Abstract
This Special Issue was organised to celebrate the 70th Birthday of Chair Professor You-Lin Xu (FHKIE, FASCE, FEMI, FIStructE, FHKEng). Prof. Xu was born in Shanghai, China, on November 25, 1952. He completed his undergraduate study in Construction Machinery at Tongji University, China, in 1978, obtained his Master’s Degree in Applied Mechanics from Tongji University in 1986, and received his PhD Degree in Structural Dynamics and Wind Engineering from the University of Sydney, Australia, in 1992. He then joined James Cook University of North Queensland in Australia as a Research Fellow from 1991 to 1995. Prof. Xu moved to The Hong Kong Polytechnic University in 1995 as an Assistant Professor and then promoted to Associate Professor, Professor and Chair Professor in 1997, 1999 and 2003, respectively. He was Head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (2007–2013), Dean of the Faculty of Construction and Environment (2014–2020), and Yim, Mak, Kwok and Chung Professor in Smart Structures (2017–2020) at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He was elected a Fellow of Hong Kong Academy of Engineering Sciences in 2018. He is currently a Chair Professor at Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, China and an Emeritus Professor at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China.
Prof. Xu has made enormous contributions to the field of structural dynamics, in particular, wind engineering, structural control, and structural health monitoring (SHM), which is evidenced by over 300 SCI journal papers and three research books. Prof. Xu is a world-class scholar in wind engineering. He has done creative and innovative work on wind-vehicle-bridge interaction, rain-wind-induced cable vibration, buffeting response of long-span bridges to skew winds, reliability analysis of wind-excited bridges, typhoon wind field simulation, conditional wind simulation, non-stationary buffeting response and vortex-induced response of long-span bridges, and vertical axis wind turbines. Prof. Xu is also a world-leading scholar in developing advanced devices, theories and technologies of the passive, semi-active and active structural control and in promoting smart civil structures. Over the past three decades, his remarkable achievements have covered dynamic response control of a wide spectrum of structural systems, including cable-stayed bridges, buildings, transmission towers and high-tech facilities subjected to wind excitation, seismic motion and micro-vibration. Prof. Xu is a pioneer in developing SHM technologies comprehensively since the 1990s in multi-scale modelling and model updating, optimal sensor placement and response reconstruction, global thermal analysis, traffic loading simulation, SHM-aided fatigue assessment, hierarchical rating system, digital twin-based life-cycle seismic performance assessment of long-span cable-stayed bridges and so forth. He has also devoted to applying SHM techniques to practical large-scale civil engineering structures, notably for the 1377-m main span Tsing Ma Bridge, 1018-m main span Stonecutters Bridge and 632-m tall Shanghai Tower. Professor Xu’s research work will certainly have a significant impact on scientific research and engineering practice.
Due to his outstanding contribution, Professor Xu has received seven national and international prestigious awards, including the Natural Science Award (First Class) of Heilongjiang Province, China, in 2020, the Guanghua Engineering Science and Technology Award in 2018, the IAWE Davenport Medal in 2018, the ASCE Robert H. Scanlan Medal in 2012, the Qian Ling Xi Computational Mechanics Award in 2010, Senior Croucher Award in 2006, and Natural Science Award (First Class) of Ministry of Education of China in 2003. Prof. Xu ranked No. 27 in World’s Top 2% Scientists in Civil Engineering 2020 released by Stanford University.
Prof. Xu is also a very successful educator and mentor. During the past 30 years, he has nurtured over 25 PhD students as the chief supervisor and 26 research fellows and post-doctoral fellows. It is a great honour for the three of us to have the opportunity to organise this Special Issue for Prof. Xu’s 70th Birthday. We have had a great pleasure and special privilege of learning from him as post-doctoral fellows and collaborators over the past decades. We are much indebted to him for his enlightening and inspiring guidance, enthusiastic and rigorous research training, as well as great kindness and friendship, without which it is impossible for us to enter the academic career.
Besides Prof. Xu’s outstanding research and education achievements, he has also served in various capacities for relevant international associations and international journals in the past 30 years. He is vice Chairman of Chinese Association of Structural Control and Health Monitoring and was Director of International Association for Structural Control and Monitoring (IASCM), Regional Coordinator of Asia-Oceania Region of International Association for Wind Engineering (IAWE), Associate Editor of ASCE Journal of Bridge Engineering, Chairman of the sixth International Conference on Structural Health Monitoring of Intelligent Infrastructures, just to name a few. He served as Guest/Visiting Professor for 15 universities, including Guest Professor for the Global Centre of Excellence (GCOE) Program in New Frontier of Education and Research in Wind Engineering, The Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT).
Prof. Xu has so many collaborators, friends and students that we could not invite them all to contribute a paper. This Special Issue consists of only16 invited papers contributed by world-class scholars. All these papers have been subjected to the usual rigorous peer-review process of the journal. They align with the scope of the journal and Prof. Xu’s main research areas.
The first set of papers in this Special Issue includes five articles concerned with wind engineering, covering the effect of 3D correlated wind and wave loads on sea-crossing bridges, wind-induced inelastic response of base-isolated tall buildings, nonlinear vortex-induced vibration of bridges, effect of tropical cyclones and severe local storms. The second group of five papers are focused on earthquake engineering and structural control, including condition assessment of bridge isolation bearings, response control of the stay cable and transmission tower-line system using inerter-based dampers, control robustness of tuned viscous mass dampers and a comprehensive review on cable vibration mitigation. The last six papers in this Special Issue are in SHM, including a review of artificial intelligence in civil engineering, computer vision and machine learning techniques for damage detection, human-induced vibration, modal identification and temperature behaviour monitoring.
The editors of this Special Issue are deeply indebted to the authors for their preparation of the high-quality papers and to the reviewers for their timely reviews. We would also like to sincerely thank Professor Tao Yu, Co-Editor-in-Chief of Advances in Structural Engineering, for his strong support throughout the development of this Special Issue.