Professor Chin-An Tan from Wayne State University Visited JNU

In executing the 2009 grant from the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs of the P. R. China to Jinan University (JNU) on the key research project of Structural Loads, Safety, and Health Monitoring, Professor Ling Yu of the Department of Mechanics and Civil Engineering invited Professor Chin-An Tan of Wayne State University (WSU) U.

S.A. to visit JNU for an academic exchange of research ideas and discussion of collaboration. During his visit from 19th to 29th of October 2009, Prof. Tan toured the Research Center on Public Safety and the MOE Key Lab of Disaster Forecast and Control in Engineering at JNU. Prof. Tan was warmly welcomed by Prof.

Hongwei Ma, Dean of College of Science and Engineering, Prof. Fang Wang, Vice Dean and other faculty leaders of the College. They discussed and explored collaboration between the MOE Key Lab of Disaster Forecast and Control in Engineering at JNU, the Guangdong Province Key Lab of Diagnosis of Fault in Engineering Structures, with the WSU U.

S.A., involving exchange of academic research ideas, faculty and students exchange and visit, co-advising of graduate students, and sharing of various research resources. Their meeting was very fruitful, establishing future research collaboration in the national research interest on structural safety, health monitoring, and damage detection.

Prof. Tan is internationally known in the research areas of structural loads, safety, and health monitoring. He is a Full Professor at WSU and a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). Prof. Tan obtained his PhD in mechanical engineering from the University of California at Berkeley in 1989.

He was an Associate Dean of the College of Engineering at WUS, was an Associate Editor of the ASME Journal of Vibration and Acoustics, and currently serves on the Editorial Board of the prestigious ASME Applied Mechanics Review and other editorial committees. During his visit to JNU Prof. Tan presented a seminar on Bridge Structural Health Monitoring Based on Vibration and Traffic Monitoring to a college-wide audience, a lecture on the applications of numerical methods in structural dynamics to graduate students in the Department, and conducted several research meetings hosted by Prof.

Ling Yu. The main contents of the presentations by Prof. Tan included: (1) statistical modeling and assessment of vehicles-bridge interactions; (2) moving loads of vehicles-bridge interactions; (3) traffic-based Bayesian analysis of structural identification; (4) uncertainty analysis of structural characteristics; (5) use of MATLAB in structural dynamic analyses; (6) calculations and simulations of vibration-based energy harvesting in structures; (7) discussion of teaching methodologies and emerging research topics at U.

S. higher education institutions. The academic reports presented by Prof. Tan were all warmly welcome and well received by the faculty and students of the Department.

Prof. Tan also provided valuable directions for the graduate students of key subject of engineering mechanics in Guangdong Province on the research topics of structural loads, safety, and health monitoring through several research discussion meetings. The discussions included: (1) recent advances in moving load identification; (2) issues in structural health monitoring; (3) vibration-based energy harvesting in structures.

This research visit and consultation has helped to motivate interest in mechanics and research creativity, raise the level of research, and strengthen academic exchange of ideas. Our graduate students give very high marks to this academic visit by Prof. Tan and look forward to many more such visits by the well-known foreign experts to JNU.