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Our team’s research focuses on three pillars: Robotic Construction, Intelligent Design and Sustainable Structures.

Robotic Construction

Under this theme, our group is aiming at automating the rebar cage assembly process, a highly repetitive, labor-intensive, and time-consuming task that is universal around the world.

Please take a peek into our work with the following video. We will provide complete projects’ descriptions after publications (many under review).

255.MP4

Intelligent Design

Under this theme, our group is aiming at facilitating the design process of civil infrastructure through the help of advanced vision and large-language models. The design process of civil infrastructure can be really tedious that involve numerous repetitive and low-skill operations, which urgently need work to automate. We will provide complete projects’ descriptions after publications (many under review!)

Sustainable Structures

Under this theme, our group follows the principle of circular economy:

1. Reduce: we aims to reduce the initial material usage by adopting high-performance material, such as UHPC, as well as structural optimization techniques
2. Resilience: we enhance the resilience to disaster and deterioration by innovative usages of high-performance materials, such as UHPC and GFRP
3. Reuse: we work on projects that design structures with engineered features to be easily reusable. Therefore, if we need to change the function or height of buildings, we don’t need to demolish and build new structures. We can maximally reuse existing structural members.

UHPC Structural Design

Project 1:

Improving the Sustainability and Ductility of Reinforced UHPC (ultra-high performance concrete) Beams

Background:

• Current UHPC materials include 2% or higher volume of steel fibers, which can contribute to over 30% and 40% of material costs and carbon emission, respectively.
• Current reinforced UHPC beams often fail early after crack localization and exhibit lower structural ductility than traditional reinforced concrete beams.

Goals:

• Investigate the feasibility of lowering fiber volume in UHPC structures.
• Develop design methods to improve the structural ductility of reinforced UHPC beams.

Research framework:

Featured results:

Compared to current practice, the new beam design can increase the strength and ductility by 44% and 114%, respectively, while reducing the initial costs and embodied carbon by 10% and 15%, respectively.

Selected publications (shown in a recommended reading sequence):

1. Shao, Y., Billington, S.L. (2019). Utilizing Full UHPC Compressive Strength in Steel Reinforced UHPC Beams, 2nd International Interactive Symposium on UHPC, Albany, NY. (First-Place Paper Award)
2. Shao, Y., Billington, S.L. (2019). Predicting the Two Predominant Flexural Failure Paths of Longitudinally Reinforced High-performance Fiber-reinforced Cementitious Composite Structural Members. Engineering Structures, 199:109581.
3. Shao, Y., Billington, S.L. (2022). Impact of UHPC Tensile Behavior on Steel Reinforced UHPC Flexural Behavior. Journal of Structural Engineering, 148(1): 04021244.
4. Shao, Y., Billington, S.L. (2021). Impact of cyclic loading on longitudinally-reinforced UHPC flexural members with different fiber volumes and reinforcing ratios. Engineering Structures, 241:112454.
5. Shao, Y., Hung, C-C., Billington, S.L. (2021). Gradual Crushing of Steel Reinforced HPFRCC Beams:Experiments and Simulations. Journal of Structural Engineering, 147(8): 04021114.
6. Shao, Y., Tich, K. L., Boaro, S. B., Billington, S.L. (2022). Impact of Fiber Distribution and Cyclic Loading on the Bond Behavior of Steel-reinforced UHPC. Cement and Concrete Composites: 104338.(PDF)
7. Shao Y., Ostertag C.P. (2022) Bond-slip behavior of steel reinforced UHPC under flexure: Experiment and prediction. Cement and Concrete Composites. 133: 104724.

Project 2:

Light-weight and High-performance Façade for Energy-Efficient Buildings

Background:

• According to the International Energy Agency, air conditioning and fans account for 10% of the global electricity consumption in 2018, a number that is expected to triple by 2050.

Goals:

• Maximize the thermal insulation to reduce the thermal load and energy consumption within the buildings.
• Minimize the self-weight to reduce the energy and costs associated with the transportation and erection of the façade panels.

Research framework:

Featured results:

Relative to two commonly-adopted façade designs (EPS sandwich façade and solid concrete façade),

the new façade design reduces the embodied carbon by over 35% while increasing the thermal resistance

by over 102%. Meanwhile, the new façade is more than 38% lighter than the other two options.

Selected publication:

1. Shao Y., Parks A., Ostertag C.P. (2022) Lightweight Concrete Façade with Multiple Air Gaps for Sustainable and Energy-efficient Buildings in Singapore. Building and Environment. 223: 109463.

Equipment and Resources

Robotics

• Custom-made gantry robotic: we designed and custom-made a four-axis gantry robotic system, currently hosted by Princeton Robotics Lab
• Upcoming robotics: we are in the process of acquiring more six-axis robotic arms at McGill

Servers

• Our group’s own servers host twelve A6000ada-48GB GPUs for high-performance computing.
• We have access to shared clusters with many A100s.

Structural lab

Our group share the structural testing capacity of McGill Jamieson Structures Laboratory, which has the capability for the full-scale testing of structural components. A 15 by 9 metre strong floor, with a half-metre square grid of 450 kN loading points, is used for setting up special loading rigs. An MTS testing machine, with a loading capacity of 10,700 kN, is used for testing relatively large specimens with controlled load or displacement. Another MTS system with separate loading jacks having capacities up to 900 kN and a Baldwin universal testing machine with 2000 kN loading capacity are also available. An Instron machine of 220 kN capacity is used for testing smaller specimens requiring precise control of load, strain, or displacement. This machine is also equipped with a controlled environment chamber for testing at elevated temperatures. Advanced data instrumentation system, such as DIC, LVDTs are frequently used for our projects.

The following tests have been conducted by my group at McGill:

• Large-scale beam tests with a length up to seven meters.
• Eccentric column compression tests.
• Full-scale beam-column joint tests.