The First ZHITU Symposium on Advances in Civil Engineering was held in College of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Zhejiang University on July 12-14. ZHITU stands for the union of five universities, namely, Zhejiang University, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Tokyo and Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology. ZHITU is ‘智途’ in Chinese, which means ‘A Smart Path for the Future’. Around 80 representatives from the five universities attended the symposium.
With the topics of structures, materials, disaster mitigation and smart city, the first ZHITU symposium includes 5 keynotes, 19 invited lectures, 26 graduate reports and contest, expert panel discussion and technical tour.
The opening ceremony of the First ZHITU Symposium on Advances in Civil Engineering and International Research Institute of Smart Structures Systems and Informatics (ISSSI) was held on the morning of July 12. The ceremony was chaired by Prof. DUAN Yuanfeng, director of ZHITU local organizing committee. Prof. LUO Yaozhi, dean of CCEA, ZJU and chair of ZHITU symposium, made a welcoming address. Prof. YUN Chung Bang, director of ISSSI, Member of Korea Academy of Science and Technology, full-time adjunct professor of ZJU, introduced the background and vision of the newly established ISSSI. Then, Prof. YUN Chung Bang, Prof. B.F. Spencer from UIUC, Prof. NI Yiqing from HK PolyU, and Prof. LUO Yaozhi jointly inaugurated ISSSI. Afterwards, representatives of the five universities introduced their education and research accordingly.
After short coffee break, 5 experts gave keynote speeches, which were: “State-of-the-art and Practice for Monitoring of Bridge Infrastructure in the USA” by Prof. B.F. Spencer from UIUC, “Bayesian Machine Learning in Structural Health Monitoring” by Prof. NI Yiqing from HK PolyU, “A Model for the Estimation of Crack Depth in Concrete by Surface-wave Transmission Analysis” by Prof. Myoungsu Shin from UNIST, “Infrastructure Monitoring Taking Advantage of IoT Technologies” by Prof. Tomonori Nagayama from UoT, and “Structural Health Monitoring and Assessment for Safe-resilient Civil Infrastructure” by Prof. YUN Chung Bang from Zhejiang University.
Invited lectures were given in two conference rooms on the afternoon of July 12 and morning of July 13. Professors from the five universities presented excellent works such as “Use of Emerging Structural Materials and Systems for the Maintenance and Sustainability of Concrete Infrastructure”, “The Bond Behavior Between Concrete and Corroded Reinforcement: State of the Art”, “Prediction of Earthquake Ground Motion Propagations and Amplifications”, “Energy Regenerative Dampers for Simultaneous Vibration Control and Energy Harvesting”, “Fire Resistant Performance Evaluation for Steel Bridges”.
Graduate reports and contest followed on July 13. Students from the five universities gave 26 reports on smart structures, intelligent materials, health monitoring, etc., and ZHITU International Scientific Committee selected 5 best papers.
On the afternoon of July 13, a panel discussion was held among five university representatives, with the focus on future collaboration on education and research. Afterwards, ZHITU closing ceremony was held, and a technical tour was guided by Prof. DUAN Yuanfeng to the lab hall of College of Civil Engineering and Architecture.
In the evening of July 13, ZHITU banquet was held. During the banquet, Dr. ZHU Songye from HK PolyU and Dr. Sim from UNIST reported the outcome of panel discussion, and five graduates were awarded for their excellent presentations in the graduate report contest.
