Tuesday 7 August 2018

Attendance and presentation at IABMAS 2018 and 7WCSCM


Hey everybody!

How has this blistering summer been treating you? Hopefully not too bad.


Today I'm going to write about two great conferences that I was able to attend and present some of the latest findings of my project in the last month.

The first one was the 9th International Conference on Bridge Maintenance, Safety and Management (IABMAS 2018). This is a conference held every two years, that brings together some of the world's highest authorities in bridge monitoring and maintenance both from industry and academia. As some of you may recall, I had participated in the previous edition of this conference in Foz do Iguazu, Brazil back in June 2016 as I wrote about it in this blog post.

This time, this conference was held at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre in the amazing city of Melbourne, Australia between July 9-13.
General view of Melbourne
Bridge next to IABMAS 2018 venue

Melbourne Convention Exhibition Centre

Opening ceremony at IABMAS 2018
In this conference, I had the chance to present a paper entitled "Performance analysis of distributed optical fiber bonding adhesives to concrete" where I described some results of a laboratory experiment conducted last winter in UPC's structural technology laboratory. 

Presenting at IABMAS 2018
This was a great event where I was able to get to know some of the most interesting and innovative research being conducted currently in the field of bridge monitoring and the people behind that research. For those of you interested in attending the next edition of IABMAS conference, it will be held in Sapporo, Japan between June 28 and July 3 of 2020.

The second conference was the 7th World Conference on Structural Control and Monitoring (7WCSCM) which was held between July 22-25 at the Shangri-La Hotel in Qingdao, China. This conference is held every four years and organized within the Internationa Association for Structural Control and Monitoring (IACSM). In fact, the last edition of this conference was held precisely in Barcelona in 2014.

Qingdao location in China (credits)
General view of Qingdao (credits)

Welcome reception of 7WCSCM

Conference dinner of 7WCSCM
In this conference, I was also able to present a conference paper, this time with the title: "Long-term reliability assessment of OBR based DOFS on reinforced concrete elements".

Presenting at 7WCSCM
Furthermore, this conference was held together with the APESS edition of this year which was held between Qingdao and Harbin in China. As some of you might recall, I had participated in last year's APESS at Yokohama National University in Japan as I described in this post, together with three of my fellow TRUSS ESRs. In this way, it was very pleasant to see several known faces and reconnect with them after this year.

Reconnecting with fellow participants of APESS 2017 at Qingdao, China
Finally, at this conference, I had the opportunity to visit together with all other participants of the 7WCSCM the Shandong High-speed Jiaozhou Bay Bridge which has a total of 41.58 Km among which 28.88 km are over water, being the longest cross sea-bridge in the world at the time of its opening back in 2011.

Shandong High-speed Jiaozhou Bay Bridge (credits)
As you might imagine, these were two great events that I really enjoyed and whose learnings and memories I will cherish for a long time.

This is all from me now, and stay tuned for more posts as I get close to the end of my project within TRUSS.

Cheers!

Monday 12 February 2018

Attendance of EURODYN'17 and 2017 IABSE Symposium

Hey guys! How have you been doing?
  
I know it's been quite some time since I posted something but these have been incredibly busy months of my PhD project. Fortunately, everything is on track and now I've finally found some time to write again on this blog.

In this way, today I'm going to write to you about two extremely exciting conferences that I had the pleasure to attend last September and where I presented some of the results obtained during the conduction of my project.

The first one was Eurodyn 2017 - X International conference on structural dynamics, that was held at the magnificent Sapienza University of Rome in Italy between the 10 and 13 of September.


Entrance of the Faculty of Civil and Industrial Engineering where the majority of the conference sessions were held

This conference was organized by the European Association for Structural Dynamics (EASD) and was focused on the theoretical, computational and experimental developments in structural dynamics and their application to all types of structures and dynamical systems.

Opening ceremony venue
Conference group photo

This was an extremely pleasant event which I had the chance to share with my fellow ESRs JJ Moughty (ESR 10) and Giulia Milana (ESR 6) as well as both other acquaintances from previous conferences and workshops and new colleagues that I got to meet and exchange experiences and ideas.

The second conference was the 39th IABSE Symposium at the beautiful city of Vancouver in Canada between the 21 and 23 of September.


I've written before in this blog about IABSE (International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering) which is one of the most important and active associations related with all aspects of structural engineering.


Opening ceremony and Keynote Lecture

Networking during this event

In this event, I also had the opportunity of attending  a practice-oriented workshop on Bridge Dynamic Response by Design targeted for Young Engineers which was a great moment to get to know more about the importance of the dynamic considerations and implications at each stage of the design process and learn from great practicing engineers and real-world structures examples.


This was an incredible and extremely rewarding experience where I got to learn a lot from what is being done regarding structural engineering not only on the academic side but also through an elite level of what is being done by practicing structural engineers. Furthermore, it was great to visit the city of Vancouver which is now one of my favorite cities in the world.

Vancouver (photo credits: yours truly ESR 11)
So this is all for now and hopefully, I will get back to you very soon with more news and developments regarding my project and my life as an ESR so stay tuned!

Cheers!