Professor Chien Ming Wang

Professor

School of Civil Engineering
Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology
cm.wang@uq.edu.au
+61 7 336 54356

Overview

C.M. Wang joined the School of Civil Engineering, University of Queensland (UQ) in January 2017 as the Transport and Main Roads (TMR) Chair Professor of Structural Engineering. He graduated from Monash University in Civil Engineering with a First Class Honours in 1978 and was awarded a M.Eng.Sc. and a Ph.D. degree from the same university in 1980 and 1982, respectively. Prior to joining UQ, Professor Wang held the positions as the Director for the Engineering Science Programme and the Director for the Global Engineering Programme, at the Faculty of Engineering of the National University of Singapore. Additionally, he was the Vice-Dean of Undergraduate Programmes of NUS Faculty of Engineering and the Associate Director of the Centre for Development in Teaching and Learning, NUS. He is also the Adjunct Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering, Monash University, Australia and was elected as Monash Civil Engineering Alumnus of the Year 2015 for his significant contributions to the engineering profession.

Professor Wang is a Chartered Structural Engineer, a Fellow of Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering, a Fellow of the Academy of Engineering Singapore, a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers Singapore, a Fellow of the Institution of Structural Engineers and a Fellow of the Society of Floating Solutions (Singapore). He was the Chairman of the IStructE Singapore Regional Group and the IStructE Council Member for 12 years. He was awarded the Lewis Kent Award 2009, the Keith Eaton Award 2014 and the IES Outstanding Volunteer Awards 2011 and 2008 for his outstanding leadership and significant contributions to IStructE and IES. Currently, he is the Chairman of International Steering Committee of EASEC, Vice President of Society of Floating Solutions Singapore, a member of International Advisory Committee of RILS and a Senior Fellow of PolyU Academy for Interdisciplinary Research, Hong Kong PolyU. He is the founding member of the International Engineering Science Consortium that comprises 9 premier universities (UC Berkeley, Cornell Univ, Univ of Toronto, Osaka University, KTH Sweden, UCL, NUS, UQ, Auckland Univ).

Professor Wang is a highly sought after keynote speaker in international conferences. He has given over 50 keynote presentations and many seminars on very large floating structures, structural modeling and analysis in many countries. He has won a number of research awards such as 2019 Nishino Medal, 2019 JN Reddy Medal and best paper awards. He has provided consulting services and served as an expert in structures and very large floating structures to many public and private organizations, including JTC Corporation, Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore, Housing Development Board, Defence Science and Technology Agency, Jurong Consultants, Surbana International and Singapore Cruise Centre.

Research Interests

  • Offshore floating fish farms
  • Infrastructure for offshore seaweed farms
  • Development of New Structural Models for Analysis

Research Impacts

Prof CM Wang’s research interests are wide; covering areas in structural stability, vibration, optimization, plates/shells, nano-structures, computational mechanics and large floating structures. He has made significant contributions to these areas by authoring over 500 journal papers, 6 books, editing 4 books and several conference proceedings. His publications have garnered over 25,000 citations and his h-index is 77 according to Google Scholar. He has been listed as a most cited researcher in civil engineering in the Shanghai Ranking for academic subjects 2016.

Prof Wang is globally renowned for his work on very large floating structures (VLFS) that find many applications such as floating oil storage facilities, bridges, restaurants, and piers/berths. He holds patents on a new type of pontoon, an offshore floating bunker supply base, a floating fuel storage facility and an aquaculture structure. Prof Wang co-edited the first book on VLFS and published extensively on the subject. He has been invited to give keynote lectures/courses on VLFS in more than a dozen countries. He is the principal investigator of several research and industrial projects on VLFS that amounts to over S$10 million. He was the chief consultant for the floating platform at Marina Bay and the floating wetlands at Punggol Waterways. His work on floating wetlands bagged the Minister of National Development R&D (Special Mention) Award 2017 and the IStructE Singapore Structural Award for Sustainability 2016. Prof Wang worked with NUS and SINTEF researchers to develop a new floating hydrocarbon storage facility and floating bridges for deployment in Singapore waters. He was awarded $688,000 from ARC to conduct research on a novel floating forest to protect fragile shorelines of Australia and another $433,000 to do research on the next generation offshore blue aquaculture. He is currently the leader of the offshore engineering and technology program of the Blue Economy CRC.

Prof Wang is also famous for his discovery of exact relationships between shear deformable beam/plate theories and their classical counterparts. His papers and seminal book on shear deformable beams/plates contain these amazing relationships that help unlock the exact solutions for shear deformable beams/plates. Another notable contribution of Prof Wang is the use of Eringen’s nonlocal theory for structural analysis that allows researchers to incorporate the effect of small length scale that is important when dealing with nanostructures. His early papers on the nonlocal beam theory have opened up a new research direction and spurred the publication of hundreds of papers on the subject. He has also contributed to the development of continuum models for carbon nanotubes, graphene and graphyne sheets. The study also involves calibrating the small length scale parameter in the nonlocal models by using Molecular Dynamic Simulations, experimental results and microstructured beam models or Hencky bar chain models.

Prof Wang's early research papers on flexural-torsional buckling of monosymmetric I-beams were cited in structural stability textbooks and his buckling formulas for these beams have been adopted in design codes. His proposed "Shooting-Optimization Technique" for solving two-point boundary value problems has been applied to solve all kinds of problems such as variable arc-length beam problems, biofilm problems, undersea cables, and fibre problems. His work on the automation of the Ritz method for plate analysis has drawn much interest from the research community. Many researchers have adopted the method for their plate analyses.

Professor Wang has supervised 28 PhD students, 20 MEng students and 12 Postdoc Fellows, many of them now holding leading positions in universities and engineering practice.

Qualifications

  • Fellow, The Society of Floating Solutions Singapore, The Society of Floating Solutions Singapore
  • Fellow, Institution of Structural Engineers, Institution of Structural Engineers
  • Fellow, Institution of Engineers Singapore, Institution of Engineers Singapore
  • Fellow, Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering, Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering
  • Fellow, Academy of Engineering Singapore, Academy of Engineering Singapore
  • Doctor of Philosophy, Monash University

Publications

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Supervision

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Publications

Featured Publications

Book

Book Chapter

Journal Article

Conference Publication

Edited Outputs

  • C. M. Wang, G. R. Liu and K. K. Ang eds. (2002). Structural Stability and Dynamics. ICSSD 2002, Singapore, 16 – 18 December 2002. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing.

Other Outputs

PhD and MPhil Supervision

Current Supervision

  • Doctor Philosophy — Principal Advisor

  • Doctor Philosophy — Principal Advisor

  • Doctor Philosophy — Associate Advisor

Completed Supervision