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Institute of Disaster Prevention Engineering

Editor: 熊思尘 Date: 2015-11-27 Hits: 103

    Disasters are big challenges that hinder social and economic development, and thus have received extensive attention all over the world. With the rapid development of large-scale infrastructure construction in China, various disasters and related engineering problems are increasingly remarkable, and their social impact and economic losses becomes more and more serious. Now disaster prevention engineering has been an important part of civil engineering, which mainly study the disaster breeding and evolution mechanism, develop the disaster prevention and control technologies, and train the young talents in area of disaster prevention and reduction.

     The research on disaster prevention and reduction in ZJU began in the fifties of last century, which generally covered Geological hazard Engineering, Underground Engineering, Earthquake Engineering, Blasting Engineering, Vibration Engineering, Wind Engineering and so on. In order to meet the demands of disaster prevention of the infrastructure construction in the twenty-first century, the Institute of Disaster Prevention Engineering of ZJU (ZJU-IDPE) was founded in 1999. After more than 15 years of development, the ZJU-IDPE has become an inter-discipline research center which is of distinct characteristics and face great challenges.

     At present, the research in ZJU-IDPE has set up its own characteristics and both domestic and international reputations in the area of disaster prevention and reduction. Our research mainly covers three areas: prevention and control of engineering geological hazards, development and utilization of underground space and related disaster control, and disaster assessment and control of engineering structure. Detailed research interests are summarized as follows:

(1)   Prevention and control of engineering geological hazards. The main studies include the formation mechanisms, control technologies anddivision of Disaster area of geological disasters (including landslide, rock fall and collapse, debris flow and so on), and the development and application of geological hazard monitoring system and monitoring technology.

(2)   Control and safety assessment of underground space excavation. The main research is on the disaster mechanism, control theory, construction method and design theory of mountain tunnel, urban metro, excavation of foundation pit and underground pipeline.

(3)   Foundation treatment. It mainly focuses on the treatment method and related technology for soft soil and high fill foundation.

(4)   Rock and soil dynamics and earthquake engineering. Its main contents are as follows: to study the engineering properties of rock mass, soft soil and sandy soil under the dynamic loads from traffic, blasting, and cyclic loading; and to analyze earthquake dynamic effect and resisting performance design for nuclear power plants, dams and other major structural engineering.

(5)   Rock mechanics and rock engineering, mainly including stability evaluation of rock masses deterministically and probabilistically, block theory and its application to rock engineering, 3-D discontinuity network modeling and their visualization, and acquisition technology of discontinuity geometric information and its application to slope and underground engineering.

(6)   Structure disaster and reinforcement: studying the nonlinear disaster response, damage accumulation and collapse mechanism of large structural materials, components and systems, and the design criteria and design method of structural reinforcement.

(7)   Intelligent health monitoring system. The study mainly focuses on: intelligent sensing element, wireless sensor network and its optimized setting and implementation technology, data acquisition and transmission technology, damage assessment and health diagnosis method for major engineering testing and monitoring; and online damage identification and location, model modification, health diagnosis, safety assessment and early warning system.

    There are totally 11 faculties in ZJU-IDPE, including 2 professors, 8 associate professors and 1 assistant professor. The personnel structure is reasonable, and full of vigor and vitality. The faculties younger than the age of 45 years old accounted for 55%, and its proportion with overseas study or learning experience reaches 90%.

    Over the past five years, the institute has undertaken more than 400 research projects including the 12th Five-Year National Science and Technology Support Project of China, the National Natural Science Foundation supported projects, the Key projects of science and Technology Department of Zhejiang Province, the Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province supported projects, the Research Programs of Transportation Department of Zhejiang Province, the major R&D projects supported by government and industry, and so on. The total five-year cumulative research funds exceeds 59 million RMB. In addition, in the past five years ZJU-IDPE has totally published over 80 peer reviewed journal papers indexed by SCI / EI and 6 academic monographs or textbooks, and has received 6 scientific and technological awards from state, province and ministerial departments, and has gotten 5 authorized invention patents and 6 utility model patents.

    More than 110 graduate students (including master and Ph.D) have graduated from the ZJU-IDPE since its establishment, and their graduation destination mainly includes government departments, universities, design institutes, banks, real estate companies, overseas studies, etc. At present, there are more than 30 graduate students and 1 postdoctoral research fellow in the institute.

    Recently, the ZJU-IDPE is expanding academic exchanges and cooperation with other countries or regions including the United States, Canada, Britain, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong, and has established long-term cooperative relationship with Cambridge University, the University of Tokyo, Nanyang Technology University and other foreign famous universities and research institutions to promote faculties’ and students’ international communication and multi-faceted research collaboration.