Recently, Associate Professor Cao Ran from the HNU College of Civil Engineering was honored with the "State-of-the-Art of Civil Engineering Award" by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) for his outstanding contributions in the field of structural crashworthiness design through his paper titled "Concrete Bridge Barriers: State-of-the-Art and Design Implementation". This paper was published in the internationally authoritative journal ASCE Journal of Bridge Engineering.
The "State-of-the-Art of Civil Engineering Award" was established by the ASCE in 1966 to recognize individuals or teams who have made outstanding contributions to systematically assessing the latest research advances and cutting-edge technologies in civil engineering, with substantial impact on engineering practice, technical standards, or industry codes. This prestigious award is granted to only one recipient globally each year.
The award ceremony will take place during the ASCE Annual Conference in October 2025, where the honoree will be formally presented with the medal.
The award-winning paper was jointly completed by HNU, the University of Michigan, and the City University of New York, with HNU serving as the first author affiliation. The paper systematically reviews the state-of-the-art developments in experimental research, theoretical analysis, and numerical simulation of concrete bridge barriers, thoroughly identifies the limitations of current design models, and puts forward practical recommendations for improvement.
The research findings provide critical theoretical support for the revision of the current AASHTO-LRFD bridge barrier design specifications in the United States, while also offering valuable references for the enhancement of relevant standards in China.
Associate Professor Cao Ran has long been dedicated to research in structural crashworthiness design and protective engineering. Cao has received multiple prestigious international awards, including the ASCE O.H. Ammann Research Fellowship in Structural Engineering (2019), the ASCE Arthur M. Wellington Prize (2020), the ASCE Raymond C. Reese Research Prize (2023), and the ASCE Collingwood Prize (2025).
The award notification.
The abstract of the paper.
