Zhen Sun is currently a postdoctoral researcher in CONSTRUCT, FEUP, University of Porto. He received his Ph.D. at Yokohama National University, Japan. Before that, he obtained his bachelor's and master's degree from Shandong University and Tongji University respectively, in China. He is now the supervisor of a Ph.D. student (ongoing) in FEUP.
He published over 30 academic articles with a Scopus H index of 13. He serves as the guest editor in the journal Engineering Failure Analysis (Elsevier, Impact factor: 3.634) for a special issue "Failure mechanism and prevention of civil infrastructure under operational and extreme conditions" (VSI: FMP of CI under OEC). He also holds six registered invention patents, and has participated in three standards/codes related to the condition assessment of bridges. He is a reviewer for around 20 international journals.
He is the Mini symposia session chair at the 13th International Conference on Structural Safety and Reliability (ICOSAR2021-2022), MS 65 “Dual-Driven Probabilistic Damage and Failure Assessment of Engineering Structures under Hazards”.
His main research interests include
(1) Structural dynamics, vehicle-bridge interaction analysis;
(2) Damage detection and load-carrying capacity evaluation of girder bridges under vehicle loads;
(3) Condition assessment of cable-supported bridges and components such as suspenders, and expansion joints;
(4) Machine learning in health monitoring/condition assessment of bridges;
(5) Stochastic traffic model, and reliability-based truck load rating for bridges.