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Research Group

Presently I am leading a group of undergraduates, Ph.D. candidates and research fellows in the research of structural health monitoring in a variety of applications and material types including damage detection in concrete and steel structures in offshore, rail, construction, geotechnical industrie. In this group, new sensing technologies such as image-based damage detection and wireless sensor nodes are also developed as enabling technologies to support structural health monitoring efforts. 

EDUCATION

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Plastic Optical Fiber Sensors  

  • Crack detection in concrete and steel structures.

  • Large-strain monitoring in geotextile materials

  • Dynamic monitoring of vibrating structures

  • POF-based accelerometers for wind-turbine blades

  • Wireless liquid level detection for flood monitoring

  • Distributed detection and location of cracks in steel tubes with v-OTDR

  • Wireless crack detection in steel mooring chain 

  • Active control of smart fibre metal laminate

  •  System identification with genetic algorithm in vibrating composite beams

  • Rubber-pad load sensors for train-tracking structural health monitoring applications

Oct 1998 - Feb 2002

University of Liverpool, United Kingdom

Ph.D Materials Science and Engineering

KSC Kuang

Fiber Bragg Gratings Sensors

  • Impact damage detection in advanced composite materials (fiber metals laminates).

  • Post-impact strain characterization in FMLs

  • Packaged FBG sensors for strain monitoring of steel structures

  • Process monitoring of composite structures (conventional composites and fibre metal laminates)

  • Temperature monitoring in microwave heating of concrete

Silica Optical Fiber Sensor

  • Intensity-based embedded sensors in advanced composites (glass-fibre polyproplene) for detection of impact-induced damage.

  • Process-monitoring of GFPP composites

  • Flexural damage detection in GFPP

Chemiluminescence-based Sensor

  • Wireless deformation sensor for detection of soil movement using chemiluminescence-based sensor

  • Flexural-damage detection in concrete beams using wireless chemiluminescence sensors

Sept 1993 - Mar 1995

University of Leeds, United Kingdom

B.Eng (Hons) (1st) Mechanical Engineering

Acoustic Emission Sensing

  • Crack detection and location in rail head using acoustic emission technique

  • Crack detection in concrete beams

 July 2003

University of Leicester, United Kingdom

MBA (Total Quality Management)

A low-cost image processing technique for crack detection for structural health monitoring

Detection of cracks in any structure is a vital task to ensure structural health and reliability. Computer vision and image processing techniques can be used to automate the inspection of structures for cracks. This paper describes an algorithm that enables the detection of cracks in a variety of materials such as concrete, metal etc. by use of image processing techniques such as contour detection, edge detection and supervised machine learning classifier – support vector machine. The accuracy of the detection and classification has been verified experimentally.

 

Jacob John KUTTISSERIL

Year: AY2014/2015

Design Centric Programme, Engineering Design and Innovation Centre

Home Department: Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Employment on Graduation: Singapore Telecommunications Limited (SingTel Ltd.)

 

Presented Paper @ 3rd ASEAN Australian Engineering Congress, Marina Bay Sands, Singapore, 11-13 March 2015, entitled: Development of a low-cost, image processing technique for crack detection for structural health monitoring

Development of a wireless sensor system based on chemiluminescence to detect concrete crack 

 

This project presents a novel damage detection sensing system based on the use of a glow stick. Although very strong in compression, concrete structures under flexural load cracks easily in the tensile region (e.g. when a critical curvature is reached) and this could lead to seepage of moisture, air and aggressive chemicals through these crack lines resulting in corrosion of the reinforcement bars. This can result in loss of structural integrity of the concrete. In this paper, a low-cost curvature sensing solution is proposed which is capable of detecting overloading or excessive curvature in these structures. A wireless module was integrated to the crack sensor allowing the damage event to be transmitted wirelessly to the base-station or headquarters to alert authorities of impending loss of structural integrity of the host structure.

 

GUO Xiangyun

Year: AY2014/2015

Design Centric Programme, Engineering Design and Innovation Centre 

Home Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Employment on Graduation: Land Transport Authority (LTA)

Acoustic Emission sensors to detect structural cracks - Structural health monitoring system

 

To detect cracks on concrete samples using AE sensors and collect data for analysis to investigate the feasibility of using AE sensors as a structural health monitoring apparatus.

 

Baskar Muthy VELAPPAN

Year: AY2014/2015

Design Centric Programme, Engineering Design and Innovation Centre 

Home Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Employment on Graduation: 

A ultra-cost, wireless, self-sustaining deformation sensor based on chemiluminescence for soil movement detection

A novel sensor based on chemiluminescence is proposed in this paper and shown to be capable of monitoring horizontal soil movement typical in landslide situation and other applications where soil movement is a concern. Simulated experiments were carried out to verify the performance of the sensors system and design recommendation. The device is also made self-sustainable and shown to be capable of providing damage information wirelessly to the user as far as 300m from the position of the device.

Compared with other conventional monitoring instruments, the proposed sensor system has the advantages of being wireless, highly cost-effective and self-sustaining

 

CAI Qinghao

Year: AY2014/2015

Design Centric Programme, Engineering Design and Innovation Centre 

Home Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Employment on Graduation: CPG Consultant

 

NUS Student Award:  

1. High Achievement Award (highest award) under Individual Category for the FoE 29th Innovation and Research Award AY2014/2015
 (Faculty of Engineering-level award)

2. NUS Outstanding Undergraduate Research (OUR) Prize AY2014/2015 (Univesity-level award)

 

Presented Paper @ 3rd ASEAN Australian Engineering Congress, Marina Bay Sands, Singapore, 11-13 March 2015, entitled: Development of a low-cost, self-sustaining, wireless, soil movement sensor based on chemilunescence

Final year projects and graduate students supervised

KSC Kuang
KSC Kuang
KSC Kuang
KSC Kunag
Anchor 1

Sensor based on chemiluminescence for structural health monitoring 

This project involve a study of the application of a chemilumnescence sensors for damage detection in concrete structures. A series of loading tests were conducted to assess the potential of the sensor and improvements were made to increase the sensitivity of the sensor to detect cracks in concrete beams, 

 

Cindy Shuo ZHANG

Year: AY2014/2015 (Overseas Student Internship)

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA.

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Shuo Zhang
Ge Yao KSC Kuang

Process and structural health monitoring for wind turbine applications using optical fiber sensors 

Developed fibre optic sensors for acceleration, bending curvature and composite curing monitoring

Proposed a frequency-based algorithm to monitor severity and location of damage in a beam structure under ambient excitations, 

 

Dr. GE Yao, PhD 

Year of Graduation: AY2014  

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Supervisors: Prof ST Quek and Dr. KSC Kuang

Employment on Graduation: Senior Scientist-Sensor Physical @ Halliburton 

 

 

(Best student prize for presenting an outstanding paper)

Ge, Y, KSC Kuang and ST Quek, "Process and Bend Monitoring of an Ultraviolet-Curable Composite using Plastic Optical Fibre: Proceedings of the 23rd KKCNN Symposium on Civil Engineering, eds. LJ Leu and CT Chen, (2010), Taipei, Taiwan, 13-15 Nov 2010. pp.465-468. 

 

 

Crack Monitoring of rail track using acoustic emission technique

Development of a method based on acoustic emission technique to detect cracks in rail track. This PhD thesis is being prepared.

 

Ms. LI Dan, PhD Candidate

Year of Graduation: January AY2017

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Supervisors: Dr. KSC Kuang (main) and Prof CG Koh (co-supervisor)

Employment on Graduation: 

 

D Li, KSC Kuang, CG Koh," Detection and Quantification of Fatigue Cracks in Rail Steel Using Acoustic Emission Technique" Proceedings of the International Workshop of Structural Health Monitoring, eds Fu-Kuo Chang  (2015), Stanford, California, USA, 1-3 Sept 2015.

 

Kuang, K.S.C., Li, D. and Koh, C.G., 2016. Acoustic emission source location and noise cancellation for crack detection in rail head. Smart Structures and Systems, 18(5), pp.1063-1085

​

​Li D, Kuang K.S.C. and Koh C.G. 2016 Fatigue crack sizing in rail steel using crack closure-induced acoustic emission waves, Measurement Science and Technology

 

AY2016-2017
AY2015-2016

Feb 2002

University of Liverpool, United Kingdom

PhD (Engineering)

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