Wen-Jun Cao

Delft University of Technology | TU · Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences (CEG)

Information collected through sensor measurements has the potential to improve knowledge of complex-system behavior, leading to better decisions related to system management. In this situation, and particularly when using digital twins, the quality of sensor data determines the improvement that sensors have on decision-making. The choice of the mon...

This paper aims to summarize, propose, and discuss existing or emerging strategies to shift towards a circular economy of materials. To clarify the landscape of existing circular practices, a new spectrum is proposed, from product-based strategies, where entire products go through several life cycles without being reprocessed, to material-based app...

With the development of new materials and advanced structural analysis, alongside increasing aesthetic requirements, recent years have witnessed a trend toward longer, taller, and lighter footbridges. Different from vehicular bridges, footbridges carry relatively small service loads and are more susceptible to vibrations, due to their lower stiffne...

The train wheel flat is one of the most common damages in the railway system. It occurs when a wheel locks up while the train is moving. The early detection of wheel-flat severity is crucial for passenger comfort and the safety of the railway operation. However, it is still challenging to quantify the properties of wheel flats (e.g., sizes) without...

As more private firms participate in public projects aiming to increase their profits by adjusting operational strategies, there has been an increasing demand for structural identification in the operational phase. In this paper, we propose a framework for finding the optimal profit of toll highways over a 5-year part of the operating period. Toll...

Surrogates in lieu of expensive-to-evaluate performance functions can accelerate the reliability analysis greatly. This paper proposes a new two-stage framework for surrogate-aided reliability analysis named Surrogates for Importance Sampling (S4IS). In the first stage, a coarse surrogate is built to gain the information about failure regions; the...

Train wheel flats are formed when wheels slip on rails. Crucial for passenger comfort and the safe operation of train systems, early detection and quantification of wheel-flat severity without interrupting railway operations is a desirable and challenging goal. Our method involves identifying the wheel-flat size by using a model updating strategy b...

In recent years, an increasing number of private firms are involved in public works using the funding strategy of public-private partnerships (PPPs), especially for civil infrastructure projects such as highways and bridges. In this paper, a framework is proposed to quantify the potential benefits of condition assessment in the operation phase. The...

Surrogates in lieu of expensive-to-evaluate performance functions can accelerate the reliability analysis greatly. This paper proposes a new two-stage framework for surrogate-aided reliability analysis named Surrogates for Importance Sampling (S4IS). In the first stage, a coarse surrogate is built to gain the information about failure regions. The...

In situ measurements have the potential to provide valuable information about the safety and the condition of bridges through implementation of system-identification methodology. A significant amount of research has focused on system identification using either dynamic or static measurements separately. Realizing the complementary relationship betw...

Although finite-element models are commonly used in designing civil infrastructure, they may fail to represent the true operational behaviour. Measurements from monitoring and inspection can provide valuable information to improve the prediction capability of models. A significant amount of research has focused on system identification using either...