TechTalk – Rock Failure Process Analysis: From Meso, Macro to Mega

All members of the HKU community and the general public are welcome to join!
Speaker: Professor Chun’an Tang, Professor, School of Civil Engineering, DUT; Director of the Deep Earth Engineering Research Center
Date: 5th November 2026 (Thursday)
Time: 11:00am

Mode: Mixed

Register now!
About the TechTalk
All members of the HKU community and the general public are welcome to join!
Speaker: Professor Chun’an Tang, Professor, School of Civil Engineering, DUT; Director of the Deep Earth Engineering Research Center
Moderator: Professor Jing Yu, Assistant Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, HKU 
Date:  5th November 2026 (Thursday)
Time: 11:00am
Mode: Mixed (both face-to-face and online). Seats for on-site participants are limited. A confirmation email will be sent to participants who have successfully registered.
Language: English
Rock failure is not simply a continuous medium failure, but a cross-scale catastrophic process emerging from mesoscopic heterogeneity. Based on the Rock Failure Process Analysis (RFPA) method, this report elaborates on three levels of failure catastrophe: at the mesoscopic scale, statistical heterogeneity of material strength governs damage initiation and localization; at the macroscopic scale, damage accumulation and stress redistribution drive crack coalescence, structural instability, and catastrophe; at the mega-scale, this principle is extended to the planetary lithosphere, forming the “Breakup of Earth” (地球大龜裂) theory—thermal accumulation drives global self-organized fracturing, triggering decompression melting and global net cooling. The three scales follow a unified physical logic: heterogeneity → damage evolution → self-organized criticality → catastrophe. The report will discuss the implications of this cross-scale framework for understanding earthquakes, rockbursts, and the origin of plate tectonics.

Schlieren and Highspeed_Kamera
Tomographic BOS
Registration
Registration
Registration
  • The tech talk “Rock Failure Process Analysis: From Meso, Macro to Mega” will be organized in the Tam Wing Fan Innovation Wing Two (G/F, Run Run Shaw Building, HKU) on 5th November 2026 (Thursday), 11:00am.
  • Seats are limited. Zoom broadcast is available if the seating quota is full. 
  • Registrants on the waiting list will be notified of the arrangement after the registration deadline (with seating/free-standing/other arrangement)

HKU members

HKU Members
Click to register the Tech Talk

Non-HKU members

NON-HKU Members
Click to register the tech talk
Recording of the Tech Talk
About the speaker

Professor Chun’an Tang

Professor Chun’an Tang is a Professor at Dalian University of Technology. He earned his PhD from Northeastern University and was a postdoc at Imperial College London. He is a Cheung Kong Scholar, chief scientist of the 973 Program, and published 400+ papers and five books on rock mechanics. He developed the RFPA numerical method and microseismic-based early warning method, and proposed the “Earth Breakup” theory (Nature Communications, included in Encyclopedia of Geology). His awards include the State S&T Progress Award (Second Prize), the 2024 Huang Wenxi-Chen Zongji Geotechnical Mechanics Award, and nine consecutive years as a Most Cited Chinese Researcher.

Promotion materials
About the project

Multifunctional Filters for Protecting Public Health

Clean water and clean air are vital for public health. This project focuses on developing high-efficiency and environmentally sustainable filters for removing harmful air/water pollutants. The team has developed novel architectures and functionalities for the filters to achieve high permeance, high removal efficiency, and excellent reusability.

Gallery
Other Tech talks
Other Tech Talks