Leading by Professor Feng Jin from the Department of Hydraulic Engineering of Tsinghua University and Professor Gang Wang from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, the research results from the project  “Inter-Organization Cooperative Research” project “study on structuralized cementing technology and innovative stone column-seawall system for environmentally friendly reclamation” was published on the famous computational mechanics journal “International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering” as featured covering. This project was co-supported by the National Nature Science Foundation of China’s overseas, Hong Kong, and Macau Scholars Cooperative Research Fund and the State Key Laboratory of Hydroscience and Engineering, Tsinghua University.  This corporate research was designed to achieve higher performance of earth and rock materials. Using high-flow cement-based material cemented soil and stone skeleton structure, the research team developed adaptive high-performance structured cementing new structures and new materials to “high altitude, macroseismic, high deep-buried, oceanic thermohaline circulation, etc.”

The research team started with the fundamental mechanical principle and developed a coma mixed analytical method that could characterize the macro characteristics. This analytical method could help optimize and ensure the quality of the structured cementing materials, promoting a broader application of this new material and structure in hydraulic and ocean engineering.

The research team solved the uncertain fundamental mechanic problem of the vertex-vertex contact within the rock-filled block system, strengthening the foundation for more profound research of the kinematic properties of cemented rock-filled and other new hydraulic and marine materials. This basic research was published in a famous computational mechanics journal “International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering” in September 2020, titled as “Discontinuous deformation analysis handling vertex-vertex contact based on principle of least effort”. The paper was selected as the featured cover of that issue. The corresponding author of this paper is Associate Professor Duruo Huang from the Department of Hydraulic Engineering of Tsinghua University.

Link for download:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/nme.6427