From1931-1933, Huang Wenxi worked as a structural designer in Shanghai Shenchang foreign firm and participated in the structural design of several buildings. When designing a 17-story rigid frame structure, he created the "direct distribution method of frame bending moment" for designing this frame structure, which was appreciated by the director of the Ministry of Construction at that time. Using this method for torque distribution, the calculation workload is also less than Klaus' torque distribution method. His paper was published in June 1934+00, Volume 9, No.5 of Engineering magazine, two months earlier than other foreign scholars' papers on the same topic.
From 65438 to 0935, he began to study a new method of arch dam structure analysis-grid method, which was completed after years of efforts. In this method, the arch dam (or shell) is regarded as a grid composed of many horizontal arch segments and vertical beam segments, which are rigidly connected to the nodes of the grid. This method of discretizing the structure is the precedent of the widely used finite element method at present. Compared with three-dimensional elastic theory, thin shell theory and test load method, it can consider all kinds of main influencing factors and boundary conditions, and is suitable for computer solution. It can also be used to study anisotropic plates and shells and their dynamic response analysis. After the doctoral thesis "Application of Grille Method in Arch Dam and Shell Plate Analysis" was completed, it was highly praised by the tutor and the defense committee.
Pioneer of water conservancy and hydropower research in New China
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Huang Wenxi not only taught water conservancy in some universities, but also served as the director of Nanjing Water Conservancy Experimental Department, responsible for the work of the earliest domestic water conservancy and hydropower research institution with a certain scale. He actively planned to further enrich and develop it, and created new research fields, such as sediments, tidal waves and structural materials. It has undertaken experimental research tasks such as harnessing the Yellow River, harnessing the Huaihe River and hydropower projects in East China, and solved a large number of practical engineering problems. Many hydraulic and geotechnical test instruments have been developed, test manuals have been compiled, test technicians have been trained, and three hydraulic test classes have been opened. The above work made Nanjing Water Conservancy Laboratory the largest and highest level water conservancy and hydropower research institution in China at that time, and made great contributions to the early water conservancy and hydropower construction in New China.
After 1956, Huang Wenxi became the vice president of the Water Conservancy Institute and served as an academic leader until the Cultural Revolution. After 10 years' efforts, the Research Institute of Water Conservancy has 9 research rooms and a complete technical logistics system, and has the ability to undertake various major water conservancy and hydropower research projects, developed a batch of high-quality scientific research achievements, and solved a large number of difficult problems in water conservancy and hydropower projects, which plays an important role at home and abroad. Huang Wenxi himself put forward many creative research results in combination with engineering practice.
Huang Wenxi is not only a scholar with outstanding achievements in geotechnical mechanics and structural theory, but also an engineer with keen thinking and rich experience and an expert in solving practical engineering problems. He participated in a large number of research and consulting work on gates, earth-rock dams, concrete dams and foundations. According to the actual situation of our country, he introduced and popularized many advanced technologies, such as strengthening soft soil foundation with sand drain preloading method, preventing seepage damage with reverse filtration method and decompression well, building sluice without pile foundation with compensation foundation principle, and preventing underground leakage of gravel foundation with cast-in-place concrete cutoff wall. Combined with the construction of a large number of underwater warping dams and water cushion dams in China, the dam filling characteristics, dam pore water pressure estimation and construction characteristics are analyzed and verified theoretically and experimentally, which enriches and popularizes this dam construction technology with China characteristics. He also actively participated in the consultation of major national projects such as the Yellow River, Huaihe River, Shanghai, Southwest China and Three Gorges.
Founder of soil mechanics in China.
1925, Karl Terzaghi published the book Soil Mechanics, which became a technical science. As early as during his study in the United States, Huang Wenxi paid great attention to soil mechanics, which was a new discipline at that time. After returning home, he took the lead in setting up soil mechanics courses in China and established the first geotechnical laboratory in domestic universities.
After the founding of New China, during his tenure as the director of Nanjing Water Conservancy Experimental Department, he organized and developed many geotechnical exploration equipment and geotechnical test instruments, compiled geotechnical test manuals, field standard penetration, penetration test, sampling and other handouts and materials, and opened four geotechnical test classes, paving the way for the geotechnical test work in New China. During his tenure as the vice president of the Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research in Beijing, he also served as the director of the Institute of Geotechnical Research, and devoted a lot of efforts to geotechnical research.
Huang Wenxi is the founder of soil mechanics in China. For decades, he has always stood at the forefront of this discipline and achieved high-level research results in different research topics.
From 1942 to 1957, he created a new calculation method of foundation settlement and stress distribution in foundation. When calculating the foundation settlement with the general layered summation method, it is assumed that the foundation soil will not deform laterally, which obviously does not conform to the actual situation. However, some calculation methods considering lateral deformation of foundation soil need to calculate two horizontal normal stresses and determine Poisson's ratio of soil, which makes the calculation complicated and difficult. He suggested using the sum of three normal stresses to calculate, which not only considered the lateral deformation of foundation soil, but also simplified the calculation and reduced the workload of compiling calculation charts. He also suggested that triaxial compression test be used to study the functional relationship between the elastic modulus and Poisson's ratio of soil and the stress value and its ratio of soil, which was the pioneer of the stress path method popular internationally in the 1970s.
Liquefaction of saturated loose sand caused by earthquake, blasting and other dynamic actions is very harmful to buildings. Therefore, the mechanism, identification and seepage control of sand liquefaction are the research objects of many scholars. However, until the mid-1950s, sand cylinders were generally used in shaking table experiments to study the liquefaction of foundation. This is theoretically flawed and cannot be used for dynamic analysis. Huang Wenxi suggested that the dynamic characteristics of sandy soil should be tested by a vibrating triaxial apparatus, and the variation law and absolute value of pore water pressure U of undrained samples and samples with different densities under different stress states and different vibration intensities were determined. He first put forward the effective stress principle to explain the liquefaction mechanism, that is, using the above test results, the maximum pore water pressure that may be generated at any point in the sand foundation or sand slope under certain conditions is determined, and the dynamic stability analysis is carried out by using the effective stress method accordingly. This research achievement has been highly concerned by international experts. The vibration triaxial apparatus and its test method proposed by him have been widely used at home and abroad and become a conventional dynamic test method.
In 1970s, he noticed that the development of computer and finite element method inevitably required the establishment of a mathematical model that could fully and truly reflect the stress-strain relationship of soil. In view of the shortcomings of too many artificial assumptions about yield surface and hardening parameters in the elastic-plastic model of soil established at that time, he put forward the theory of directly determining the elastic-plastic model of soil from experimental data. After 10 years' efforts, Tsinghua University, led by him, established the "Tsinghua Elastic-Plastic Model" and did a lot of verification work, which was also used in the calculation and analysis of practical projects and was highly praised by colleagues at home and abroad. This scientific research achievement won the third prize of the National Natural Science Award.
After he was over 80 years old, he also published a paper "A Simple Method for Elastic-plastic Stress of Earth Dams", which put forward new suggestions on the calculation methods of initial pore water pressure, instantaneous deformation and final deformation of saturated soil after loading.
Since 1980s, with the development of soil constitutive relation and geotechnical calculation, he has seen the important role of various model tests, especially geotechnical model tests, in verifying theory and simulating practical engineering, and also saw the huge gap between China and advanced countries in hydraulic model tests. 1984 personally led a delegation to visit western Europe, Japan and the United States. After returning to China, he appealed from many sides and finally established centrifugal model test devices of different scales in China, which will certainly play a great role in promoting the development of geotechnical engineering in China.
In addition, he also organized specialized personnel to carry out permeability model test, supported theoretical research of pressuremeter test, vigorously carried out hydraulic fracturing test and mechanism research, placed great enthusiasm on the application and research of geosynthetics, and promoted the application of geosynthetics in water conservancy projects. Some of these projects are still in the exploration stage abroad, and some have great engineering significance and potential.
A large number of talents in water conservancy and hydropower science and technology have been trained.
Huang Wenxi has been engaged in education for more than half a century, and has paid equal attention to teaching and educating people. It has taught students a lot of valuable knowledge and inspired them with its exemplary role.
He works hard and is extremely efficient. He often works 14 hours a day. His extensive and profound knowledge and ability to solve difficult problems all come from diligence. When teaching, he spends a lot of energy preparing lessons carefully every time he lectures. In his 70s, he still taught structural mechanics and advanced soil mechanics to students, young teachers and graduate students. Among them, the complicated mathematical formulas were all derived from the memory on the blackboard, which surprised his disciples. After more than 80 years old, he still handles a lot of manuscripts every day, accurately and quickly. When writing a paper, formula derivation, illustration drawing and document retrieval are all done by hand.
He advocates heuristic education and emphasizes the cultivation of students' self-study ability. He has always advocated that students should pay equal attention to basic theory and basic engineering skills training, and emphasized the position of experiments in soil mechanics teaching and postgraduate training. He asked his graduate students to read a lot of literature and do as many experiments as possible. He advocates recruiting engineering graduate students from technicians with practical engineering experience and selecting scientific research topics from the problems that need to be solved urgently in practical engineering.
He studies rigorously, examines papers and reports very strictly and revises them very carefully. It is required to check the theoretical derivation repeatedly and the test results must be repeated many times. His graduate students often have more than 100 experiments in their thesis work.
He is good at discovering and cultivating talents and spares no effort to promote the backward. In the unit where he works, he pays attention to organizing and cultivating multi-level excellent teams. When everything was in ruins after the Cultural Revolution, he served as the director of the teaching and research group of soil mechanics in Tsinghua University at the age of 70. He adjusted scientific research projects, determined the direction of scientific research, organized the deployment of personnel, sent teachers and graduate students to study abroad, and trained a number of high-level masters and doctors.
He has been teaching at home and abroad for more than 50 years. Some of his students have become teachers, doctoral supervisors, famous scholars and experts. It has also trained a large number of engineering and technical backbone talents who are active in China's water conservancy and hydropower front and other industries.
Edited Engineering Properties of Soil, and published Structural Mechanics and Geotechnical Mechanics in Hydraulic Buildings in 1984, selected works of Huang Wenxi. Huang Wenxi has made great contributions to China's water conservancy and hydropower education and has become a model for several generations of water conservancy and hydropower engineers and technicians.
1955 Huang Wenxi joined the China * * * Production Party, and was successively elected as the representative of the first Jiangsu Provincial People's Congress, the third National People's Congress, the second and third CPPCC National Committees, and the fifth and sixth CPPCC Jinghua Municipal Committee. 1955 was elected as a member of Chinese Academy of Sciences (now an academician of China Academy of Sciences). 1956 participated in the formulation of China's first medium-and long-term science and technology development plan, namely 1956 to 1967 National Science and Technology Development Prospect Plan. He has served as vice chairman and honorary director of China Water Conservancy Society, director of geotechnical mechanics professional committee, vice chairman of China Hydropower Engineering Society, honorary member of china civil engineering society, director of China theoretical and applied mechanics Society, and chairman and honorary director of China Soil Mechanics and Basic Engineering Society. He also served as the editorial boards of Journal of Water Conservancy and Journal of Geotechnical Engineering, Journal of China Science and Journal of Tsinghua University. He also actively participated in academic activities at home and abroad. He has been to Western Europe, Japan and the United States for academic investigation, participated in international academic conferences for many times, published academic papers and conducted academic exchanges. He is an internationally renowned expert.
1955, Huang Wenxi joined the China * * * production party and was elected as the representative of the Third National People's Congress and a member of the Second and Third Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. 1956 was elected as a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He has served as vice chairman and honorary director of China Water Conservancy Society, director of geotechnical mechanics professional committee, vice chairman of China Hydropower Engineering Society, honorary member of china civil engineering society, honorary director of China theoretical and applied mechanics Society, chairman and honorary director of China Soil Mechanics and Basic Engineering Society. He also served as the director of the editorial board of the Journal of Water Resources and the chairman of the editorial board of the Journal of Geotechnical Engineering. He actively participated in academic activities at home and abroad, led a delegation or participated in inspection tours to Western Europe, Japan and the United States, and participated in international academic conferences and wrote papers for them many times.