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This essay aims to rectify a failure on the part of Western philosophers of technology to attend to the creative philosophical work of Li Bocong at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. After a brief account of Li Bocong's personal contacts with the West and some remarks on his relationship to Marxism, we take up three aspects of his philosophy that can contribute to enlarging Western philosophical thinking about engineering and technology: (1) Li's analysis of engineering as more than design, (2) his argument for the relevance of the sociology of engineering, and (3) his conceptualization of engineering ethics as more than professional ethics., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Research papers published by Chinese and Indian researchers during 1998-2007 and cited at least 100 times by end of 2009 are analysed. There were 776 papers with at least one author from India (amounting to 0.32% of all papers from India) and 2260 papers with at least one author from China (0.4% of all papers from China) that have gone on to be cited at least 100 times. We have identified prominent authors and institutions, journals used and fields of research. Although highly cited Chinese papers were cited on average less often than the highly cited papers from India, Chinese authors have been able to place their papers in high impact journals such as Nature and Science far more often than Indian authors. The Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai and Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangalore are the prominent Indian institutions, whereas universities in Hong Kong, Peking University, Tshing Hua University and several institutions under the Chinese Academy of Science dominate in China. In terms of citations, Chinese National Human Genome Centre Shanghai, Shanghai, tops the list. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contribution: This paper qualitative research delineates the thinking and behavioral patterns that reflect students' advanced level of epistemological thinking in project-based learning (PBL) activities and the associated impact factors. Background: PBL has been widely adopted in engineering education for its effectiveness in improving students' problem-solving abilities, collaboration skills, and academic achievement. The four stages of Perry's theory--Dualism, Multiplicity, Relativism, and Commitment (within Relativism)--depict students' epistemological development from dualistic to contextual relativistic thinking. Prior research suggested that participation in PBL could benefit students' development to relativistic thinking--the most revolutionary change in Perry's model. Nevertheless, how epistemological thinking was exhibited in the context of PBL, and the relationship between students' epistemological thinking and PBL learning activities both remain unclear. Research Questions: 1) What are demonstrations of students' relativistic thinking in PBL activities? and 2) What are the factors in regard to students' relativistic thinking in PBL activities? Methodology: Built upon quantitative results obtained using a modified Zhang's cognitive development inventory (ZCDI) developed in the context of Perry's theory, this paper explored demonstrations of students' relativistic thinking in PBL in a qualitative manner, and analyzed the associated factors based upon one-on-one interviews with 17 engineering students. Findings: In PBL activities, students' epistemological thinking is reflected in their solving problems within constraints, conducting feasibility analyses, exhibiting commercial awareness, having their thinking broadened, and more. Their epistemological thinking can be impacted by factors, such as guidance from professors, collaborations with peers, communications with other stakeholders, and complexity level of projects.

Responding to globalization trends, many engineering schools are internationalizing their courses and curricula to prepare graduates for careers that involve working across countries and cultures. As a result, both students and staff are looking beyond study abroad to international work, research, and service learning opportunities as alternate pathways for high-impact experiential learning in global context. However, such programs can also pose unique challenges related to preparing students for professional practice abroad and systematically evaluating program outcomes and impacts among students and other stakeholders. This paper responds to these challenges by reporting on International Research and Education in Engineering (IREE) 2010 China, a summer engineering research abroad program. It describes orientation strategies designed to improve student readiness for global practice, and presents mixed-method assessment methods and results for global engineering competency and other key learning outcomes. The main audience for this paper includes faculty and staff who develop and support global learning experiences in engineering and other professional degree programs.

This paper gives a brief analysis on the educational advantages and objects of NCWU. It believes that the educational philosophy and development direction of foreign school in engineering colleges must be set up on the basis of need of China and talents need, moreover, the development of the School of Foreign Studies must be analyzed by integrating into the whole development of NCWU. This paper put forwards the educational philosophy of "Drawing on Advantages, Avoiding Disadvantages, and Gearing Education to Society" and the Development Direction of "Rooted in Foreign Language and Characterised by Engineering and Business". It analyzes the problem of school of foreign studies in NCWU in Specialty Construction, teaching team and Construction of Discipline and puts forwards some solutions.

It is well-known that engineering is a key profession for both economic and social development. This is as true for China as it is for other countries which are in the process of development. However, what are the economic incentives for young people to enter the profession today? Currently, there are many studies of the rate of return to educational investment, but recent empirical studies of the rate of return to educational investment for engineers are uncommon. This is true generally, but especially for contemporary China. This is because it is difficult to obtain high-quality and representative sample data about engineers. This paper uses the data of the Chinese Family Panel Studies, 2010, and applies a Mincerian income function to estimate the rate of return to education for engineers who work in the private sector in urban China. The empirical results show that the rate of return for engineers is 12.3%, which is an impressive figure. It is in accordance with the current supply and demand of the Chinese labour market which requires many engineers to carry out construction and maintenance projects given China's continuing industrialisation, modernisation and urbanisation. However, the empirical results also show that compared with the rate of return to education for professional and technical personnel who are employed in business economics and finance, the rate of return for engineers is significantly lower. This may explain why in China today the attraction of engineering education for talented young people is declining, with more and more students choosing business economics and finance as their first choices of major and career, rather than engineering as in the past.

Research on engineering practice is scarce and sharing of qualitative research data can reduce the effort required for an aspiring researcher to obtain enough data from engineering workplaces to draw generalizable conclusions, both qualitative and quantitative. This paper describes how a large shareable qualitative data set on engineering practices was accumulated from 350 interviews and 12 field studies performed by the principal investigator and by students conducting PhD and capstone research projects. Ethical research practice required that sharing and reuse of qualitative data be considered from the start. The researchers' interests and methods were aligned to maintain sufficient consistency to support subsequent analysis and re-analysis of data. Analysis helped to answer questions of fundamental significance for engineering educators: what do engineers do, and why are the performances of engineering enterprises so different in South Asia compared with similar enterprises in Australia? Analysis also demonstrated the overwhelming significance of technical collaboration in engineering practice. Conceiving engineering practice as a series of technical collaboration performances requires a more elaborate understanding of social interactions than is currently the case in engineering schools. Another finding is that global engineering competency could be better described in terms of "working with people who collaborate differently". Research helped to demonstrate that formal treatment of technical collaboration in an engineering curriculum could help avoid student misconceptions about engineering practice that hinder their subsequent engineering performances.

As a very important skill both in English teaching and learning, reading strategy has been emphasized at home and abroad for a long time. Many scholars and teachers make research on undergraduates of English major or non-English major. However, the postgraduates are often neglected. Actually, it is also imperative to make a study among postgraduates of non-English majors, getting the information of their use of reading strategies and giving some useful suggestions to them. Therefore, this paper makes a quantitative study among 40 postgraduates from College of Mechanical Engineering in Chang'an University. This study shows that postgraduates of non-English major in Chang'an university do not frequently use reading strategies to improve their reading speed and proficiency. And there is a big difference between the successful learners and unsuccessful learners in terms of the use of reading strategies.

Considering that the course group regarding theory and design of mechanisms is characterized by strong engineering application background and the students generally feel very boring and tedious during the learning process, some teaching reforms for the theory and design of mechanisms are carried out to improve the teaching effectiveness in this paper. Taking the engineering cases as the teaching objectives, we combine the course contents with the engineering background. Moreover, in order to help the students understand the knowledge difficulty and improve the design capacity of the mechanisms and machines, the MATLAB technology is introduced into the theoretical teaching to provide assisted analysis. At the same time, the MATLAB is also introduced into the practical teaching to provide theoretical guidance. The teaching effect shows that MATLAB-based teaching reform under the engineering application can deepen the understandings of course contents for students, improve the interest in learning, strengthen the design capacity and develop the innovation ability.

With the advent of the era of big data and information technology, deep learning (DL) has become a hot trend in the research field of artificial intelligence (AI). The use of deep learning methods for parameter inversion, disease identification, detection, surrounding rock classification, disaster prediction, and other tunnel engineering problems has also become a new trend in recent years, both domestically and internationally. This paper briefly introduces the development process of deep learning. By reviewing a number of published papers on the application of deep learning in tunnel engineering over the past 20 years, this paper discusses the intelligent application of deep learning algorithms in tunnel engineering, including collapse risk assessment, water inrush prediction, crack identification, structural stability evaluation, and seepage erosion in mountain tunnels, urban subway tunnels, and subsea tunnels. Finally, it explores the future challenges and development prospects of deep learning in tunnel engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the development of an aero control experiment apparatus (ACEA) for use in aerospace control practical courses. The ACEA incorporates a systematic multihierarchy learning and teaching method, and was designed to improve aerospace engineering students' understanding of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) control systems. It offers a number of standard experimental modules at three levels: component, system, and simulation and evaluation. The software and hardware design methods used in the modules were chosen to allow students to conduct experiments in a simple, more hands-on manner. As a result, they were able to select or reconfigure their experiments and so continuously improve their skills and extend the ACEA itself. The practical curriculum module-s-grouped in three skill levels of basic experiments, case study, and independent design--were applied in a 3-year M.Sc. course, UAV Control Systems. The marking criteria created to evaluate students' achievements are presented, along with some results of this evaluation.

The Tibetan Plateau stands as one of China's largest middle and low latitude permafrost regions. However, the effects of global warming and human activities have led to permafrost thawing, inducing surface instability and posing significant threats to infrastructure and indigenous communities. The deployment of Lu Tan-1 (LT-1), China's premier L-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite constellation, offers a novel opportunity to assess these changes. This paper evaluates the deformation of critical engineering corridors, such as the Qinghai-Tibet Railway (QTR) and the Qinghai-Tibet Highway (QTH), utilizing time-series InSAR techniques with LT-1 SAR constellation data. We introduce both Stacking InSAR and a multi-baseline persistent scatterer multitemporal (MT-InSAR) method to enhance permafrost and engineering corridor deformation detection capabilities. Results obtained through the MT-InSAR approach reveal line-of-sight (LOS) deformation velocities of permafrost in the Beiluhe region ranging from -90 mm/y to approximately 70 mm/y, with an average velocity amplitude of 0.06 m/y. Differential displacement between alpine meadows and alpine deserts across the Beiluhe region is successfully discerned using LT-1 SAR data. Deformation velocities of QTR, QTH were found to be lower than that of permafrost, with average velocities of 0.027 m/y. These findings underscore the LT-1 SAR constellation's potential to serve as a valuable SAR data source for monitoring engineering corridor deformation within the Tibetan Plateau permafrost region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To effectively identify the key material parameters of different zones of concrete face rockfill dams and improve the efficiency of parameter optimization, a global sensitivity analysis method of parameters based on sparse polynomial chaotic expansion (sPCE) is proposed in this paper. The latin hypercube sampling method is used to select multiple groups of material parameters, and then finite element method is used to calculate the displacement of dam characteristic nodes in dam body. On this basis, the displacement is expanded by sPCE, and the polynomial basis function is reconstructed by orthogonal matching pursuit to improve the construction and analysis efficiency of the proxy model. According to the chaos coefficients, Sobol' indices are calculated to evaluate the influence of the material parameters and their interaction on different displacements of the dam. The results show that the sPCE model can accurately simulate dam displacement and its statistical characteristics with a relatively small sample size. The sensitivity of the same parameter has spatial variability, and under the influence of parameter levels and spatial distribution of different materials, the parameter sensitivity ranking of different zones has certain differences. The proposed method provides a new reference to sensitivity analysis and uncertainty analysis for practical engineering., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2023 Ran et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Oil and gas reservoirs in volcanic rocks are a particular type of unconventional reservoir and present unique challenges for exploration and production engineers. To help the oil industry understand volcanic reservoirs and solutions to complex development problems, we reviewed their key engineering technologies as well as their geological characteristics. The distinctive geological characteristics of volcanic hydrocarbon reservoirs are strong heterogeneity, low porosity and permeability, complex fracture systems, etc. The volcanic reservoir rock types in order of hydrocarbon abundance are basalt (38.5%), andesite (15.9%), volcaniclastic (12.1%), and rhyolite (11.5%). The porosity ranges from 0.1 to 70%, and permeability ranges from 0.0007 to 762 md. In some commercially developed volcanic reservoirs of China, the average porosity is 7.7–13%; the average permeability is 0.41–3.4 md. Engineers have applied a variety of adapted technologies to produce volcanic reservoir economically. Horizontal wells can increase production and reserves by 4–6 times those of vertical wells, and longer wells are preferred. Specialized hydraulic fracturing techniques are suggested, including small or mixed proppant size, second HF treatment after proppant slugging, high-viscosity frac fluid with high-temperature resistance, special fluid loss reducer, high pump pressure, Extreme Overbalance Perforating, limited-entry fracturing, matrix acidizing, etc. Water control measures include producing below critical rates, partial perforation or penetration, controlling hydraulic fracture height, using horizontal wells, implementing complete cementing job, etc. Well productivity evaluation should be conducted to understand well performance and appropriately allocate production rates among wells, using the modified AOF method and other productivity prediction models considering breakdown fracture gradient, gas slippage effect, non-Darcy effect, etc. Well sites need to be selected based on recognizing profitable lithologies, lithofacies, high porosity and permeability, relatively developed fracture systems, thick net pay zones, etc. The critical questions for the industry are how to enhance volcanic reservoir recovery with more efficient and economic hydraulic fracturing and water control techniques. This is one of the first papers systematically summarizing the engineering technologies and unique solutions to develop volcanic reservoirs. Further and more complete reviews can be carried out in the future, and more novel and effective techniques can be explored and tested in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of Xiongan New Area in Hebei Province, China, as a significant national choice, has considerable strategic significance for the integrated growth of Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei. This paper proposes a cloud model for the suitability evaluation of the construction of Xiongan New Area based on entropy weight analysis, taking into account the geological conditions, groundwater environment, environmental geological problems, and other factors of the suitability of image city development. According to the research, the suitability evaluation findings for the project building employing the cloud model are in strong accord with those of the traditional model and have some application potential. The evaluation's findings indicate that the project construction in Xiongan New Area is acceptable, with suitable and relatively suitable sites making up 81.4% of the total area and excellent circumstances for project development, construction, and usage. This study offers helpful direction for Xiongan New Area's urban land-space design and serves as a useful point of comparison for studies looking at the viability of other deep Quaternary Plain region engineering buildings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to promote the development and application process of suspended permanent maglev monorail transportation system, China has built suspended permanent maglev monorail transportation system engineering test line, Xingguo engineering test line, and the line has made useful explorations on many key technologies in the engineering process of the system. The key technical contents such as the overall layout of the test line, the suspension guidance and drive system, track beam and turnout, manufacturing process, which are different compared to the permanent maglev monorail transit and the conventional rubber wheel suspended monorail transit, are studied emphatically in this paper. The research shows that, under the premise of meeting the basic requirements of the test line, the reasonable overall layout reduces the land and engineering investment at the greatest extent. The innovative design of core systems, such as permanent maglev, realizes the stable suspension guidance and drive of the test line vehicles, and the design of key systems such as track beam bridge, turnout and processes lays the foundation for the safe operation of the test line. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, with the leap-forward development of computer technology and the transformation of information technology management concepts, China's construction industry is quietly entering the era of refined management. Accurate estimation and cost control have become among the key considerations of the construction industry. For the calculation of engineering quantity, there are already many software devices that can be used for the calculation of engineering structure quantity, which means that the incorrect operation of personnel has been reduced to some extent, improving the work efficiency and measurement accuracy. The purpose of this paper is to solve the problems of computational missing, computational errors, inefficiency, data loss, and repetitive system in traditional computing based on the advantages of BIM computing system, which provide a reliable basis for cost forecasting and control. At the same time, using BMI calculation system to solve the problem of steel reinforcement in construction engineering, as well as the use of personnel, the existing calculation software still needs a lot of time and energy. We proposed a comprehensive evaluation study of reinforcement calculation in domestic construction engineering BIM calculation system based on a fuzzy comprehensive evaluation. This paper first summarizes the BIM calculation system of construction engineering, uses fuzzy comprehensive evaluation system as an important evaluation index system in domestic construction engineering BIM calculation system, through the judgment of various factors affecting the actual effect of the calculation system, and uses the fuzzy evaluation system combined with a case to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed research. Therefore, through the above research and experiments, it is concluded that the research method of this paper solves many problems in the process of engineering structure reinforcement calculation and provides a good reference method for the establishment of comprehensive evaluation system of reinforcement calculation, as well as providing an effective validation for the widespread use of BIM technology in the construction industry. Finally, it is also beneficial for users to comprehensively evaluate the BIM calculation system of the construction industry and provide a basic reference condition for different industries to use and choose BIM calculation systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of China's new urbanization has driven the rapid increase in large complex engineering projects, which have the characteristics of large-scale investment, long-term construction, and wide social influence, easily causing benefit conflicts among relevant stakeholders, and breaking out social stability risks. In the previous research, the risks of large complex engineering projects mainly concentrated on the assessment of economic risk, schedule risk, etc. However, there were few studies on social risks, and they did not consider how the risks spread on the complex networks based on the social connections such as interpersonal relationship. From the subject of social stability risk diffusion of large complex engineering projects, this paper constructs a related risk diffusion model based on the SIR model to analyze risk diffusion mechanism. through Net Logo simulation platform, the model is placed under a small-world network environment that is closest to the topology structure of real social interpersonal relationship network for simulation research, aiming to find out key factors of social stability risk intervention for large complex engineering projects, which greatly contributes to the social stability risk management of large complex engineering projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author notes that the sciences are now something one must latch onto early and successfully as a teenager, and endure against all odds. This pivotal point requires maturity and even myopia--delayed gratification and voluntary dorkiness--traits not common in the young. As a nation, Americans are losing their hegemony in the sciences. In just the past decade, China quintupled its number of doctorates in engineering and the sciences, Korea and Taiwan doubled theirs, but the U.S. stayed stable. As individuals, Americans operate more and more contraptions, but understand them less and less. While there is no single solution to the problems of the STEM pipeline--where scientific interest is squelched over time and newcomers are barred from entry--the author offers a few thoughts.

CO2 geological storage projects are an essential tool for China to achieve the double carbon target of energy savings and emission reductions. In order to safely and effectively control the implementation of injection projects and monitor the dynamics of CO2 injection, multi-dimensional and multi-disciplinary monitoring tools are required. Among them, microseismic monitoring is a key technology for predicting reservoir dynamics and reflecting reservoir geomechanical behavior. Such monitoring has been carried out previously for reservoirs in other countries, but experimental projects are also gradually being developed in China. In this paper, we focus on the research and analysis results of microseismic monitoring of carbon storage projects in various work areas. For different reservoir conditions, we explore combinations of the monitoring implementation methods in China, comparing the differences in each work area. We propose a joint well and ground microseismic monitoring method and a multi-spatial and multi-physical field coupling research system for use in the implementation of domestic demo projects for the future research and development of microseismic monitoring of carbon storage projects. The monitoring program can meet the requirements for certain periodic repeated or continuous observations and can intelligently assess the risk and handle the alert behavior. The foundation is laid for the development of the future microseismic monitoring technology to achieve the goal of developing cost-controllable, permanent, and real-time monitoring equipment. The application of the monitoring system in China has been effective, and this experience can contribute to the development of injection engineering in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Road recycling technology is gradually becoming a research focus in road construction due to natural resource shortages. It is therefore necessary to carry out deep and extensive analysis of the huge amount of publications in the research area of recycling technology in road construction. Based on three databases (Web of Science, Compendex and Scopus) and VOSviewer visualization software, this study conducts a bibliometric analysis of the literature in the field of recycled construction materials in pavement engineering. The global research publications were reviewed to quantitatively identify the literature characteristics. A number of publications, document types, research areas and keywords were used to achieve the general statistics of this reviewed literature. H-index, publication number and citations per publication were used to evaluate the academic contributions by country, institution and journal. The results show that the most productive country and institution for publications are the USA and Chang'an University from China, respectively, followed by China and Wuhan University of Technology. In recent years, researchers have generally paid attention to two main approaches: the application of rubber modified asphalt and the performance enhancement of recycled pavement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A few problems in the present calculation methods in the aspects of insulation flashover criteria, influence of operating voltages, induced overvoltage component, and shielding failure in China are briefly analyzed and discussed. Lightning performance of 500-ky double-circuit line schemes (nine tower types and thirteen schemes of insulation disposition) for the Three-Gorge Project is computed and compared with the existing operation experience of double-circuit lines. Different schemes are compared with each other. The cause of the remarkable increase of the total lightning outage rate of the usual unbalanced double-circuit lines, with one circuit insulation reduced, in the operation is analyzed. Different from the usual unbalanced insulation lines, a one-circuit insulation enhanced scheme is proposed in this paper. It is emphasized in the paper that the key of the lightning protection of double-circuit transmission lines is to reduce the double-circuit simultaneous trip-out rate and to keep a reasonable total trip-out rate at the same time. It can be achieved by choosing the proper insulation disposition scheme referring to the order of the weighted trip-out rate values. The viewpoints and methods in the paper would be useful to others working in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper puts forward a new Chinese concept of ‘Wu Liu’ (material flow) which is different from the concepts of logistics and physical distribution popular in the West and Japan in four aspects: characteristics, contents, properties and applications. The paper points out that the research on material flow science and technology in China has lagged far behind, especially in the application aspect of material flows which is not in line with the position that material flow holds as the third biggest backbone industry group of the national economy. The paper also discusses issues in researching material flow in economic development, social development, as well as natural sciences. At the end, a framework of material flow science and technology is proposed which includes four components: disciplines supporting material flow science and technology, engineering and technological disciplines supporting material flow science and technology, theoretical disciplines supporting material flow science and technology, and other disciplines supporting material flow science and technology. About forty disciplines are related to material flow science and technology which need to be either built or enhanced. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pile-anchor retaining structures are widely used in excavation engineering. The evaluation of lateral displacements, the internal forces of piles are extremely important for the performance of the structure. Most of the existing methods are empirical, semiempirical or FEM methods, while analytic calculation methods for this evaluation are rare. This paper presents an analytic method to calculate the displacements and internal forces of anchored retaining piles based on the existing design code. In the calculation method, the singular function is applied to evaluate the effect of segmented loading on the deflection of a beam with a nonuniform cross section. The load concentration function, expressed by the singular function, can describe the segmented load and be integrated without a complicated procedure for determining the integral constants. The method is applied to a structure in Wenzhou, China, and the calculation results are compared to the field measurement results. This method is only valid for pre-failure predictions., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Featured Application: The obtained kinds of borehole camera images of long or deep holes in the tunnels of the building Sichuan-Tibet Railway. Digital panoramic borehole imaging technology has been widely used in the practice of drilling engineering. Based on many high-definition panoramic borehole images obtained by the borehole imaging system, this paper puts forward an automatic recognition method based on clustering and characteristic functions to perform intelligent analysis and automatic interpretation researches, and successfully applied to the analysis of the borehole images obtained at the Wudongde Hydropower Station in the south-west of China. The results show that the automatic recognition method can fully and quickly automatically identify most of the important structural planes and their position, dip, dip angle and gap width and other characteristic parameter information in the entire borehole image. The recognition rate of the main structural plane is about 90%. The accuracy rate is about 85%, the total time cost is about 3 h, and the accuracy deviation is less than 4% among the 12 boreholes with a depth of about 50 m. The application of automatic recognition technology to the panoramic borehole image can greatly improve work efficiency, reduce the time cost, and avoid the interference caused by humans, making it possible to automatically recognize the structural plane parameters of the full-hole image. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a method was developed to assess the vertical response of piles considering crushing characteristics. A load transfer model of a pile is built and the relationship between the crushing characteristics and load transfer function of a pile was analyzed. Based on the analysis results, the transfer equation of load function considering the crushing characteristics was derived using the finite difference method. The ideal side resistance and the load transfer mechanism of a pile can be obtained by the transfer equation of load function. The predicted response of piles with the proposed method is in good agreement with the response observed in some pile tests reported in the literature. Further study was conducted to discuss the effect of the parameters related to the load transfer model considering crushing characteristics on the load-settlement response of a single pile., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Deep soil mixing (DSM) columns as a retaining structure for deep excavations in soft soil areas has been widely used because, in addition to its low cost, it has fewer environmental hazards and no need of dewatering. However, due to its low tensile strength, this system usually requires a very thick wall cross section and is generally impractical for use as a retaining structure for very deep excavations. In an attempt to extend the use of DSM columns for deeper excavations, this paper introduces a so-called compound DSM retaining wall system that combines DSM columns with reinforced concrete bored piles. As shown in the paper, both the compressive strength of soil-cement mixtures and the bending moment capacity of concrete piles are developed to their full advantage in this hybrid soil-retaining system. The paper also presents the detail design methodology for the proposed compound DSM wall as a retaining structure for deep excavation. Finally, the benefits of this hybrid retaining system are further demonstrated through a case study completed in Shanghai, China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Earth-rock dams make up a large proportion of the dams in China, and their failures can induce great risks. In this paper, the risks associated with earth-rock dam failure are analyzed from two aspects: the probability of a dam failure and the resulting life loss. An event tree analysis method based on fuzzy set theory is proposed to calculate the dam failure probability. The life loss associated with dam failure is summarized and refined to be suitable for Chinese dams from previous studies. The proposed method and model are applied to one reservoir dam in Jiangxi province. Both engineering and non-engineering measures are proposed to reduce the risk. The risk analysis of the dam failure has essential significance for reducing dam failure probability and improving dam risk management level.

Some toe-deck crack cases in China have been reported after about 10 years of service in suspension and beam bridge steel orthotropic decks with trough stiffeners. In this paper, a reference stress method used in design practice and a hot-spot stress method provided by the International Institute of Welding are used to investigate toe-deck fatigue of the newly built Taizhou Yangtze River Bridge. Shell and solid finite element models with different mesh sizes are compared. The hot spot at the weld toe and the point at the trough-deck intersection are discussed. One is a shell-model hot spot with no weld. The other is a solid-model hot spot with the weld. Hot-spot stress calculated with the shell model is larger than that with the solid model. Different extrapolation methods of hot-spot stress are discussed; stress calculated with the linear extrapolation method is almost the same as with the quadratic method. The stress of the joint under a moving unit wheel load is studied. Fatigue strengths against reference and hot-spot stresses are derived. Fatigue damages under the truck load, evaluated based on the reference stress method and the hot-spot stress method, are compared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Railway Standard Design is the property of Railway Standard Design Editorial Office and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Railway Standard Design is the property of Railway Standard Design Editorial Office and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Railway Standard Design is the property of Railway Standard Design Editorial Office and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Railway Investigation & Surveying is the property of Railway Investigation & Surveying Editorial Office and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

With strong support from national and local government policies for prefabricated buildings, China's prefabricated buildings have entered a period of rapid development. This article analyses the literature from various countries and establishes a structural model of the prefabricated building supply chain under the Engineering Procurement Construction (EPC) mode. It analyzes the factors that affect the prefabricated building supply chain under the EPC model from eight aspects: design stage, prefabricated component production and manufacturing stage, procurement stage, and EPC general contracting stage, etc. Then, it establishes an AHP fuzzy comprehensive evaluation model that combines qualitative and quantitative methods to evaluate the entire lifecycle supply chain of prefabricated buildings, providing reference for the robustness and resilience evaluation of prefabricated building supply chains, and further achieving green management of cost reduction and efficiency improvement in prefabricated building supply chains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engineering construction involves many internal factors and external environmental factors, resulting in conflict or uncoordinated problems in engineering management. The harmonious management of engineering construction is the process of coordinating and solving the contradiction between construction elements and the problems between them and the external environment. The connotations of three subsystems of engineering harmony, namely, Ren harmony (RH), Wu harmony (WH), and Shi harmony (SH), are defined, and the system architecture of engineering harmony is constructed. Then, a hypothetical model is proposed to deeply explore the impacts of subsystems such as Ren harmony, Wu harmony, and Shi harmony on engineering harmony, as well as the moderating effects of the natural ecology, social humanities, and political economy on engineering harmony. The results show that (1) natural ecology has a significant promotion effect on RH, SH, and engineering harmony; (2) social humanities have a significant enhancement effect on SH and engineering harmony; and (3) political economy does not play a significant role in any process. "Engineering harmony" is used to measure the effectiveness of engineering management, and a scientific scale is used to reflect this index. It provides a new idea for theoretical exploration and practical guidance in engineering construction management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pine wood nematode disease is currently the most deadly forest disease in China, and the Monochamus alternatus is its primary vector. Controlling the M. alternatus is crucial for managing pine wood nematode disease. This study, based on the selected HasA (pGHKW4) secretory expression vector, used electroporation to combine the genetically modified high-toxicity toxin Cry3Aa-T with the entomopathogenic bacterium Yersinia entomophaga isolated from the gut of the M. alternatus. The SDS-PAGE and Western blotting techniques were employed to confirm the toxin protein's secretion capability. The engineered bacteria's genetic stability and effectiveness in controlling M. alternatus were assessed for their insecticidal activity. The results of the SDSPAGE and Western blotting analyses indicate that the HasA system effectively expresses toxin protein secretion, demonstrates certain genetic stability, and exhibits high insecticidal activity against M. alternatus. This study constructed a highly toxic entomopathogenic engineered bacterial strain against M. alternatus larvae, which holds significant implications for controlling M. alternatus, laying the foundation for subsequent research and application of this strain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In modern logistics operations, large-scale logistics companies, besides active participation in profit-seeking commercial business, also play an essential role during an emergency relief process by dispatching urgently-required materials to disaster-affected areas. Therefore, an issue has been widely addressed by logistics practitioners and caught researchers' more attention as to how the logistics companies achieve maximum commercial profit on condition that emergency tasks are effectively and performed satisfactorily. In this paper, two vehicle scheduling models are proposed to solve the problem. One is a prediction-related scheme, which predicts the amounts of disaster-relief materials and commercial business and then accepts the business that will generate maximum profits; the other is a priority-directed scheme, which, firstly groups commercial and emergency business according to priority grades and then schedules both types of business jointly and simultaneously by arriving at the maximum priority in total. Moreover, computer-based simulations are carried out to evaluate the performance of these two models by comparing them with two traditional disaster-relief tactics in China. The results testify the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jinsha River has very abundant hydro power reservation, ranking first in all the hydro power bases of China. To deliver the 38-GW hydro power from Jinsha power stations by HVDC transmission lines to load centers 1000-2000 km away, it is necessary to determine the right voltage level and the capacity of each bipole. This paper proposes three preliminary power delivery scheme and presents an optimization method for transmission capacity, dc voltage and conductor size. Based on a comprehensive comparison of cost-effectiveness, technical feasibility and network security and stability, it was recommended that the 3 bipolar ±800-kV ultra HVDC (UHVDC) links with rated capacity of 6.4 GW for each link be adopted as transmission scheme of Phase I Hydro Power station on Jinsha River. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article assumes that a profession is a number of individuals in the same occupation voluntarily organized to earn a living by openly serving a moral ideal in a morally-permissible way (a discipline) beyond what law, market, morality, and public opinion would otherwise require. Our question is whether the concept of profession (so defined) may have a far wider range than the term, so that, for example, pointing out that a certain language lacks a word for 'profession' in our sense, is not enough to show that those who speak the language also lack the concept. We believe the survey of 71 Chinese reported here begins to answer that question. This article has four parts. The first describes who was interviewed, how, when, and so on. The second describes some important features of the survey's questions, explaining how the questions track the concept of profession. The third part reports and interprets the results relevant to our question. The forth defends a tentative answer to the question with which we began-arguing the survey supports the claim that China has a profession of engineering. This article should serve as a 'proof of concept', that is, a model for similar studies around the world both of engineering and of other occupations thought to be professions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the research in engineering technologies in China.

The proper disposal of steel slag has always been a great challenge for the metallurgical industry in China and around the world. In this work, the steel slag aggregate (SSA) was surface pretreated (PSSA) and applied into asphalt mixture. The adhesive behavior between the bitumen and five different types of aggregates (i.e., limestone, diorite, diabase, SSA, PSSA) were evaluated based on the contact angle and binder bond strength tests. The pavement performance of three asphalt mixtures which contain normal aggregate, SSA and PSSA respectively, was analyzed by Marshall stability test, wheel-tracking rutting test, low-temperature bending creep test and water sensitivity test. The results showed that surface modification can improve the surface properties of SSA, reduce its contact angle with bitumen, and eventually lead to the improvement of adhesion between them. In addition to the satisfied low-temperature properties, PSSA was found to significantly improve the anti-rutting property and reduce the water sensitivity of asphalt mixture. This work is expected to promote an alternative application for recycling of SSA in pavement engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Underground void subsidence hazards, especially mine goaf, have now become one of the major social problems affecting the well-being of civilians and development in China. The objective of this study was to propose a kind of strong thixotropic engineering slurry and filling treatment for use in underground void subsidence hazards. The optimal agent ratio for thixotropic cement slurry/mortar was obtained by indoor tests, where the rheological agent is 7.5% compared to the weight of cement, the water–solid ratio is in the range of 0.7~0.8, and the aeolian sand ratio can be 0~1.5 times that of cement. The rheological properties of slurry and mortar were tested using a Brookfield RST-SST rheometer. The results show that aeolian sand can be used as thixotropic cement mortar for a backfilling treatment for underground voids (mine goaf). The static yield stress increases non-linearly compared to existing thixotropic models. The stress decays sharply with shearing (the shear rate is more or less 10 s−1) and then the stress increases with the increase in shear rate (the shear rate is more than 10 s−1). The increase in the stress of the slurry is greater than in the mortar. A natural logarithmic function between yield stress and rest time (only 1 parameter), an exponential function with two parts for stress–shear rate (a rheology model, with only 3 parameters), and an exponential function for the accumulation law (only 2 parameters) were proposed in turn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently, remote sensing technologies were widely employed in the dynamic monitoring of the land. This paper presented an algorithm named fuzzy nonlinear proximal support vector machine (FNPSVM) by basing on ETM+ remote sensing image. This algorithm is applied to extract various types of lands of the city Da’an in northern China. Two multi-category strategies, namely “one-against-one” and “one-against-rest” for this algorithm were described in detail and then compared. A fuzzy membership function was presented to reduce the effects of noises or outliers on the data samples. The approaches of feature extraction, feature selection, and several key parameter settings were also given. Numerous experiments were carried out to evaluate its performances including various accuracies (overall accuracies and kappa coefficient), stability, training speed, and classification speed. The FNPSVM classifier was compared to the other three classifiers including the maximum likelihood classifier (MLC), back propagation neural network (BPN), and the proximal support vector machine (PSVM) under different training conditions. The impacts of the selection of training samples, testing samples and features on the four classifiers were also evaluated in these experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Unconventional incidents bring great influence to human life, of which the most destructive is earthquake. Blood is a special resource for lives, especially in a big earthquake, in which there will be a sudden increase in demand for blood, therefore sufficient and safe blood supply is a huge challenge. In this paper, we propose an emergency blood supply scheduling model. Providing decision support for the scheduling of engineering emergency blood supply. We propose a multi-period location - allocation model, and give the heuristic algorithm based on Lagrangian relaxation. Finally, give an example case study in the context of Beijing. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Since the end of 2004, ticket prices of China''s major scenic spots have increased substantially. The sharp rise phenomenon is mainly due to the single pricing method for scenic spots and the back flush cost. Based on the analysis of these problems, this paper puts forward a dynamic engineering pricing method of revenue management to set the price of scenic spots tickets. Meanwhile, the established pricing model and the numerical example could provide some information for the relevant official sectors as reference. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Service quality management is a major engineering project in the study of tourist destination. Research on service quality engineering management of Tourist Destination is of very forward-looking and importance of realism and innovation. The Yangtze Three Gorges tourism collecting natural beauty, ancient sites and modern engineering miracle has been attracting visitors from all over the world. After the Three Gorges Project has become a must scenic spot for all cruise ships, the Three Gorges tourism is hotter. But more and more service quality issues are exposed. How to improve and guarantee service quality has became the key to promote Three Gorges tourism sustainable development. This paper used questionnaire empirical approach for travelers’ opinions and gave a detailed analysis to how to promote the service quality of the Three Gorges tourism destination. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]