On September 13, Professor Li Jie from RMIT University, Australia, delivered an academic lecture titled The Australian Approach to Residential Footing Design on Expansive Soils in Conference Room 8A509 of the Modern Transportation Engineering Center. The lecture was organized by School of Urban Railway Transportation at Shanghai University of Engineering Science and hosted by Professor Wang Lei, Vice Dean of the college.
At the beginning of the lecture, Vice Dean Professor Wang Lei delivered a welcome speech and provided a detailed introduction to Professor Li Jie’s academic background and achievements. During the lecture, Professor Li Jie focused on the engineering practices of residential footing design in expansive soil areas in Australia, systematically elaborating on the related technical methods and standard systems. He pointed out that expansive soils in semi-arid regions pose significant challenges to geotechnical and structural engineering, as soil movements often cause damage to structures such as lightweight buildings and pavements. To address this issue, he highlighted the risk management strategies currently adopted in Australia, covering site classification, experimental testing, and residential footing design, among other aspects. Using real engineering cases, he vividly demonstrated a case study of a house affected by expansive soils.
Professor Li Jie’s lecture was broad in perspective and rich in content, combining theoretical depth with close ties to engineering practice. It provided faculty and students with a more comprehensive understanding of building foundation design in expansive soil areas. After the lecture, attendees actively raised questions and engaged in in-depth discussions with Professor Li on related technical issues.
This academic lecture not only broadened the horizons of faculty and students at our university regarding advanced technologies in expansive soil foundation design but also laid a solid foundation for future in-depth collaboration in scientific research and talent cultivation between the two parties.
Professor Li Jie is currently a professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at RMIT University, Australia. He has long been engaged in research in areas such as unsaturated soils and building materials, achieving significant results in the characteristics of expansive soils and their interaction with foundations. He has led and participated in multiple Australian national-level research projects, including the Australian Standard Project AS287. Professor Li Jie has an impressive academic impact, with over 4,580 citations in the Elsevier SciVerse Scopus database (H-index 42) and over 6,800 citations in Google Scholar (H-index 49).