vibration damage or fatigue problems, and eventually have structural cracks or bolt loosening issues. Timely structural health monitoring and regular maintenance are therefore greatly important to smooth operation of these structures and also highly relevant to public health and safety.
The award-winning work is entitled by “A second-order output spectrum based method for detecting bolt-loosening fault in a satellite-like structure”, which is done by a ME PhD student, Mr Quankun Li, in the research group of nonlinear dynamics, vibration and control (NDVC) led by Dr Xingjian Jing. The work is about a systematic and effective method for accurately identify and locate potential crack or bolt-loosening faults in these aforementioned complex structures, based on a novel nonlinear feature of vibration response of structures using only several trails of vibration signals. Compared to existing results in the literature, this unique method can make full use of fault-incurred nonlinear features but minimize the influence of inherent nonlinear dynamics already existing in structures, and eventually can give more accurate and sensitive diagnosis on potential fault and its location. The method is developed based on a series of studies within Dr Xingjian Jing’s NDVC group on the theory and methods for analysis and design of nonlinear systems in the frequency domain in the past years. The work done by Mr Li has led to several publications in top international journals including Structural Health Monitoring (IF3.798, Rank 6/86 in Multidisciplinary Engineering), Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing (IF5.005, Rank 6/129 in Mechanical Engineering), Nonlinear Dynamics (IF4.6004, Rank 7/134 in Mechanics), and so on, and would have wide engineering applications.
The HKIE Outstanding Paper Award for Young Engineers/Researchers 2019 is an international paper award which is organised in its 14th consecutive year. It is the HKIE ultimate goal to encourage young engineers and researchers to publish their works and advance in their professional findings, as well as to promote engineering among the younger generation. This competition is open to young engineers and researchers worldwide who are at the age of 35 or below. Three papers have been selected for the year’s Award. A Public Lecture will be organised for the three awardees to share and exhibit their findings and accomplishments in various engineering fields.
