Civil Engineering

TechTalk – A Station Location Design Problem in a Bike-Sharing System with Both Conventional and Electric Shared Bikes

Innovation Wing Two, TechTalk / By

January 15, 2026 (Thursday) 4:00pm-5:00pm
Bike-sharing systems (BSSs) have emerged in many cities worldwide. One key issue regarding the strategic design of BSSs is the deployment of bike stations. Innovations in technology have enabled new types of bikes, such as shared e-bikes, to work alongside conventional shared bikes. However, existing studies on bike station location design mainly focus on single bike type, and there is a lack of a theoretical model to determine the optimal bike station locations for a BSS where both conventional shared bikes and e-bikes are considered. This study investigates the station location design problem in a BSS with conventional shared bikes and e-bikes. Problem formulation, solution method, and numerical examples are presented to offer key insights into the planning of BSSs.

Young Scholar TechTalk – Synergistic Low Carbon and Durable Design for Reinforced Concrete Structures

Innovation Wing Two, TechTalk / By

October 23, 2025 (Thursday) 4:00pm-5:00pm
The construction industry faces dual demands for decarbonization and longevity. However, existing research often addresses decarbonization and durability separately. Achieving synergistic carbon reduction and service life extension through advanced materials and paradigm shift remains a critical challenge. The speaker has developed a multi-scale design framework — a novel corrosion-based service life model in concrete level, a load-harsh environment coupled durability model in reinforcement level and a whole life carbon-durable design framework in structure level. These advances unveil the mechanisms between decarbonization and durability enhancement in reinforced concrete structures, effectively lowering carbon footprint of buildings while extending service life. Such achievements can provide critical theoretical and technical supports for national carbon neutral initiative.

TechTalk – Lifecycle Wake Mitigation Strategies of Wind Farms using Machine Learning Techniques: Layout Optimization and Cooperative Yaw Control

Innovation Wing Two, TechTalk / By

November 7, 2024 (Thursday) 4:30-5:30pm
The turbine wake refers to the trail left by the upstream turbines with the decreased wind speed and the increased turbulence intensity. The adverse wake effect correspondingly results in less energy production and triggers earlier fatigue failure of downstream turbines. The talk aims to propose solutions to lifecycle wake mitigation strategies, i.e., layout optimization in the design stage and cooperative yaw control in the operation stage, through advanced machine learning techniques and optimization methods. A machine learning wake model accurately predicts wake characteristics and demonstrates its advantages when applied to the freeform optimization and renovation of wind farms. A novel double-layer machine learning framework involving Bayesian optimization for cooperative wind farm control is established to improve the overall power output in the maintenance stage. Overall, these proposed solutions offer a promising path forward for the robust development of offshore wind farms in the long term.

Young Scholar TechTalk – Ground Characterization from Digital Drilling Data with Time Series Algorithm

Innovation Wing Two, TechTalk / By

July 30 2024 (Tuesday) 4:30-5:30pm
Drilling a hole serves as an in-situ test for assessing geomaterial strength. Digital methods like Measurement While Drilling (MWD) and Drilling Process Monitoring (DPM) have been utilized to record drilling data for ground characterization, offering advantages in data acquisition and cost-effectiveness compared to conventional methods. However, challenges lie in addressing random variations in MWD penetration rates, leading to undesirable correlations with other investigation results. This study aims to address the research gap by analyzing digital drilling data from various projects using a time-series algorithm associated with DPM. The study includes MWD depth-series data from advanced drillholes and blastholes for safe tunnelling, instrumented boreholes for site investigation, and DPM time-series data from scientific drillholes for oil shale exploration. The reliable and accurate interpretation of digital drilling data with time-series algorithm can help MWD method become common and standard method for ground characterization in the geotechnical engineering and petroleum engineering.

TechTalk – Greening the Slope: Revolutionizing Urban Water Management in Hilly Environments

Innovation Wing Two, TechTalk / By

May 14, 2024 (Tuesday) 3:30-4:30pm
Urban landscapes on slopes present unique challenges for managing stormwater. Traditional drainage systems often exacerbate other environmental problems, but sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) offer a nature-inspired solution. By mimicking natural processes, SuDS absorb, clean, and slowly release rainwater, effectively reducing stormwater and enhancing urban resilience. This talk explores innovative SuDS designs tailored for hilly environments. Findings highlight the effectiveness of integrating SuDS with existing infrastructure, particularly in collection-storage-release forms or terraced configurations. These showcase not only nearly complete water quantity control but also the potential of SuDS to transform urban water dynamics on slopes and emphasize their role in fostering sustainable cities.

TechTalk – Device-Independent Quantum Key Generation

Innovation Wing Two, TechTalk / By

March 7 2024 (Thursday) 4:30-5:30pm
The extraction of private, uniformly random bits from weakly random seeds is a problem of central importance in cryptography with multiple applications. A well-known result in classical computer science states that randomness extraction is possible using classical resources only when multiple independent sources are available. On the other hand, Quantum Entanglement enables a solution to the problem even in the so-called device-independent framework. Device-Independent quantum cryptography offers the highest form of security, wherein the users do not need to even trust the devices executing the cryptographic protocol, and can instead verify correctness and security by means of simple statistical tests on the devices. In this talk, we report on the state-of-art theoretical and experimental results on device-independent quantum cryptography, with a focus on quantum randomness amplification and quantum key distribution.

TechTalk – Unlock the Hidden Value of Bridges’ Reserve Capacity in Toll Highway Operation

Innovation Wing Two, TechTalk / By

February 22 2024 (Thursday) 4:30-5:30pm
The extra reserve capacity exists widely in highway bridges due to the conservative design and construction. In a case study of a highway flyover in Singapore, the flyover still possesses at least an additional 30% loading capacity after twenty years of operation. This additional capacity, which was achieved by consuming extra raw materials and energy when the bridge was built years ago, is considered another kind of “waste” since it has never been used. To make use of it, the speaker introduced the additional loading capacity into the framework of operating profit optimization. The unused loading capacity enables a higher volume of vehicles and a higher proportion of heavy vehicles, thus further leading to the increase in toll profit.

TechTalk – Seawater Sea-sand Engineered Cementitious Composites (SS-ECC) for Marine and Coastal Infrastructures

Innovation Wing Two, TechTalk / By

January 25 2024 (Thursday) 4:30-5:30pm
Engineered/Strain-Hardening Cementitious Composites (ECC/SHCC) is an advanced fiber-reinforced concrete exhibiting multiple-cracking and strain-hardening under tension. We aimed to explore the feasibility of producing high-strength seawater sea-sand Engineered Cementitious Composites (SS-ECC) for marine and coastal applications facing the shortage of freshwater and river/manufactured sand. The effects of key composition parameters including the sea-sand size, the polyethylene fiber length, and the fiber volume dosage on the mechanical performance of SS-ECC were comprehensively investigated. The crack characteristics of SS-ECC were also assessed and modelled, which are critical for its applications with non-corrosive reinforcements. SS-ECC with tensile strength over 8 MPa, ultimate tensile strain of about 5%, and compressive strength over 130 MPa were achieved. Using seawater and sea-sand had almost no negative effects on the 28-day mechanical properties of high-strength ECC. Smaller sand size and higher fiber dosage of SS-ECC resulted in smaller crack widths under the same tensile strain. A five-dimensional representation was proposed to assess the overall performance of SS-ECC, by comprehensively considering both the crack characteristics and the mechanical properties. A probabilistic model was also proposed to describe the stochastic nature and evolution of crack width, and it can be used to estimate the critical tensile strain on SS-ECC for a given crack-width limit and cumulative probability. The findings and proposed methods can facilitate the design of SS-ECC in marine and coastal infrastructures.

TechTalk – HKU’s Contributions to Landslide Hazard Mitigation in Hong Kong

Innovation Wing Two, TechTalk / By

February 1 2024 (Thursday) 3:00-4:00pm
Hong Kong, renowned as one of the most densely populated territories globally, grapples with its hilly terrain and limited flat land, resulting in numerous buildings constructed on slopes or adjacent to large cut slopes. This situation poses a grave risk as landslides could tragically claim multiple lives. To address this critical issue, slope stabilization plays a crucial role in mitigating the landslide hazard. In this TechTalk, the pioneering work of Professor Peter Lumb on slope stability will be reviewed. The development and validation of soil nailing as an effective measure for slope stabilization will also be described.

TechTalk – Artificial Intelligence for Structural Design, Simulation and Health Monitoring

Innovation Wing Two, TechTalk / By

December 14 2023 (Thursday) 4:30-5:30pm
Structural engineering community require the experience of experts in design, simulation and structural health monitoring (SHM) of existing structures. Currently, the training process of structural engineers may take more than 10 years from undergraduate to expert. The economic design currently relies on the experience of engineers, which may not reach the optimized design outcome. In addition, high-fidelity simulation and SHM are still challenging and practical applications of the nonlinear structural simulation and SHM are mostly limited to researchers, instead of practical engineers. Conventional structural engineering widely adopts finite element solvers based on CPUs, which may be time consuming. The computing resources of GPU accelerators and GPU-based supercomputers cannot be fully utilized due to the lack of GPU-based simulation platforms.

The project develops deep-learning-based intelligent structural design, simulation and structural health monitoring platform. For structural design, dataset is collected for structural design input parameters and structural design drawings, the generative models are learned to generate preliminary structural design drawings of buildings and bridges. For structural simulation, physics-informed neural networks are developed to replicate the spatial discretization and temporal discretization of conventional finite element solvers. For SHM, the state-of-the-art neural operator is trained on finite element simulation dataset of vehicle-bridge interaction (VBI) system and fine-tuned on experimental dataset to infer the damage distribution field based on structural response field. The project can inspire the undergraduate and graduate students to learn more about the challenges and future developments of structural engineering.