Kai Wei

Verified

Kai verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

Learn more

Verified

Kai verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

Learn more

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at Southwest Jiaotong University

The piers of sea-crossing bridges always suffer from considerable breaking wave loads. But the uncertainties and variability of wave slamming maxima and time history have yet been understood quantitatively. This paper conducted a series of experiments in a wave flume to investigate the slamming load of breaking waves on bridge piers with different...

Caisson foundation is widely used to support the long-span bridge, while the local scour is exacerbated due to the large volume of the caisson. A novel design, named “skirted caisson”, was proposed by reducing the upper size of the caisson and forming a skirt for preventing scour. This study conducted a series of experimental and numerical investig...

Historical tropical cyclones (TCs) are usually insufficient in determining extreme hazards due to limited data. This study developed a full-track stochastic model to generate synthetic TCs based on historical TCs and climatology data in Northwest Pacific. A variable geographical sampling approach was proposed to capture the spatial heterogeneity as...

With the construction of coastal infrastructure in the complex environment of nearshore straits, accurate estimation of wave conditions during the passage of tropical cyclones is essential for reliable structural design. In this study, internal and external dependence relationships between height- and period-related parameters for typhoon-induced m...

In this paper, the seismic resilience methodology for considering the multi-component post-earthquake repair process of the deepwater bridge was proposed. In this methodology, the repair patterns with possible rehabilitation measures were firstly defined for different damage states of the deepwater bridge. To cope with these repair strategies, the...

Local scour induced by strong currents has become one of the major challenges for sea-crossing bridges built for the convenience of transportation across bays. To mitigate the local scour of the sea-crossing bridge foundation, this study optimized the design and geometry of the upper part of the skirted caisson and proposed a new type of foundation...

This manuscript reports on the interaction of a current-free monochromatic surface wave field with a wave-free uniform current field. The existing reasonable theories of wave–current interactions are primarily based on weak current assumptions and derived from linear theory, resulting in calculation bias in the analysis of nonlinear wave–current in...

Ocean current forecasting is essential for tidal renewable energy generation and operation. However, comprehensive studies and an efficient approach for forecasting the current direction at multiple points along the water depth are still lacking. In this study, a data-driven approach was developed to attain short-term prediction in the current dire...

In seismic risk assessment of bridges, developing fragility function is a fundamental step to characterize the structural vulnerability, which is usually derived based on the relationship between the engineering demand parameter (EDP) and intensity measure (IM). The EDP‐IM relationships are generally developed through three approaches, namely Cloud...

Coastal bridges usually suffer from wave, current, and storm surge hazards simultaneously under typhoons. Comprehensive mitigation measures can reduce the structural failure probability under these hazards but usually lead to a conservative structural design and a significant increase in the project budget. With the recent development of sustainabl...

Breaking waves pose a serious threat to offshore structures. Estimating the breaking wave region is hence important for structural design and construction. This paper developed a numerical approach for estimating the breaking wave region based on the coupled wave and storm surge simulations of typhoons. The SWAN +ADCIRC coupling model was employed...

The Holland model is a common and efficient parametric model for constructing the typhoon wind field and involves two critical parameters: the radius of maximum wind (RMW) and the Holland B parameter, which are sensitive to the azimuth of a typhoon prior to landfall. However, their azimuth dependencies cannot be well addressed in the original mathe...

Floating breakwaters (FBs) have been attracting attention as wave safeguards due to the low construction cost and fast installation, but their wave attenuations are sensitive to structural configuration. Horizontal flanges have been proven sufficient in improving the wave attenuation of restrained box FB, but how it evolves in the moored FB has not...

Existing investigations have proved that the near-fault vertical ground motion (VGM) would have a significant effect on the seismic performance of bridge structures. This study mainly investigates the combined effect of VGM and horizontal ground motion (HGM) on failure mode and component damage sequence of long-span sea-crossing cable-stayed bridge...

Flume testing of a scaled model under steady flow is an essential reference for accessing the flooding-induced drag force on a prototype pier, but is highly susceptible to the cross-sectional blockage effect. Round-ended bridge piers have a non-axisymmetric cross-section, of which the drag force varies significantly with inflow direction. A flume t...

Typhoon is a disastrous weather system, which usually induces strong waves, currents, and surges along the coastal area, and causes severe hydrodynamic loads on the elevated pile cap foundation, which is widely used to support the sea-crossing bridge. Estimating the hydrodynamic loads under typhoons is essential to ensure the bridge's safety. This...

Typhoon-induced strong wind, extreme wave, and storm surge pose a significant threat to the structural and operational safety of a sea-crossing bridge. However, historical typhoons are usually insufficient in determining extreme hazards. Stochastic modeling of typhoons can expand the TC database and has been widely used in the risk assessment of TC...

The extreme wave impact is among the most severe loads the elevated box structure can suffer. This paper illustrated the spatial distribution of wave impact pressure on the elevated box structure with a rectangular cross-section. An existing wave flume experiment for an elevated box structure was reproduced numerically. The wave impact pressure on...

The present paper proposed a probabilistic methodology for evaluating the lifetime seismic resilience of the cable-stayed bridge considering the effect of structural corrosion. In this proposed methodology, the deteriorating processes, including the corrosion of steel bars, the reduction of concrete strength, and the corrosion of high-strength stay...

The sliding of laminated rubber bearings (LRBs) and failure of shear keys observed in the Wenchuan earthquake significantly increase the span collapse risk of simply-supported highway bridges and contradict the ductile design philosophy recommended by the current design code in China. In the meantime, the seismic damage mode of bridges may also cha...

The coastal or sea‐crossing bridges located in seismic regions are experiencing long‐term chloride‐induced corrosion in their life cycles and have a high risk of suffering from strong earthquakes. Thus, the fragilities of these bridges must be properly evaluated under the multiple hazards of corrosion and earthquake. Conventional fragility assessme...

This paper focuses on the evolution of wave front profile of dam-break waves. Firstly, dam-break waves with various initial upstream and downstream water depths are conducted experimentally and systematically. Secondly, the obvious influence of bottom resistance on wave front profile for dry-bed, also the accuracy of exiting analytical solution on...

In the course of the propagation of waves from the offshore to the nearshore zone, the wave may break due to the shoaling effect. Strong impact forces are observed when the breaking wave acts on the pier of the bridge. This impact force might not only change the dynamic load pattern on the pier but also cause strong structural vibration, which may...

The earthquake-induced hydrodynamic effect on the elevated pile-cap foundation is distinct from the immersed single columns or piers due to the pile group - pile cap interaction. This paper focused on the hydrodynamic added mass of the pile cap and pile group in the elevated pile-cap foundation submerged in water. The potential-based numerical mode...

Offshore steel trestles (OSTs) are exposed to severe marine environments with stochastic wave and current loads, making structural safety assessment challenging and difficult. Reliability analysis is a suitable way to consider both wave and current loading intensity uncertainties, but the implicit and complex limit state functions of the reliabilit...

Bridge construction is one of the cores of traffic infrastructure construction. To better develop relevant bridge science, this paper introduces the main research progress in China and abroad in 2020 from 16 aspects. The content consists of four major categories in 16 aspects. The first part is about the bridge structure, including concrete bridge...

Ocean current forecast is vital for developing tidal energy and construction of offshore structures in the strait waters. This paper developed a short-term ocean current forecasting approach using the warped Gaussian process (WGP), which consists of the measured data preprocessing, kernel function selection, and data forecasting using WGP. A prepro...

Deep-water bridges located in a V-shape canyon may suffer from spatially varying ground motions due to the canyon topography. This paper focused on the effect of canyon topography on the seismic responses of a deep-water continuous rigid-frame bridge that crosses a V-shape canyon. The ground motions in three example sites with different topography...

Seismic fragility assessment using structural dynamic analysis remains challenging for complex systems due to the high computational demand, such as the sea-crossing cable-stayed bridges. The paper aims to overcome this difficulty by developing an efficient seismic fragility analysis framework based on endurance time method (ETM). To demonstrate th...

Elevated pile caps are always located close to the still-water level, where breaking waves can induce great impact loads and threaten the structural stability of bridges. This paper focuses on the interaction between breaking waves and an elevated pile cap with a rectangular cross-section. An elevated cap specimen under three breaking wave conditio...

Sudden flooding is one of the major risks for the drainage sinking construction of deep-water caisson. The damage of inner walls due to hydraulic pressure induced by sudden flooding threatens the labor and structural safety. This study developed the numerical model and analytical method to assess the hydraulic pressure on the inner walls of both th...

Long-span bridges suspended from floating towers are a promising design concept to cross the strait with deep water depth. This paper presents an alternative dynamic simulation framework for floating suspension bridge by integrating the calculations of wave, radiation and wind loads with common software and computing scripts, and verifies the numer...

Typhoon-induced wind and wave can interrupt the operation and even threaten the safety of moving vehicles and bridges. However, the typhoon-induced maximum wind speed and maximum wave height are not coincident in time. Hence, it is a critical issue to include the time lag in the hazard model of wind and wave conditions for bridges. This paper adopt...

The stochastic waves generated by storm landfalls usually determine the design and safety of coastal and offshore structures in typhoon regions. This study developed a parametric wave spectrum model for typhoon-generated stochastic waves that considers the variation in the wave spectrum due to the temporal variation in the typhoon. A field measurem...

Structural analysis and construction control of staged construction process is a major subject for modern long-span bridges. This paper introduces the concept of stress-free-state variable of structural elements and deduces the mechanical equilibrium equations and geometric shape governing equations for staged construction structures utilizing the...

The seismic reliability assessment (SRA) of complex nonlinear structures which possess structural and seismic uncertainty is an open challenge for academics and practical engineers. This paper proposes an improved maximum entropy method (IMEM) for the SRA of nonlinear structures. Non-stationary ground motions are first generated via a random-functi...

With the increasing demand for land transportation in coastal areas, the number of sea-crossing bridges has increased rapidly. In the construction of sea-crossing bridges, the elevated pile cap foundation is one of the most commonly used foundation types. This paper summarizes four main aspects of the research on the hydrodynamic effects on elevate...

As a clean and highly valuable renewable energy, wind energy has gradually become an important branch of energy technology. By means of measurement methods, the wind characteristics, energy applications for distributed wind energy source (DWES) in six sites in Henduan Mountains and economic evaluation are investigated. According to the results, the...

The main navigational channel bridge of Changtai Changjiang River Bridge is a rail-cum-road cable-stayed bridge with a main span of 1 176 m. To balance technology and economy, caisson foundations are chosen for the pylons. However, super-large caisson foundation also means large cross-section dimension, hefty body, and great depth in soil. To addre...

A caisson can be suspended in the river during its settlement construction. The water flows induces the local scour of sediments under the caisson, which increases the settlement difficulty and threatens the safety of construction. A numerical model using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) was introduced to simulate the local scour process around t...

Elevated pile cap is one of the foundation types that are commonly used to support sea-crossing bridges. However, the large weight and small lateral stiffness make it sensitive to wave impact loads. The horizontal dynamic response of the elevated pile cap induced by extreme wave is obviously larger than that calculated by the static method, which w...

The square concrete deck is being used as an elevated transition piece in offshore structure but has a large exposure area to extreme waves. This study focused on the horizontal wave-in-deck loads on the square concrete deck. Wave flume tests were carried out to investigate the wave-in-deck loads on a specimen of the square concrete deck. Horizonta...

Local scour around caissons under currents has become one of the main factors affecting the safety of foundation construction and operation in coastal and offshore bridge engineering. Local scour occurs not only in the operation stage, when the caisson has settled into the sediment, but also in the construction stage, when the caisson is suspended...

Empirical single-peak wave spectra have been widely applied in current practice for the stochastic analysis of sea-crossing bridges under random waves. However, single-peak wave spectra may not be appropriate for evaluating the wave responses of bridges located in the nearshore site under tropical cyclones. In this study, typhoon wave spectra at an...

The dynamic responses of the deepwater rigid-frame bridge are assessed by underwater shaking table tests and numerical simulations. The frequency domain dynamic responses are estimated to illustrate the effect of water depth and superstructures on the bridge subjected to earthquake loading along the transverse direction. Major findings are summariz...

In current practice, linear wave load theory is widely employed in the wave force evaluation of sea-crossing bridges. However, the observation of nonlinear wave loads in shallow waters suggests that second-order wave loads might be essential to the dynamic behavior of marine structures. In this paper, a framework to investigate the stochastic respo...

The assessment of earthquake-induced hydrodynamic added mass is critical in the seismic design of structures supported by immersed columns. This paper developed an efficient potential-based numerical model to determine the hydrodynamic added mass for immersed column with arbitrary cross - section. General formulations of the hydrodynamic added mass...

Offshore steel trestles (OSTs) are commonly used to construct sea-crossing bridges. Presuming OSTs to be elastic to hydrodynamic hazards during their service lifetime is economically unacceptable due to their use as a temporary facility. In order to enhance operational safety and also reduce building costs, a nonlinear analysis framework is develop...

Local scour of bridge piers is one of the main threats responsible for bridge damage. Adopting scour countermeasures to protect bridge foundations from scour has become an important issue for the design and maintenance of bridges located in erodible sediment beds. This paper focuses on the protective effect of one active countermeasure named an “an...

Hydrodynamic effects are concerns in the seismic analysis of bridges with complex hollow piers submerged in a reservoir. In this study, potential-based fluid elements were employed to set up a three-dimensional numerical fluid-structure interaction model to account for the hydrodynamic effects of interest. A typical reservoir bridge with a nonunifo...

Deepwater bridge piers suffer from long-term irregular and dynamic wave loading in ocean environment. Although the static wave calculation approach based on characteristic waves used in the traditional design practice is simple and efficient, the effect of randomness and dynamics on the structures cannot be considered. This paper focuses on the pro...

Construction cofferdams for sea-crossing bridges can be damaged or even collapsed due to extreme wave loads under tropical cyclones. To enhance a better understanding of the random wave pressure on the cofferdam, wave gauges and pressure transducers were installed on a real cofferdam for sea-crossing bridge to measure the random wave pressure durin...

In order to accurately calculate the wave loads on the cofferdams for construction of sea-crossing bridge, a method based on the hydraulic pressure field measurement for calculating the wave forces acting on the cofferdams was proposed. An actual cofferdam used for construction of the pier B39 of the Pingtan Rail-cum-Road Straits Bridge Project was...

The sea-crossing railway bridge is exposed to a high risk of wind and wave, which threatens the safety of the bridge and railway. A wind–wave–vehicle–bridge dynamic analysis model for sea-crossing railway bridge under wind and wave loadings is developed by extending the previous wind–vehicle–bridge model. The developed wind–wave–vehicle–bridge mode...

p>This study employs three-dimensional finite element model based on potential-based fluid elements to investigate the effect of the valley slope on the seismic response of piers of a deepwater rigid- frame bridge. The valley slope is treated as a rigid wall boundary in the numerical model. Seismic responses of an example deepwater rigid-frame bridg...

The assessment of wave conditions is a primary task for the design, construction, and structural analysis of sea-crossing bridge. This article presents a numerical simulation and a field measurement to study the wave conditions in the nearshore island area for sea-crossing bridges. Pingtan Strait sea-crossing bridge site was selected as an example...

To probe into the relationship between the final target geometric shape and the unstressed state amounts of the structure formed in stages, the geodetic coordinates are chosen as the reference for the target geometric shape, the external force potential is defined as the force potential relative to the coordinate axes and by taking the unstressed s...

This paper studies the effect of structural dynamics on the response of an offshore wind turbine (OWT) supported by a jacket and subjected to wave loads. The study includes a series of time-domain dynamic analyses based on loading from regular and irregular wave histories and three example OWT support structures. The OWT support structures are prop...

Cofferdams used in the coastal area have shown severe damages after typhoons including fracture of the steel piles, overturn and even total collapse. In order to enhance the understanding on the met-ocean conditions of the site and the wave pressure on the wall of cofferdam, extreme wave elevation was obtained through ultrasonic wave measuring inst...

Recently, the transportation of dangerous explosive goods is increasing, which makes vehicle blasting accidents a potential threat for the safety of bridge structures. In addition, blasting accidents happen more easily when earthquake occurs. Excessive dynamic response of bridges under extreme loads may cause local member damage, serviceability iss...

This paper introduces a framework for the assessment of damage of offshore wind turbines (OWTs) supported by jackets under extreme environmental loadings. Performance levels/damage states, ranging from operational/undamaged to near collapse/severely damaged, are defined based on static pushover analyses. An example performance assessment is present...

This paper developed a new type of elastomeric isolation bearings, of which the reinforcing element is manufactured by high-strength steel mesh. In order to investigate the compressive and shear deformation performance of the new system, eight full-scale steel mesh reinforced elastomeric isolation bearings (SMREIB) with details partly referring to...

Risk of hurricane damage is an important factor in the development of the offshore wind energy industry in the United States. Hurricane loads on an offshore wind turbine (OWT), namely wind and wave loads, not only exert large structural demands, but also have temporally changing characteristics, especially with respect to their directions. Waves ar...

The development of renewable energy sources is a critical global need. The Atlantic coast and Gulf of Mexico of the U.S., with large wind resources and proximity to major population centers, are natural places for such development; however, these regions are also at considerable risk from severe hurricanes or tropical cyclones. Current internationa...

Successful development of the offshore wind energy resource depends upon the reliability of the structures that support the electricity-generating rotor-nacelle assemblies that form the core of a wind turbine system. The risk posed to offshore wind turbines (OWTs) by extreme environmental events such as Atlantic hurricanes requires a more detailed...

This paper employs the fragility function method to study the effects of dynamic fluid-structure interaction on seismic response of multi-span deep water bridges. Currently, two approaches are widely used to study the dynamic fluid-structure interaction effect of structures: the analytical ‘added mass’ method and full-scale two- or three dimensiona...

The dynamic analysis model of cap considering structure-water interaction is built up, based on potential fluid theory. A double-layer water mesh generation method is suggested to simplify the modeling process. The influences of different parameters of the rectangular cap and the one with complicated chamfer on the hydrodynamic effect are investiga...