Professor Chun Qing Li

Professor Chun-Qing Li has been professor of civil engineering since 2006 initially in UK and now at RMIT, Australia. He is the fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers of UK (FICE) as well as the Institution of Engineers, Australia (FIEAust). He is also a chartered professional engineer of these two institutions. 

Professor Li was Head of School of Civil, Environmental and Chemical Engineering in RMIT University from 2011 to 2016 during which period, the ranking of School’s civil and structure discipline has risen from beyond 100 to the top 51 to 100 bracket and its chemical engineering discipline has doubled its ranking from beyond 200 to the top 101 to 150 bracket (QS ranking 2015 and 2016).

Professor Li has taught a variety of courses ranging from theoretical subjects of mechanics and stochastic processes to practical subjects of materials and structures, e.g., reinforced concrete structures. 

Professor Li’s core research expertise is time-dependent reliability theory and its application to service life prediction of deteriorating materials and structures. His research areas include whole life design of structures, risk and reliability analysis of engineering works, steel corrosion and its effects on mechanical property and structural behaviour, corrosion of buried metal pipes, mixed mode fracture failure and fracture toughness, stochastic modelling of loading and structural resistance, concrete technology and construction management. Professor Li’s research in risk-based service life prediction of civil infrastructure was rated “international leading” (i.e., 4* - the highest rating) in UK’s 2008 Research Assessment Exercise.

Professor Li’s contribution to time-dependent reliability theory is that he derived a closed-form solution to first passage probability for non-stationary Gaussian stochastic processes in 1993 and more recently (2016) he derived a new solution to first passage probability for non-stationary and non-Gaussian process. Professor Li is one of the first researchers to advance research on corrosion from material perspective to mechanical and structural perspectives since 1998; one of the first to apply first passage probability method to service life prediction of deteriorating structures since 2004; one of the first to propose risk-cost optimisation for developing maintenance strategy for deteriorating structures since 2007; and one of the first to develop models for mixed modes fracture failures of buried pipes since 2013. Professor Li recently discovered that the fracture toughness consists of both elastic and plastic parts and developed models for total fracture toughness in 2016. 

Professor Li has published over 300 papers and more than 120 papers are published in high quality international journals, e.g., ASCE journal of engineering mechanics, journal of structural engineering, ACI journals etc.. He has been awarded many research grants in total over $10 m since 2000 as lead or sole CI from both national research councils of UK and Australia where he has worked, e.g., UK’s Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC) and Australian Research Council (ARC). Professor Li currently holds as lead or sole CI in total of $2.6m, three ARC grants on service life prediction of buried pipelines and a few industry grants, the most notable one of which is one million dollars funding from Metro Trains Melbourne to investigates the remaining safe life of Metro infrastructure.

Professor Li has served on a number of professional bodies, including editorial boards, conference committees, codes and standards committees and so on. He is the Associate Editor for the prestigious international journal of Structure and Infrastructure Engineering.

Professor Li specialises in whole life design of structures, integrating reliability theory, corrosion science and fracture mechanics which is reflected in all his activities.

Teaching areas

• Structural design
• Structural assessment
• Systems engineering
• Building materials 
• Construction project management
• Research methodology

Research areas

• Whole life design of structures
• Risk and reliability analysis of engineering works
• Steel corrosion and its effects on mechanical property and structural behaviour,
• Corrosion of buried metal pipes
• Mixed mode fracture failure and fracture toughness
• Stochastic modelling of loading and structural resistance
• Concrete technology 
• Construction management

Current research projects

• Prediction of mixed mode fracture failures of metal pipelines,  ARC DP170102211, $320,000
• Preventing reoccurrence of catastrophic failures of stormwater pipelines,  ARC LP150100413, $410,000,
• Accurate Prediction of Safe Life of Buried Pipelines,  ARC DP140101547, $280,000
• Investigation of Remaining Service Life of Metro Trains’ Infrastructure,  Metro Trains Melbourne, 1,002,000

Supervision of students

• PhD and Masters research student
• Projects of Master students 
• Capstone projects of undergraduate students

Various admin and management tasks

• PhD
  Thesis: Time-dependent structural systems reliability theory and its application University of Newcastle, 1993
• MSc (Structural Engineering)
  Thesis: Behaviour of concrete beam-column joints under cyclic loading Wuhan University of Technology, 1985
• BEng H1 (Civil Engineering), Wuhan University of Technology, 1982

Professional membership

• Fellow of The Institution of Engineers, Australia – FIEAust
• Chartered Professional Engineer, Australia – CPEng
• Fellow of The Institution of Civil Engineers, UK – FICE
• Chartered Engineer, UK – CEng

Member of Editorial Board

• Editor, Advances in Civil Engineering, an international journal.
• Associate Editor, Structure and Infrastructure Engineering, an international journal.
• Member of Editorial Board, Material and Structural Reliability, an international journal.
• Member of Editorial Board, Journal of Building Pathology and Rehabilitation, an international journal.
• Member of Editorial Board, Advanced Civil Engineering Practice and Research, an international journal.

Member of Research Consortia

• Member of Task Group CIB/TG22, Environmental design methods in materials and structural engineering
• Member of Working Group ISO/TC98/SC/2/WG10, General Principles on the Design of Structures for Durability
• Member of LIFETIME network, EU

Member of Conference Committees

• Steering Committee, International Conference on Durability of Building and Construction Materials (dbcm), On-going
• Scientific Committee, International Symposium on Life-Cycle Civil Engineering (IALCCE), on-going
• Scientific Committee, International Conference on Sustainable Construction Materials and Technologies (SCMT), on-going
• Scientific Committee, Australasian Conference on Mechanics of Structures and Materials (ACMSM), on-going
• Scientific Committee, International Conference on Structural and Civil Engineering (ICSCE 2017), Lyon, France, 21 – 23 September 2017
• Scientific Committee, International Conference on Sustainable Civil Engineering, Cape Town, South Africa, 20 – 22 June 2016
• Scientific Committee, International Conference of Civil Engineering, Architecture and Sustainable Infrastructure, Zhengzhou, China, 13 – 15 July 2013.